Under the leadership of Sewickley grad Tom Droney and co-founder Nate Perry, the ITPS Wildcats are the first Pittsburgh AAU team to earn a shoe deal. If the program succeeds at the elite level, it could have a lasting impact on local hoops.
How does a player from Sewickley get the attention of a college coach in North Carolina?
By playing in Las Vegas, of course.
At least, that’s the path that Sewickley graduate Tom Droney took. If not for his play at an AAU tournament in Vegas, Droney might have never garnered the attention of Davidson coach Bob McKillop and played in two NCAA tournaments.
It’s that experience that Droney and co-founder Nate Perry are hoping to lean on as the directors of the ITPS Wildcats, a Pittsburgh-based AAU basketball team that recently earned entry into the Adidas Gauntlet Gold Division. The circuit features the elite in AAU basketball, an exclusive club featuring only teams sponsored by the shoe company.
ITPS is the first Pittsburgh-based AAU program to earn a shoe deal.
“We’ve kind of just been building from scratch and just working to get to this point,” Droney said. “It’s been the goal since day one, to get the shoe contract.”
If ITPS performs well, it could secure a multi-year deal with Adidas. Such a contract could turn the program into a hub for the area’s elite talent. While the current headliners are players like prized Kennedy Catholic juniors Oscar Tshiebwe and Maceo Austin, the ITPS roster also includes Sewickley Academy’s Isiah Warfield and Isaiah Smith, as well as OLSH’s Donovan Johnson and Dante Spadafora.
“Now we can ensure that kids don’t have to leave the area to play AAU, which has been an issue in the past,” Droney said. “This is more of an attractive situation to keep the talent in Pittsburgh.”
For the last decade, the top talent has often chosen to play AAU ball outside of Pennsylvania. Mars senior Robby Carmody, a Notre Dame recruit, played for the Ohio Basketball Club. Butler star sophomore Ethan Morton plays for the New York Rens. Nelly Cummings and Cameron Johnson each played with AAU teams outside of the state.
That wasn’t always the case. In the mid-2000s, the AAU program of choice for local recruits was the Pittsburgh JOTS. A nationally competitive program, the team boasted a deep roster of Division I talent that included DeJuan Blair, D.J. Kennedy, Herb Pope, Terrelle Pryor and Lance Jeter. But after the JOTS dissolved in 2007, players scattered.
Carliss Jeter saw the exposure his nephew, Lance, received playing nationally with the JOTS. With his son, Sheldon, emerging as a top prospect, Carliss made the choice to sign up Sheldon for the King James All-Stars in Ohio.
“That was important for me, to get him seen,” Jeter said. “Because he was playing for the LeBron James team, scouts wanted to see that team, because it had the best players from all over the country.”
Sheldon Jeter landed a scholarship from Vanderbilt before transferring to Pitt.
“As a parent, it’s an investment. I didn’t mind going to Ohio. I would’ve taken him to California to try to get him a scholarship to go to school,” Jeter said.
Even if they don’t leave the state, local prospects are often scattered around the region. PK Flash, an AAU program run by Joe Lewandowski, has a heavy local presence. Others play for College Basketball Prospects of America, a program run by Sewickley assistant coach Almamy Thiero.
But not everyone plays in the elite tournaments. Nike, Under Armour and Adidas all sponsor exclusive circuits limited to teams they sponsor. While some open events – like this weekend’s Pitt Jam Fest – remain central to the AAU circuit, the exclusive events feature the top prospects and draw the top recruiters.
“It’s kind of created a gap,” Droney said. “You’ll have the shoe circuit and then you have these independent tournaments, some of which are really good, but the exposure and competition isn’t present.”
It was a gap that Droney and Perry thought they could fill.
“We saw an opportunity where there wasn’t really an elite AAU program after the Pittsburgh JOTS dissolved,” Droney said. “So we saw it as an opportunity to help kids and give them some of the wisdom that we were enriched with when we went through the recruiting process.”
Droney and Perry, a Hempfield graduate who played at Youngstown State and Seton Hill, first formed their own AAU team in 2014. The program grew and eventually merged with the West Virginia Wildcats. It now features six teams, including four at the high school level. Three of those high school teams will play in the high profile Gauntlet series, which included a stop in Indianapolis this weekend.
“In the past, we’d go to tournaments and there’d be the third assistant or mostly low-Division I and Division II coaches,” Droney said. “Now we’re playing in front of the decision makers – the top assistant and the head coach – and you’ll have every level of Division I.”
ITPS’ emergence as an elite AAU program comes at a time when high school basketball is seeing a development growth. Pittsburgh Basketball Club founder John Giammarco started a summer league in 1994 with just eight high-school teams. When he started a fall league, the push back was immediate.
“People said, ‘You’re out of your mind. It’s football season,” Giammarco recalled.
The fall league now features eight separate sites for varsity teams and has grown to include junior varsity, middle school and bantam teams. Giammarco views year-round basketball development as critical to the quality of talent in the area.
“Any city’s AAU programs are only going to be as good as the high school basketball that’s played,” Giammarco said. “When your high school basketball is strong, then you have the players to feed into the program.”
The summer and fall leagues have become pivotal to skill development and team chemistry. In some respects, it’s also increased the value of high school basketball at a time when the AAU circuit is growing exponentially. As close as some players are to AAU coaches, nothing can replace the academic and background information a high school coach has on a player.
“We see a kid every day for four years,” Lincoln Park coach Mike Bariski said. “It’s still imperative for a college coach to have a relationship with a high school coach.”
But in many ways, AAU is a necessary component. With hundreds of colleges searching for talent, it’s not productive for a college coach to see prospects one or two at a time.
“The good thing about AAU is that it gives kids great exposure,” said Bariski, who isn’t fond of the travel circuit. “If I’m a college coach, I go to a big-time AAU tournament and I see 20 players instead of seeing one at a time.”
It’s that exposure that Droney hopes will help make ITPS a fixture on the elite AAU circuit. Nothing is guaranteed. ITPS has a one-year deal with Adidas to show it belongs amongst the elite.
“If we go out and do what we need to do, we could potentially get a multi-year deal once this AAU season is finished,” Droney said.