Oft-traveled Spellman tired of sitting
RADNOR » All Omari Spellman could do earlier this year was watch as Villanova marched to yet another 30-win season that included a fourth straight Big East regular-season title and second Big East Tournament crown in four years.
He wasn’t hurt, like teammate Phil Booth, but the product of a ruling by the NCAA that forced the 6-9½, 250-pound forward, to sit out the year as an academic redshirt.
The issue was when Spellman’s freshman year of high school began.
Spellman enrolled at Middletown High School in New York in the fall of 2011 and then transferred to the Hoosac School, a private school in Hoosick, N.Y., a few months later. In order for Spellman to attend that school, administrators told him he would have to enter as an eighth-grader, which he did.
Spellman then spent his ninth- and 10th-grade years at North Royalton High School in Ohio, his junior year at the MacDuffie School in Massachusetts and his senior year at St. Thomas More in Connecticut.
Under NCAA regulations, prospective student-athletes have four years to complete his or her core requirements once they enter high school. While Spellman met all the academic requirements for eligibility, by dropping back to the eighth grade, he took longer than the required four years so the NCAA ruled that Spellman had to sit out the year as an academic redshirt.
Yet it wasn’t a lost year for the big man who was chosen as the preseason Freshman of the Year in the Big East by a vote of the league’s coaches and was ranked as the No. 18 prospect in the Class of 2016 by ESPN and Rivals. com.
“It was growing process,” Spellman said Tuesday. “I learned a lot, grew a lot. I won’t say it wasn’t hard, trying to cope with not being able to play in games, but I definitely learned from it and I think I definitely made it a positive.
“I learned about how serious the game is. In high school there are times you can take plays off, be kind of silly and foolish on the court. Here, that’s not really a thing. Most importantly, the importance of playing defense, the importance of knowing everything and the importance of knowing the scouting report. Those are the major takeaways for me. The hardest part was not being able to play in the games.”
Spellman could be on the bench during home games, but was not able to travel with the team for away games. So he spent that time working on his game with graduate assistant Henry Lowe. Spellman also used the year to get leaner. He changed his eating habits and worked out constantly with strength coach John Shackleton and shaved 37 pounds off his frame.
“It’s easier to move,” Spellman said. “While it’s not easy to defend people it’s easier to defend people. It just made me better as a player.”
Spellman is being counted on to help fill some of the void created by the graduation of Josh Hart, Kris Jenkins and Darryl Reynolds. An athletic big man who is as comfortable on the wing as he is in the low post, Spellman gives the Wildcats a much-needed inside presence.
“Having Spellman is nice,” Villanova coach Jay Wright said. “We haven’t had a big guy that good that early in his career. He’s not at a point where Daniel Ochefu was at the end of his career, and we might never see that here, but at the beginning of his career he’s the most talented young forward that we have.”
Yet Wright is not expecting Spellman to shoulder the load. Wright has Jalen Brunson, the preseason Player of the Year in the Big East, Mikal Bridges, Phil Booth, Donte DiVincenzo and Eric Paschall to do that.
“He’s going to struggle early as a freshman,” Wright said, “but by the end of the year he could be a really good player.”
After sitting out a year Spellman is keeping his personal goals simple.
“I just want to be the best player I can be,” he said.