Markus Kennedy is tough to miss. He’s 6-foot-9, 250 pounds, and when the mammoth power forward is walking toward you on a bright day, he can block out the sun. Yet for some strange reason, the affable young man with the pleasant smile from Yeadon, Delaware County, Pa., slipped below the radar of some.
Maybe it was because he started playing basketball late. Maybe it was because he went to three different schools in three years.
What’s important, however, is that he didn’t slip past Villanova. The Final Four Wildcats noticed Kennedy’s prowess before everyone, and when former Villanova assistant coach Pat Chambers introduced himself last summer to Markus, it was a meeting that seemed to resonate with Kennedy.
It carried such weight that Kennedy this afternoon made an oral commitment to attend the Big East powerhouse, coached by Jay Wright, in 2010. The Wildcats will be getting a versatile player who can both overpower opponents inside, and has the range to hit 3-pointers.
This past season, Kennedy led Living Faith Christian Academy, in Pennsauken, N.J., with a 22-point scoring average and 12 rebounds a game. He choose Villanova over West Virginia and Temple, but there didn’t even seem to be a race between the three schools.
Villanova, which ended a historic season reaching the Final Four for the first time since its memorable 1985 NCAA championship and finished 30-8, was there from the beginning. The Wildcats, a guard-oriented team under Wright, can use the large inside presence of someone like Kennedy.
A big reason for his decision was proximity. Villanova is about 25 minutes from his home. Markus has been a major factor in his household, helping his mother Barbara raise his younger siblings.
“My mother is the backbone of this family, and I’ll do whatever I need to help her out,” Markus said. “I like Villanova, and I was really impressed with Coach Wright. I like the coaches, the players and the campus. The fact that Villanova is so close was a big factor. What really sealed the deal was when Coach Wright came up and spoke to my teachers about me. That impressed me. It said to me that Coach Wright really cares about my future, not just me as a basketball player.”
The interesting twist is that Kennedy hasn’t been playing competitive basketball that long. He dabbled in a number of sports growing up, but was more accomplished in swimming than anything else. Basketball was just something he did with his friends. The sport did not really grow on him until he transferred from Monsignor Bonner (Lansdowne, Pa.) as freshman to begin his sophomore year at basketball powerhouse St. Patrick, in Elizabeth, N.J.
There, he was welcomed with a host of college coaches, and TV cameras covering St. Pat’s. But the 6-hour roundtrip daily haul from Yeadon to Elizabeth turned out to be too much of a grind. Kennedy opted to transfer to Living Faith his junior year.
It meant his third school in three different years. But if you meet Kennedy and his family, the last thing that would come to mind was the Kennedys trying to parlay athletic prowess for a bigger, better deal.
“That wasn’t the case at all,” said Pennsylvania State Senator Anthony Williams, who is Kennedy’s godfather and in many respects a surrogate father, since Barbara and Ross Kennedy, Markus’ father, are separated. “Barbara has always demanded that Markus get the best education possible, and that’s what the family was looking for. Too many of these schools push kids through because of their athletic ability. It was the direct opposite with Markus. We wanted the best academic fit. The attitude has always been academics first, followed by basketball. If you’re good, they’ll find you.”
Villanova found Kennedy, who enters his senior year next fall with peace of mind knowing where he’ll spend the next four years of his life.
Barbara, who raised her three children on her own, knows the calls from some schools may still come trying to convince Markus to change his mind.
“How I was raised, and how I raised Markus was to believe in always keeping your word,” said Barbara, a corrections officer at Graterford prison, who will be deployed this Friday to McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, beginning a three-month tour as a staff sergeant in the reserves. “Markus’ word is gold and he means to stick with it. He gave his word that Villanova is where he’s going to go and there is no changing that.”
Joseph Santoliquito covers high schools for the Philadelphia Daily News and is a frequent contributor to MaxPreps.com. He can be contacted at JSantoliquito@yahoo.com.
