Catching up with Matt Duffy
Matt Duffy has taken his laid back attitude and hard playing basketball style to Wells College in upstate Aurora, New York as his settles into academic life as a freshman and quickly masters the college hoops game.
A 2009 graduate of Huntington High School, Mr. Duffy has never had a problem making friends. But, as he settles into his new digs upstate, he readily admits to missing his friends back home.
“The town of Aurora is about a block long,” Mr. Duffy recently joked. It’s a very rural area, to be sure, and the Blue Devil alum has been known to drive 30 minutes to nearby Auburn or Ithaca just for fast food. It’s a far cry from the bustling streets of Huntington village, but Mr. Duffy has managed to make the adjustment.
At Huntington, Mr. Duffy captained and played point guard for the boys’ basketball team that advanced to the Suffolk Class A finals. He compiled a fine career with the Blue Devils and his spirited, competitive performances and razzle-dazzle style will long be remembered by his coaches and teammates. For his outstanding play, he won the Coaches Award at the senior athletic awards dinner last spring.
Mr. Duffy’s ambition was to always play college basketball and he felt that
NCAA Division III would give him the opportunity to battle for playing time while not consuming every waking moment of his life. He met head coach Joe Wojtylko at a basketball showcase in the summer before his senior year and that’s where he first learned of Wells College. The coach was in the process of putting together the school’s inaugural basketball team and based on what he saw at the showcase and the tapes Mr. Duffy sent to the school, a connection was made.
The Huntington alum’s transition to the college life has admittedly been a little bumpy in his first semester, but things are starting to come together. “The hardest transition has been adjusting to the academic work load and expectations of the professors here at Wells College,” Mr. Duffy said. He’s enrolled in several core liberal arts classes along with classes in history and math. “I haven’t decided on a major yet, but the current workload can be pointed towards various majors,” he said.
What’s not surprising to those who know him is that Mr. Duffy has excelled on the basketball court and this has helped ease the transition to college life. “It was a little tough in the beginning because I was named a starter for the first few games, but the minutes were limited and I couldn’t get on track,” he said. “My college team plays a different style than I played at Huntington and I had to adjust from being a distributor to a scorer.”
After going scoreless in his first three games, playing a total of 20 minutes and losing his starting job, the 5’10 college rookie made the most of his next opportunity and hasn’t looked back. Over the last four games after earning his starting position back, he has averaged 14.5 points in about 30 minutes a game.
In the last game before the semester break, Wells College toppled Cazenovia in a wild 105-80 contest. Mr. Duffy, who wears uniform number 20, played 37 minutes, scored 18 points, contributed six assists and picked up a steal. Through the first nine games he has averaged 7.6 points and pulled down 15 rebounds, dished out 14 assists and notched nine steals.
The Duffy family keeps in close contact with each other every day, which has made adjusting to the college routine a little bit easier. Matt’s parents have traveled the five hour distance to watch him play in four of his first nine games and the schedule for 2010 features plenty of weekend doubleheaders. His parents are ready for even more traveling as they plan to attend 10 of his remaining 16 games.
“Since tenth grade, I may have missed one game and that’s because my wife and I went to Aruba,” laughed Matt’s father, Chris Duffy. “The fact that I can’t make it to all of his games is killing me, but as long as the funds are available and the weather cooperates, I’ll try to get as many as I can.”
His college success is all the more impressive when one considers that Mr. Duffy was cut from Huntington’s JV team as a ninth grader and he was always considered too small to play basketball. By now, he has proved his doubters wrong.
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