VIDEO: Trombetta’s impact at Middle not diminished by narrow miss of scoring milestone

Posted: March 12th 2024

Middle Township's Anthony Trombetta gets to the basket for a layup during a game late this season. (photo courtesy Tom Powers)

By BRIAN CUNNIFF

CapeAtlanticLive.com

The Middle Township High School boys basketball program has a long history of producing some very good players who didn’t score 1,000 career points.

Brian Allen, Dave Smith, Ty Wilson, Terrance McNeal, Marcus McNeal, Jason O’Neill, Lou Brown, Boo Evans and Mike Wise are some of them. There are quite a few others as well.

You can add Anthony Trombetta to that list.

Trombetta fell agonizingly short of the mark, finishing his career with 972 points when Middle Township lost the South Jersey Group II title game to Camden earlier this month.

The failure to reach the coveted milestone certainly doesn’t diminish the impact Trombetta had at Middle. He posted one of the best seasons in recent program history, setting a new program record for three-pointers made in a season with 92 on just 194 attempts, giving him a splendid three-point shooting percentage of 47.4 for the season.

Trombetta averaged a team-best 14.6 points per game for the Cape-Atlantic League champion Panthers, who finished at 28-3 overall.

“I thought it was a fun year,” Trombetta said. “It was a good season. I had a great time playing.”

Trombetta said narrowly missing the 1,000-point milestone is only frustrating due to the fact that he most likely would have surpassed it had the team beaten Camden and played more games.

“I’m upset with not getting it more the fact that if we would’ve won, I probably wouldn’t have had a problem getting it,” he said. “If we had gotten to the state championship game. I probably would’ve gotten it. That was the whole goal, really, to get to that game. But unfortunately it didn’t happen for us.”

On a team that featured the sensational athleticism of Jamir McNeal and Bubba McNeil and the high-flying exploits of Re’Ale Basquin, Trombetta was as critical to Middle’s success as anyone.

Trombetta also would have been a lock to reach 1,000 career points if not for minor injuries as a sophomore and junior that forced him to miss a few games in each of those seasons.

“Not getting 1,000 points, it doesn’t define me and I don’t think it defines who I am as a player,” Trombetta said. “I think there’s a lot more to my game than just scoring points.”

Colleges certainly think so as well. Trombetta is getting recruited by quite a few Division III schools, including Stockton and Rowan, as well as a couple of Division II programs. As of early this week, he had yet to make a decision.

While Trombetta’s future basketball home is uncertain at this point, there’s no doubt about his place in Middle Township High School boys basketball lore.

He was one of the best.