The Little Fundamental
Name: Eddie Griffin
Season Story: 27 PPG, 13 RPG, 6 BPG
Up Next: Seton Hall *** Roman Catholic High School sits right on Broad Street in North Philadelphia. A few miles to the south down Broad lies the First Union Center, City Hall and Geno’s – the home of the best cheesesteaks in the free world. Roll in the other direction, only a few blocks from Roman’s front door, and you hit the Blue Horizon Boxing Club, Temple Owl country and the ensuing badlands of North Philly. This is where Roman Catholic rests, a box-like building on a main artery in one of America’s biggest cities, stuck between the North and South. An inconspicuous and commonplace building from the outside, the school mimics its favorite Seton Hall-bound son, Eddie Griffin, in its quiet, unassuming nature. To get to Roman’s gym, you have to make your way through the dimly lit, musty halls, to a winding wooden staircase that snakes its way up through the heart of the school. The court itself is about as big as a broom closet. The five or six rows of stands on each side are right on top of the floor; there’s no space between the bottom of the bleachers and the out-of-bounds line. Some of the best seats are the folding chairs they set up on the stage behind one of the baskets. The court is so short and narrow that the three-point arc runs itself out of bounds just below the foul line on each side. For a visitor who’s never run on the third floor at Roman Catholic, it feels like a cage.
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