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Sielski: Loyalty as important as hoops to Arcidiacono

Ryan Arcidiacono entered Neshaminy High School in 2008 and graduated from Neshaminy High School in 2012 and went nowhere else in between. It's maybe the most revealing item on his curriculum vitae, a small but significant indication of how and why he has developed into the point guard, the captain, and the beating heart of a Villanova team two victories from a national championship. Understand why he went there, understand why he stayed there, and you'll understand how he got here.

Ryan Arcidiacono entered Neshaminy High School in 2008 and graduated from Neshaminy High School in 2012 and went nowhere else in between. It's maybe the most revealing item on his curriculum vitae, a small but significant indication of how and why he has developed into the point guard, the captain, and the beating heart of a Villanova team two victories from a national championship. Understand why he went there, understand why he stayed there, and you'll understand how he got here.

These days, an elite Division I basketball recruit is often an ambitious nomad, bouncing from one high school to the next, from one AAU program to the next. It seems a necessary part of the search for a scholarship, and Arcidiacono skipped it altogether, sticking with the local public high school in his hometown, Langhorne.

"I knew if I performed well in AAU, high school - not that it didn't matter, but I knew I'd have a better experience than if I went to a prep school, and I stayed local with my friends," Arcidiacono said. "I loved everything about Neshaminy."

It's not as if Arcidiacono didn't have other options and didn't consider them. His two elder sisters had attended Archbishop Wood, and his elder brother had gone to St. Joseph's Prep, and through his AAU team, PA Playaz, Arcidiacono already had attracted the interest of several high-profile programs throughout the Philadelphia region. In sixth grade, he had participated in a tournament at Penn Charter, and he and his father, Joe, had targeted the Inter-Ac League - featuring traditional powers such as Episcopal Academy and Germantown Academy - and Penn Charter in particular as Ryan's preferred destination.

"As he was coming up," Joe said in a phone interview, "I was hearing two different messages from people: that AAU was where all the recruiting was, but you want to go to the best high school because you're going to practice and play against the best. I was kind of buying into that a little bit."

To make a seamless academic transition from his elementary school, St. Andrew in Newtown, to Penn Charter, Ryan had to do two things, though. He had to enroll in a two-week summer enrichment program, at a cost of $500. And because all Penn Charter ninth graders take Algebra II, he'd have to repeat eighth grade. At the last minute, with his parents having already written the check for the enrichment program, Arcidiacono realized he didn't want to be so bothered. Neshaminy didn't require an hourlong commute to the city before dawn. Neshaminy was where several of his buddies were going anyway. Neshaminy, it was. "I was able to experience being a high school kid and going to high school football games and just the overall atmosphere," he said.

For Joe Arcidiacono, too, there was something special about Ryan's having that sort of experience. Growing up in Northeast Philadelphia, Joe had bussed tables at an Italian restaurant to defray his tuition to Father Judge High School. His friends then were his friends now, and he hoped Neshaminy would provide the same dynamic - the lasting relationships, the reunions down the Shore - for Ryan.

"The great thing about those schools is the unbelievable community spirit they have forever," said Joe, who works as a pharmaceutical sales representative in Princeton. "It brings you back to a time when your life was so simple and great in its own way, when you didn't have two nickels to rub together but were the happiest kid in the world. I wanted him to have a lifelong commitment, not to say, 'Hey, let me go to the greatest school for hoops, knock the crap out of everybody, and then we'll never see each other again because none of us are from this area.' "

After Ryan's freshman season at Neshaminy, St. Joseph's, Rice, and Rutgers offered him scholarships. He'd long had his sights set on Villanova by then - both Joe and Patti Arcidiacono, Ryan's mother, are alumni - but the year of success had validated their course of action.

"We were never going to change from that path after that happened," Joe Arcidiacono said. "It was like, 'You know what? This is kind of fun.' We're kind of the anti-'Let's go join a prep school and smash teams by 61 points and call ourselves the best team in the state.' That's a little bit of the rebel in me.

"I see these kids, and at the first sign of challenge in their lives, when these kids are faced with adversity, they bail. You go back to the core roots. You go back to these high schools where they just kicked everybody's asses because they were recruited and had all these superstars. And I'm like, 'No. Ry, you don't have to do that.' It was that loyalty."

Arcidiacono's decision was all the more unorthodox because of Neshaminy's recent hoops history in the Suburban One League. Over the three years before Arcidiacono's arrival, the school's varsity boys basketball team had gone 12-60. Over the five years since Arcidiacono last played a high school game - he missed his senior season after having surgery to repair a herniated disc in his back - Neshaminy has won 16 games and lost 88. But over Arcidiacono's three seasons, the Redskins went 60-27, and his choice to spend his entire career there did nothing to damage his standing as a boy legend in Lower Bucks County. If anything, it enhanced it.

"We knew there was something really unique about him because he did that," Villanova coach Jay Wright said. "We all know the business. If you're at a school like that, that doesn't have a tradition, your freshman year everybody's coming to you with a better plan as soon as they see you. When you knew he wasn't going to leave that place, you immediately thought this is somebody special, and he really is."

His connection to his high school has remained strong throughout this run to the Final Four. He has been in constant contact, for instance, with Jerry Devine, who was removed as Neshaminy's head coach in January after an infamous incident in which he head-butted a referee during a game. "He texts me after every game," Arcidiacono said. "He's been great to me, and I love him for it."

It's that loyalty, like his father said. It's the only way Ryan Arcidiacono ever knew how to be.

msielski@phillynews.com

@MikeSielski