EJ Matthews-Spratley(‘22) has committed to the University of Scranton, where he will be continuing his academic and basketball career. Matthews-Spratley, a starting guard, averaged 14.5 PPG this past season and was recently named to the Olympic Conference All-American Division first team.
Matthews-Spratley began playing basketball “around 2nd or 3rd grade”
His biggest inspiration in playing basketball was “definitely my older brother. We used to have this huge garage with a basketball hoop inside of it and we would just play every day. Most of the time he won but it was very physical and very fun.”
Outside of school, Matthews-Spratley plays for South Jersey Titans, an AAU team.
The recruiting process for Matthews-Spratley was “a lot of fun,” he said, “just meeting new coaches and taking visits, especially official visits where you stay overnight with the team and players. It’s great, but it is very stressful just picking one and trying to make sure it’s a good fit.”
Matthews-Spratley began playing Varsity as a sophomore, and he reflects on his experience as “kind of surreal,” but as soon as he started playing, he “got comfortable and we really made a great run and [he] learned a lot from that year”
Matthews-Spratley describes his East Basketball Career as “really unique from freshman basketball to starting varsity the next year to playing in the group 4 final then obviously covid junior year wasn’t the best but senior year coming back going 28-2 winning the conference and getting back to the group 4 final,” He describes this past season as “unbelievable, we didn’t lose for two and a half months, although it didn’t end how I wanted it to,” Finally he said, ”Over these past 4 years, this program, and DA have made me into a college basketball player.”
Matthews-Spratley said his favorite memory from his time in the East Basketball program was “My whole senior season is my favorite memory. We had fun and played hard and did something special.”
In the fall Matthews-Spratley will begin his first semester at the University of Scranton. Matthews-Spratley is excited to begin this next chapter of his academic and athletic career, and we all can’t wait to see what life has in store for him.