Marple Newtown forward Aziz Khammassi shoots during practice Thursday. The senior took part in a tryout with the Tunisian Under-17 national team last year, which helped him focus and improve on his game this season. (Digital First Media/Pete Bannan)
By Matthew DeGeorge
Aziz Khammassi’s junior-year basketball journey wasn’t the one he had originally expected.Two games into the season in December 2017, the forward let Marple Newtown coach Sean Spratt know that he would be away for most of the next month. He returned to Tunisia, the country of his father’s birth, to visit his sick grandmother. And while there, he got his fill of hoops by trying out for the Tunisian Under-17 team.
“When I went down there, I didn’t think it was going to be anything like here,” Khammassi said this week. “But they had like a 6-10 guy, a lot of good guards, lots of guys getting offers from schools here.”
The disruption to the high school season was a setback last year, but the exposure to a higher level of talent has paid long-term dividends. Khammassi spent two weeks trying out with the Tunisian Basketball Federation (FTBB), and while he didn’t make the final squad for a game, per the FTBB, the experience was important to Khammassi.