Archdeacon: Kiss ready to rock against Wright State

Peter Kiss, Bryant’s 6-foot-5, sixth-year guard, leads the nation in scoring with a 25.1 points-per-game average.

But a great name and a great game don’t necessarily make for a great embrace all the time.

That’s the Jekyll-Hyde conundrum of the guy who is soft-spoken and empathetic off the court and often despised on it.

And it’s not just that he crushes opponents’ dreams with his ability to score in a variety of ways, it’s what he does after the baskets, and well, sometimes before them, too.

In the Northeast Conference title game – where Bryant routed Wagner, 70-43, to win the NCAA Tournament bid– he did everything from drop to the floor after scoring on a driving lay-up and doing a couple of celebratory push-ups to holding up three fingers and sticking out his tongue at the crowd after he hit a three pointer.

After a dunk, he pumped his hands skyward in “raise the roof” revelry.

After another score, he even headed over to press row to taunt a reporter who had tweeted out that Wagner would beat Bryant:

“That’s for you!”

Kiss is known for trash talking opponents, debating referee calls and oncein game this year he blew a kiss to a rival coach after he hit a three pointer.

While head coach, Jared Grasso, and his teammates love his edginess and competiveness – though Grasso did admit Tuesday it’s sometimes “a blessing and a curse” – opposing coaches aren’t always that amused by it.

Although Kiss led the nation in scoring and has lifted his Smithfield, Rhode Island, school into the NCAA Tournament for the first time, he was not voted the player of the year in the Northeast Conference.

The league’s coaches do the voting and they instead chose Wagner’s Alex Morales for the second season in a row.

Kiss has long played with a chip on his shoulder – something that comes when you go to four high schools and three different colleges and are always trying to find the right fit – but the player of year snub certainly had to hurt, even if he won’t say it publicly.

And so he put on a show against Wagner. His theatrics were the sidelight to a 34-point performance.

Oh and Morales?

Kiss and his teammates held him to an 0-for-16 shooting night.

Afterward Grasso told reporters: “(Kiss) is the Player of the Year. He’s the best player in the league. The most dominating player in the league.

Yet, if you saw Kiss immediately after that game or Tuesday at the end of the Bulldogs practice at UD Arena, you’d have seen a completely different side of him.

His alter ego can be just a fascinating to watch.

When Bryant finished its First Four drills, the players and coaches gathered at center court for a team photo. While his teammates were mugging, shoulder to shoulder above him, Kiss dropped down and squatted next to two of the coaches’ little children so they felt comfortable. He put his arm around 4-year-old Nathan Martelli, whose dad is one of the assistants, and whispered to him.

Soon he and the little boy were laughing.

Kiss is from Manhattan and for several years now he’s volunteered at a Safe Haven program there for people with disabilities.

During the Bulldogs season, he spends his Friday nights – before Saturday home games – with the Unified Dolphins, a Special Olympics team that’s associated with the Smithfield YMCA. He teaches the kids basketball.

On Selection Sunday he had some of those kids with him.

“Off the court I’m just completely different,” he said Tuesday. “I’m sort of a little soft spoken and I like to make an impact on other people’s lives.

“On the court people see me as sort of boisterous and animated. But I’m two different people and I embrace it. And I know that’s what makes me good on the court,”

Grasso agreed there are two sides to Kiss: “It’s two different human beings. Off the court, he’s soft spoken. He’s got a huge heart.

“My children love him.”

Grasso, though, didn’t recruit him as a baby sitter, he wanted someone to help launch the program and he said he’s known Kiss for several years.

After his high school odyssey ended at Notre Dame Prep in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, Kiss went to Quinnipiac, Grasso’s alma mater, started 21 games, averaged 13.3 points and won all rookie honors. A coaching change prompted him to transfer to Rutgers, where he redshirted a season, averaged six points a game the next season and left the program after playing in two games in 2019-20.

Last season he won first team All-NEC honors, but the Bulldogs lost in the conference title game.

Driven to lift the team higher, he spent the summer on campus and said he worked out five to six times day from 5a.m. to midnight.

By the end of the summer his body fat was below 4 percent.

But as often the case with him, there still have been some bumps in the road. He was suspended the first two games of the season by Grasso for a minor infraction and he incurred a two-game suspension after a rough game with Long Island University resulted in 12 technical fouls and four ejections.

Undeterred, he came back stronger than ever down the stretch. He’s had 10 games where he scored at least 30 points this season.

“Thankfully, I’m not coaching against him right now so I don’t have to figure that out,” Grasso said when asked how to defend Kiss.

WSU coach Scott Nagy had nothing but praise for Kiss on Tuesday and the Raiders players said they would defend him by committee, though the brunt of the task will fall on Tim Finke, the team’s best defensive player.

Nagy calls him the MVP of the team. His teammates say he’s the best defender in the Horizon League, though, like Kiss, he got snubbed in postseason honors.

“I like it when we have tough assignments,” Finke said of Kiss. “It will be fun.”

As for Kiss, he dismisses his antics: “I’m having the most fun of anybody in the country playing basketball, bar none.”

All Grasso would say: “When the lights come on, he’s the guy you want on your team. He’s a competitive, nasty, tough, edgy winner.”