PUP boys basketball Player of the Year: Neighborhood Academy’s Courtney Wallace

Not long after leading Neighborhood Academy to a Christian league championship in seventh grade, Courtney Wallace and teammate Shamar Simpson began pleading with school administrators about joining the WPIAL.

“I remember that week, that moment, talking to [athletic director Gary] Shawley and Brent Jernigan, who was head of the middle school at the time,” Wallace recalled. “We just knew the WPIAL was the best basketball competition in the area. We wanted to play at a higher level, so that’s where we needed to be.”

Not a lot of people were familiar with Neighborhood Academy at the time, so Wallace and pals wanted to put the small school, located in the Stanton Heights area of Pittsburgh, on the map.

As it turns out, they not only put the Bulldogs on the local map but also on the state map.

Neighborhood Academy joined the WPIAL in 2020, and in just its fifth season, the Bulldogs captured WPIAL and PIAA Class 1A titles in 2025, a big reason for that being the play of Wallace, a bulldog of a point guard who will play collegiately for the Yale Bulldogs.

“Neighborhood Academy means so much to me,” said Wallace, an outstanding student who boasts a 3.89 GPA. “Putting it on the map, that’s been the goal. It’s a bigger goal than me winning any awards.”

Well, Wallace’s play this season earned him a lot of awards, too, the latest being the Pittsburgh Union Progress boys basketball Player of the Year. All WPIAL and City League players were considered for the award picked by the PUP sports staff.

What Wallace did statistically, you almost had to see it to believe it. A 6-foot-3 senior, Wallace averaged a triple-double on the season — 22 points, 13 rebounds and 10 assists per game.

“Someone told me at the beginning of the year that no [WPIAL player] had averaged a triple-double in 15 to 20 years,” Neighborhood Academy coach Jordan Marks said. “So I told him, ‘You’re that good, that athletic and so unselfish that there’s no reason you can’t do it.’”

Count Wallace’s future coach as being among those who were super impressed. James Jones is Yale’s all-time winningest coach and just finished his 26th season at the school, which included a second straight NCAA tournament appearance. Jones said that in all his years he doesn’t remember recruiting a player who averaged a triple-double in high school.

“I haven’t had anyone that has done that,” Jones said. “I don’t think anyone has anyone that has done that. It’s almost impossible to do. He’s a special talent.”

It wasn’t much more than a year ago when Yale associate head coach Justin Simon approached Jones with film of Wallace. When Jones watched it, he came away amazed, so much so that he compared this teen with cartoonish numbers to a cartoon character.

“I was just amazed at his athleticism and his toughness,” Jones said. “He has calves like Barney Rubble. He’s a big, strong, powerful guard capable of scoring in bunches, passing, and dunking on anybody.”

Wallace did a lot of all of that, not only this season but also throughout a high school career that saw him compile 2,056 points, 1,083 rebounds, 392 assists, 265 steals and 141 blocked shots. 

You could say that Wallace is a chip off the old block. His father, Courtney Sr., was a standout player a few decades ago who helped Perry reach the City League championship in 1997 prior to going on to star at Duquesne, where the physical point guard finished his career with 1,394 points and 509 rebounds. 

Marks, Neighborhood Academy’s coach for the past four seasons, has known the older Wallace since they were kids and young Courtney since he was in diapers. Marks said that it was apparent when the younger Wallace was a little kid that he had the potential to grow into a big-time talent.

“You could tell something was there. You could tell that he was something special,” Marks said. “Did I think he would be this good? I don’t know because he’s phenomenal, but I knew something was special about him. And what took over was his work ethic.”

Marks has often brought up Wallace’s work ethic, and for good reason. Wallace asked Marks for the key to the gym following his freshman season and has never given it back. From 6 a.m. workouts to staying for hours after practice working on his game, Wallace has a big motor and a desire to get the most out of the gifts he was given.

“He’s a culture setter,” said Marks. “His work ethic has changed the culture of the entire program. Now the younger kids that want to emulate him are staying after practice, coming early in the morning, asking for gym keys.”

Wallace keyed Neighborhood Academy’s run to its first WPIAL championship appearance his junior season, but it wasn’t until this season that he and the Bulldogs fully unlocked their potential. The Bulldogs finished 29-1, which included victories against teams from every classification and the City League. The only blemish came via a one-point loss to a strong Class 4A Beaver team on Jan. 4. Wallace had a half-court heave rim out at the buzzer.

Wallace shined in some of the season’s biggest games, finishing with 21 points, 18 rebounds and 5 assists in a 69-46 win against Serra Catholic in the WPIAL championship, and 16 points, 13 rebounds and 5 steals in 60-51 win against Sankofa Freedom in the PIAA championship. Taking in that game was one of Wallace’s future coaches, Simon, who watched while sitting with Wallace’s family behind the Neighborhood Academy bench.

“That last game, it was our last time playing in front of a lot of people, so I just wanted to make sure we went out the right way and in a positive way, win or lose,” said Wallace, whose Bulldogs were the only WPIAL team to win a PIAA championship.

This future Ivy League player was in a league of his own statistically this season. No WPIAL player put up numbers like Wallace, who will continue to be a numbers guy in college as he plans on studying finance at Yale. And even though the Bulldogs are top dogs in the Ivy League, Wallace could see significant minutes as a freshman.

“He’s so big and strong,” Jones said. “He’s built like a college guy already. He doesn’t need to get any stronger. I can see him being able to do a lot of the same things he did in high school.”

Yale is considered one of the top universities in the world, so Wallace doesn’t need to worry about putting the school on the map. But that’s exactly what he did at Neighborhood Academy, which is as well known as it has ever been, with Wallace being a big reason for that.

“Four years ago when I took the job, everybody would ask me, ‘What’s Neighborhood Academy?’” Marks remembered. “Now because of what this team did and what Courtney did, everybody kind of knows about Neighborhood Academy.”