When basketball head coach Bob Montana recruited Aaron Galletta '02 five years ago, he knew he was looking at a good shooter.
Anything else would be a bonus.
Today, Montana says, Galletta is a complete basketball player who can read defenses extremely well.
And he has not forgotten how to shoot.
This February, during a game against Clarkson in Memorial Field House, Galletta became the all-time leading scorer in the College's basketball history. Playing in front of his parents on Senior Night, in his last regular-season home game, he made a three-point shot with a little more than two minutes left in the first half to give him 1,791 points in his career, eclipsing the old career record of 1,790 set by Joe Cardany '81. (Galletta finished the season with 1,949 points, and his 663 points this year broke the previous single-season record of 652 held by Jim Tedisco '72, now a New York State Assemblyman representing the Schenectady area.)
Just as important, those three points against Clarkson were part of the twenty he scored to lead the Dutchmen to a 70-59 win that gave Union sole possession of first place in the Upstate Collegiate Athletic Association (UCAA). The team went on to finish with a fine 21-8 record, won its first UCAA regular season championship, made its first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1983, and Galletta was named “Player of the Year” in the UCAA and a second team All-American by the National Basketball Coaches Association.
Galletta, a 6'7″, 180-pound guard, was happy when the record chase was over. “Everyone I talked to on campus was talking about it. I just wanted to get it over with. It was a little much, but I never lost track of what the main goal was-to win games and do what I could to help the team out.”
When Galletta was attending Franklin D. Roosevelt High School in Hyde Park, N.Y., it would have been hard to imagine him reaching these heights. Only one college that offers athletic scholarships looked at him, even through he was the school's scoring leader.
“It's probably because I was really skinny, and colleges probably thought the only thing I could do was shoot,” Galletta says. “People really didn't respect my game back then.”
He has worked hard, Montana says, and has become a complete ballplayer and a team leader. That leadership was recognized near the end of the season, when Galletta was named one of ten national finalists for the Jostens Trophy, which is awarded to the outstanding student-athlete in Division III basketball. The trophy is awarded on three criteria-basketball ability, academic ability, and community service. Galletta is a managerial economics major with a history minor, former president of his fraternity, and has organized blood drives and volunteer efforts at soup kitchens in Schenectady. “He is one of those guys that you hope for when you recruit-a complete college kid, not just a basketball player,” Montana says.
Galletta was the Dutchmen's leading scorer in all but four games this year and had a career high of forty-five to lead Union over Cazenovia in the Desert Shootout in Las Vegas, Nev. He started all 108 games of his career, scored in double figures 91 times, and pulled down double-digit rebounds in six games. An outstanding three-point shooter, he finished sixth in the country in three-point field goal percentage (50.7 percent) and first in three-point field goals per game (2.76).
Union career scoring
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Aaron Galletta '02 – 1,949
- Joe Cardany '81 – 1,790
- Jim Tedisco '72 – 1,632
- Sam Poulis '95 – 1,426
- Joe Wood '84 – 1,398
- Ken D'Orazio '85 – 1,292
- C.J. Rodgers '02 – 1,274
- Joe Clinton '83 – 1,270
- Ken Evans '94 – 1,233
- Rob Groelz '99 – 1,199
- Kevin Bartlett '85 – 1,147
- Dave Santos '63 – 1,117
- Jerry Brescia '91 – 1,050