It was a night like no other for two brothers who are among Lincoln Park’s all-time basketball greats.
Earlier this month, Class of 2024 graduate Brandin Cummings enjoyed a breakout game for the Pitt Panthers, pouring in 30 points off the bench in a win against Eastern Kentucky.
But what made the Dec. 11 matchup at the Petersen Events Center even more special was that Cummings’ older brother Nelly was on hand to call the game for the ACC Network.
That marked Nelly Cummings’ broadcast debut, making it a night of auspicious firsts for the two brothers, both natives of Midland.
Brandin Cummings, who was an integral part of LP’s back-to-back state championships the past two years, was on fire from behind the arc against Eastern Kentucky, draining six of eight three pointers, and hitting 10 of 13 shots from the field overall.
The 6 foot 3 inch guard followed in the footsteps of his older brother Nelly, who played for the Panthers in 2022-23 and averaged 11.1 points per game during that campaign. The 6 foot tall point guard started in his lone season at Pitt, following stints at Bowling Green and Colgate, and helped the Panthers win multiple NCAA Tournament games.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette‘s Christopher Carter did a great recap of this memorable evening, which you can read here.
Nelly Cummings, who graduated from LP in 2017, scored more than 2,000 points for the Leopards during his high school career, a feat his younger brother Brandin duplicated. The two became only the second set of brothers in WPIAL history to manage that feat.
Like Brandin, Nelly also won a state title at Lincoln Park. That was in 2014, when he started for the Leopards as a freshman.
Taking a break from playing basketball professionally in Europe, Nelly Cummings said that he hopes to broadcast more games in the future. His younger brother, meanwhile, has scored in double figures in three of four games in December, and is now averaging 7.7 points and 1.8 rebounds a game, while shooting 50 percent from the floor.
The two brothers are the sons of Renell Cummings and Brandi Gomez. And their grandfathers Chuck Gomez and James Slappy were all-state basketball stars at the old Lincoln High School, bringing Midland a state title in 1976.
“People in Midland have been supportive of me all my life,” Cummings told The Beaver County Times in 2016. “So, in my own way as a basketball player, I’m glad that I’ve been able to give something back to them.”
Count the Cummings brothers’ memorable evening at Pitt as just another way that the pair have been able to give something back to their hometown–and to their hometown school, LP.
Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School is a tuition-free public charter school located in Midland, PA, and open to all Pennsylvania families. Students grades 7-12 are bused from more than 90 different school districts to study the arts concentration of their choice: theatre, writing and publishing, media arts, health science and the arts, music, dance, and pre-law and the arts.
For more information, visit lppacs.org or contact: admissions@lppacs.org
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