You should usually prefer the eight card suit game to no trump. This may be an exception to the rule.

Your re-bid of 2NT showed 18 to 19 high card points. (That is more than the 16 or so that would have been implied by a raise to 3 spades.) Partner should have added that to his seven to realize that you had a total of 25-26, not 23-24, meaning that a no trump game was at least a possibility. Partner could have raised to 3NT, the question was should he have done so, or should he have raised to three spades, pushing partner to raise to four spades with his three.

The main drawback of a no trump game is implied by the opponent’s heart overcall. Here, partner has a perfect antidote in ♡K972. Opener is not going to bid 2NT without a heart stopper of some sort, say Qxx, or in this case, Ax. Also, given opener’s reluctance to bid say, four spades, he may have Qxx in the suit or less.

Give opener ♠ Qxx and ♡Qxx in the majors, and he is probably “stacked” in each of the minors with something like AKx(x) or AQJ(x).As it turned out, the spade suit was the weakest (although longest) of your combined holdings. Partner has “five” spades, but the king high suit is “ragged,” so its length is more like “4.5” Somewhat the same can be said of your three card “support.” Given these facts, and your combined high card strength, you might prefer the nine trick no trump game to a ten trick spade game. It’s probably not be an accident that the best scorer was the 3NT bidder.