Dick Jerardi · @DickJerardi
21st Mar 2019 from TwitLonger
Don’t know how Phil Martelli’s leaving St. Joe’s went down. Just hope there comes a time to celebrate his 24-year tenure as head coach, his 34 years with the program. When somebody spends more than half his life at one place and has the impact that Phil had, that certainly needs to be recognized. Once emotions cool, that needs to happen.
I covered SJU for Phil’s first 22 seasons so I can give the on-court performance some context. Beyond the record, however, is a coach unique in modern college basketball. Nothing was ever closed. Practices were open. The locker room was open. Want to watch film with the coach or sit it on a film session with the team. Pull up a chair. Want to talk to a player, it would just be you and the player, nobody looking over your shoulder.
When I asked if I could essentially live with the team during the 1997 and 2004 NCAA Tournaments, I was invited in. Nothing was off limits, nothing off the record. Just write what you see. Hung with Phil for hours in his Salt Lake City hotel room as he watched tape of Boston College to prepare for a second round NCAA game in 1997. Stayed up all night in a New Jersey hotel conference room as the coaches watched Oklahoma State tape to prepare for a 2004 Elite Eight game.
I learned so much basketball during those sessions. More importantly, I got to see just how dedicated Martelli and his staff were to giving their teams the best chance to succeed.
Success, in fact, was immediate when he got his dream job in 1995. NIT championship game in 1996, Atlantic 10 championship and Sweet 16 in 1997. Then, three down seasons, not at all unlike the last three. There were questions. Maybe, Phil just could not sustain it.
Then, Jameer Nelson arrived from Chester High. Nearly beat No. 1 seed Stanford in Jameer’s freshman year with Marvin O’Connor going off in San Diego. Would have gone much farther in Jameer’s junior year if Delonte West had not been hurt late in the season. Went all the way to No. 1 in Jameer’s senior season, an inch from getting a steal on Oklahoma State’s final possession, that close to the Final Four.
It really should have fallen way off after Nelson and West were drafted into the NBA that summer, but it didn’t. Martelli’s best coaching job came the very next season when his team was lost at 3-6 after starting the season with a 40-point loss at Kansas. He completely changed the style of play and rode the incredible shot making of Pat Carroll to an A-10 regular season championship, a near miss in the A-10 Tournament championship game and another heartbreaking, buzzer-beating loss in the NIT championship game. They were 21-6 after that 3-6 start.
Back in the A-10 title game the next season, an excruciating one-point loss to Xavier from the NCAA. 18 wins the next season and then 21 wins and back to the NCAA with Pat Calathes against Oklahoma and Blake Griffin.
SJU won 98 games during Nelson’s four years and 98 more in the five after he left. What happened with Jameer was never going to happen again. If you understand the dynamics of modern college basketball, what happened immediately post Jameer was, in its own way, just as impressive.
Then came two 11-win seasons. It looked bleak until it didn’t. Gradually, Langston Galloway, Ron Roberts and Halil Kanacevic got better, winning 20, then 18 and, finally 24 and an A-10 championship in 2014.
SJU took a step back for one season when they left, but behind the brilliant play of D’Andre Bembry and Isiah Miles went 28-8 in 2016, won the A-10 again and had No. 1 seed Oregon on the ropes in the second round.
Even without Bembry and Miles the next season, they were 7-5 and won the A-10 opener against George Washington even after star point guard Shavar Newkirk tore his ACL on the final play of the first half. They finished 4-15 without him.
The Hawks played all of last season without injured Charlie Brown and Lamar Kimble, two starters. They somehow finished 16-16, winning 6 of 7 down the stretch and getting all the way to A-10 semis when they lost a terrific game to Rhode Island, 90-87.
This last season, which began with such high expectations went off the rails when SJU lost its first three league games by 25, 14 and 26 with everybody healthy, was just bad, ending 14-19. There were too many non-competitive games. Hagan Arena was often half empty. There was no juice. From afar, I found it sad.
No doubt, Martelli thought he could turn it around it again because he had done it twice in the past. Now, we’ll never know.
So I saw the basketball and got to know the person. Phil is complicated, but caring. If I heard one story of his generosity, I heard a hundred. He did not say no. His work with Coaches vs. Cancer will leave a forever legacy that dwarfs anything that happened on the court which was considerable.
Endings are inevitable, of course. Tuesday morning’s announcement did not qualify as a proper ending. With time and space, a proper ending should be fashioned. It may take a peacemaker to initiate talks now. Feelings are that raw.
The court should be named after Phil Martelli. He meant that much to Saint Joseph’s. That he is no longer the head basketball coach does not change that immutable fact.