St. John’s battles back to down Seton Hall, further timely surge

Dillon Mitchell (1) finishes second-half dunk as St. John’s completed 15-point comeback Tuesday with win over Seton Hall. (Photo by St. John’s Athletics)

NEW YORK — Rick Pitino’s latest motivation was a rhetorical question.

The hall of fame coach, master tactician and unrivaled king of conveying messages picked the brains of his roster before Tuesday’s game against Seton Hall. What exactly did the Red Storm’s leader want to know?

His players’ most favored trait of Zuby Ejiofor, their senior teammate, whose hustle is praised fondly and effusively on a near-everyday basis around the program.

“I asked the guys before the game: ‘What do you admire most about Zuby?’ Pitino recalled. “And they all said, ‘he just outworks everybody.’ I said, ‘well, I gotta get 13 guys that outwork everybody like Zuby in order for us to progress at the level we want to get to.”

Message, once again, received. Except this latest execution required more of a relentless fight.

Trailing Seton Hall by 15 with 16 minutes remaining in regulation, St. John’s looked overmatched by the scrappy Pirates, who jumped on the offensive glass and used their physicality and fearlessness to build an advantage that, coupled with the Johnnies’ offensive struggles, looked insurmountable.

Until Dillon Mitchell, arguably the team’s most valuable player this season for his knack to provide value and plays that affect winning no matter the situation, stepped in and willed the Red Storm back.

With Ejiofor in foul trouble and Bryce Hopkins laboring harder as a result, Mitchell posed a matchup problem for Seton Hall. With his presence on the floor, the 15-point deficit was quickly whittled down to seven. Then five. Then three, then one, until his basket with just under five minutes remaining in regulation put St. John’s ahead for good.

“It’s just playing as hard as you can,” Mitchell said of his refusal to give in. “That’s the main thing. It was nothing special that we did, it was nothing that we drew up or something like that. It was just playing hard, getting stops on defense. At that point, down 15, you’ve got nothing else to lose. You gotta go out there and try to get back in the game, and that’s what we did.”

“The coaches have been telling us, even before the game, what it’s gonna take to win this game, to stop (Seton Hall). In the first half, we didn’t listen, we didn’t do none of those things. The second half, we just had to stay together. We got a little frustrated, but we stayed together, we locked in on what we had to do. We just went out there and played our hearts out, left it all on the court.”

The Texas and Cincinnati transfer does not have the gaudiest statistics, as evidenced by his standing as the fifth-leading scorer with an average of just over nine points per game. However, his 59 percent shooting is a team best, and his intangibles have caught the eye of a fellow veteran who has seen many players come and go during his time.

“We see it every day, what he brings to this team,” Hopkins said of Mitchell. “His energy, his athleticism, how vocal he is with us in timeouts and stuff like that. He’s impacted us in a tremendous way. We love being out there in that lineup with Dillon out there with us, and I feel like we’re playing some really good basketball right now. The ball’s moving, guys are playing confident, not pressing.”

Since being inserted into the starting lineup on January 6, Mitchell is averaging nearly ten points per game to go with nine rebounds, three assists and a collective 19-for-35 mark from the floor in St. John’s five-game win streak. More importantly, his competitive spirit has trickled down the bench to the rest of his teammates, with a revelation of sorts coming Tuesday night as the Johnnies began what would eventually be a 33-13 run to close out Seton Hall.

“I think we’ve discovered that there’s no quit in us,” Hopkins shared, harkening back to Mitchell’s nothing-to-lose mentality. “As (Pitino) stated, we didn’t come out how we wanted to in the first half, and I think the discussion between me and the guys was, who’s gonna be the tougher team? Are we just gonna fall down and keep getting punched, or are we gonna get back up and throw our punch? And I feel like that was the biggest thing we did coming out of halftime, even if we started out a little slow in the second half. At the 15-minute mark, I feel like something clicked with the guys. We all came together and we decided to play every possession like it was our last, and just rallied around that to just keep building that momentum.”

Pitino expounded on that never-say-die mantra, sharing the rationale behind his assertion that the Red Storm had its back to the wall after losing to Providence on January 3.

“I said our backs were to the wall because they were, and I wanted my team to feel that,” he explained. “I wanted my team to understand this could happen at any point in time. You’re gonna face certain nights that are not your night, but you’ve gotta dig in and find a way to win. You’re down 15, don’t worry about it. You’re getting down. Don’t get down, get up, possession by possession. Make the plays offensively, get the offensive plays, get the defensive rebounds, play by play. Dig in. It’s not your night, (but) it will be our night with a victory, so just dig in. And they did.”

The innate desire and pursuit of perfection, and not settling for anything less, has been a common characteristic of almost every team Pitino has shepherded over a half-century of basketball. Sometimes nothing is good enough to satisfy someone who has seen it all over 1,000-plus games on the sideline. On Tuesday, an exception was made.

“Without question, this was my favorite game of the season,” he said. “Now we’ve played better, but it’s my favorite game of the season because when you’re down 15 to a team like Seton Hall, and you’re getting your backs kicked on the offensive glass and you’re in foul trouble, and you come back from 15 down and wind up with 20 offensive rebounds, you really wanted to win this game.”

“These guys keep getting better and better and better. Seton Hall’s a tough-ass team to play against. And we had to pull a Seton Hall to win this game.”

Seton Hall squanders 15-point lead as Pirates let one get away against St. John’s

Najai Hines (25) chases loose ball as Seton Hall saw 15-point lead slip away in loss to St. John’s Tuesday. (Photo by Wendell Cruz/Imagn Images)

NEW YORK — For 24 minutes, Seton Hall had everything its way.

The edge in toughness. An increased physicality. One of the best players in the Big East ineffective against the Pirates’ in-your-face defense. Timely outside shooting. The notion that everything was once again coming together for a team that had dropped two straight to fall out of the Top 25 almost as fast as it had entered the polls.

It was all there, until it wasn’t.

Leading St. John’s by 15 points with 16 minutes to play, Seton Hall had its Hudson River rival on the ropes searching for its first win at Madison Square Garden in nearly four years. But an anemic 11-for-20 effort at the free throw line and an 11-for-31 mark shooting layups led to the Pirates’ demise, as the host Red Storm came back to score a 65-60 victory Tuesday, its fourth straight over The Hall.

“When teams make a run, the way to stop a run is getting the ball inside and getting to the free throw line,” a dejected Shaheen Holloway lamented. “We did that. We just didn’t cash in.”

Seton Hall (14-5, 4-4 Big East) last won in Manhattan on January 22, 2022, when it rode a career day from Myles Cale to a win over St. John’s in a year that ended in the NCAA Tournament. Holloway, who replaced Kevin Willard at the reins the following season, remained winless at the Garden after coming up short in his fifth attempt. The loss, the Pirates’ third straight, marks the longest losing streak of what has been a resurgent year following last season’s 7-25 campaign.

“This sucks,” Holloway bluntly added. “We’ve just gotta get back to the drawing board. I thought we came in with a good game plan on a short prep for (St. John’s), and I thought for 30-plus minutes, we controlled the game. They just imposed their will.”

“It started on the offensive glass. We weren’t boxing out in the second half, and I think that was the difference.”

The Pirates attacked the backboards in the opening stanza, ripping down 12 offensive rebounds against a St. John’s team that had yielded just 17 total caroms on that end since a January 3 loss at Providence. With Zuby Ejiofor hampered by foul trouble and unable to impact the game the way he normally would, Stephon Payne flirted with a double-double in the first half, ultimately finishing with 13 points and 15 boards. A.J. Staton-McCray led Seton Hall with 16 points while Tajuan Simpkins added 14 of his own, but Budd Clark’s off night made matters far more difficult. The junior missed all seven of his field goal attempts, only finishing with three points, but battled valiantly through injury.

“He got hurt (in Saturday’s loss to Butler),” Holloway revealed. “He hurt his quad last game in the first half. He’s a tough kid, he tried to play through it. I thought he played on pretty much one leg. He was out there, he just didn’t have a Budd Clark game.”

After going to the locker room with a 38-32 halftime lead and a plus-8 margin on the glass, Seton Hall scored the first nine points after the intermission to force a Rick Pitino timeout. The stoppage would soon be the Pirates’ undoing, as St. John’s ramped up the pressure and unleashed X-factor wing Dillon Mitchell as part of a comeback that saw the Johnnies secure 27 second-half rebounds to pull the battle of the boards even at the final buzzer.

While the Red Storm is now 7-1 in Big East play for a second straight year, Seton Hall, winless since a January 10 victory at Georgetown, is left to pick up the pieces en route to DePaul, who will welcome the Pirates to Chicago on Saturday in a pivotal game for both sides. Holloway faces a short turnaround once again to prepare his team, made shorter by the bitter aftertaste of a win that slipped through the cracks.

“This is disappointing,” he said. “I thought we played well enough to win this game for a period, and to lose it like that down the stretch is disappointing. But there’s a lot of basketball to be played. We gotta keep our heads up. We’ve got a good DePaul team on Saturday, so we gotta get back to work.”

Sha Sounds Off: St. John’s

On losing a 15-point lead in the second half:

“They started imposing their will and started hitting the offensive glass, and we just had to get a couple guys a quick blow because these guys were cramping. I gave certain guys a quick blow and they went on a 10-0 run quick, within two or three minutes. They got momentum in the second half, and then they just imposed their will. I thought we did that in the first half and we didn’t in the second half.”

On Stephon Payne:

“I thought he played with some toughness. I thought he did well from a defensive standpoint and rebounding. He kind of got gassed down the stretch…he hurt his ankle at halftime, so I gave him a quick blow in the second half. A couple guys went to the bench, and that’s when they imposed their will on us.”

On Seton Hall’s offensive droughts:

“We (need to) change it. We’ve got two days of making them understand they’ve gotta get through their progressions, right? There’s two, three, four different options within one play, and we can’t stand around. I thought in the first half, we did that. The second half, we started playing hero basketball when we had a lead, instead of just doing the same thing that got you the lead.”

On missed free throws and missed layups:

“I don’t understand how to answer the question, I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t know. We’ll watch the film and see. Missed free throws is the focus, right? Missed layups, that’s part of the game. I thought we had some layups in transition that we should have cashed in on. I don’t know, we definitely work on it. Like I said, they imposed their will in the last seven minutes of the game, and I think that was the difference.”

On Budd Clark not playing like himself:

“He got hurt last game, he hurt his quad last game in the first half. He’s a tough kid, he tried to play through it, the last couple days, he couldn’t do anything. Tonight, I thought he played on pretty much one leg, but if you’re out there, you gotta be out there. He was out there, he just didn’t have a Budd Clark game.”

On Seton Hall’s three-game losing streak:

“This sucks. It does. We’ve just gotta get back to the drawing board. There’s nothing…I thought we came in with a good game plan on a short prep for these guys, and I thought for 30-plus minutes, I thought we controlled the game and they just imposed their will. It started on the offensive glass. We weren’t boxing out in the second half, and I think that was the difference. In the first half, we boxed out and I think we controlled it from a rebounding standpoint, we were up 10 or 11 on them in rebounds. In the second half, and it was their second group…I don’t want to mess the kid’s name up…how do you say No. 17’s name? (Ruben) Prey? I thought he came in and gave them excellent minutes. I thought he gave them excellent minutes, he was all over the place. When we got a rebound, AJ fell and rolled, he dove on the floor and got the ball. He gave them excellent minutes. I thought he imposed his will, him and (Bryce) Hopkins in the second half, and also the kid (Dillon) Mitchell.”

On giving up offensive rebounds despite defense:

“It’s not good, especially when you’re missing free throw box-outs, things that win and lose games and things that we work on. I don’t know, just lack of focus. This is disappointing. I thought we played well enough to win this game for a period, and to lose it like that down the stretch is disappointing. But there’s a lot of basketball to be played. We gotta keep our heads up, we’ve got a good DePaul team on Saturday, so we gotta get back to work.”

On teachable moments from this game:

“I think, like I said, the last two days…well, not Sunday, you can’t do too much…but yesterday, I thought for a one-day prep, I thought we did some things to help us, and I think it worked in the first half just from an offensive standpoint. Even holding a team like St. John’s to 65 points, they’ve scored 80-something, so the defense is there. We’ve just gotta start cashing in on offense, like you said, 20 missed layups and nine missed free throws. When teams make a run, the way to stop a run is getting the ball inside and getting to the free throw line. We did that, we just didn’t cash in.”

Yale gets back on track with key win over Columbia

By Connor Wilson (@Conman_815)

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Even with the Ivy League better than people thought it was coming into the year, the expectation was that Yale was going to roll through the conference into Ivy Madness, as it has done the past couple of years.

The Bulldogs flirted with perfection in the Ivy last year, falling to Harvard on the road on the penultimate weekend to end up 13-1 in league play. Vibes around New Haven and the northeast as a whole were that they had a chance to match that, maybe even finish off the perfection they failed to reach the year prior.

Instead, after winning at Brown on January 5, Yale traveled down to Jadwin Gymnasium for its second game of league play and laid an egg, falling to Princeton, 76-60, and coming out of the first week of Ivy play with more questions than answers.

“We went down to Princeton and didn’t shoot the ball well and it hurt us,” head coach James Jones said. “Sometimes you’ve gotta take a loss and figure some things out.”

The response this weekend? A pair of convincing home wins to move to 3-1 in conference play, including a 91-74 victory over Columbia on Monday afternoon at Payne Whitney Gymnasium.

“I think winning helps, right?” Jones said. “Just winning and getting back to who we are is beneficial. We reset (after Princeton) and were able to do that.”

Yale was led by Nick Townsend and his 25 points, with a career-high-tying four threes. He and fellow frontcourt mate Samson Aletan had their ways inside, with Aletan chipping in a season-high 18 points on 8-of-11 shooting.

The Bulldogs came into the day ranked 38th in offensive efficiency according to KenPom, one of the highest ranked mid-major programs in the country in that stat. Yale’s ability on that end of the floor was evident from the opening tip, getting quality looks on nearly every possession offensively.

“Our spacing has been great the past couple games.” Townsend said. “It lets me or Samson or whoever have space to operate in the post with whoever has a good matchup and we’ve been able to get a lot of kickouts.”

After trading jabs for the first few minutes, the Bulldogs had a 9-0 jolt thanks to threes from Townsend, Jordan Brathwaite and Riley Fox that turned a one-point deficit into an eight-point lead in less than two minutes at 22-14, prompting a Kevin Hovde timeout.

Even if it is known for its offense this year, the Yale defense looked the part in the first half, too. The Bulldogs didn’t make life easy for the Lions, closing out well on shots and controlling the glass. One possession in particular saw Brathwaite get a pair of deflections that led to a turnover.

Bench production in the first half and overall was critical as well. The main three reserves of Brathwaite, Fox and Devon Arlington combined for 20 points, hitting timely shots and bringing in some much-needed energy from the bench.

“I thought when we subbed for the first time, we got a lot of energy from Devon, Jordan and Riley.” Jones said. “They were able to knock down a couple threes and really push us, give us a bit of a cushion.”

The first half lead peaked as high as a dozen for Yale after Townsend splashed his second three with around two minutes left, but a free throw and a tip-in layup for the Lions narrowed the advantage to nine, 44-35, at the break.

In less than five minutes to start the second half, the Bulldogs doubled their lead of nine to 18 thanks to a 13-4 jolt out of the locker room. They kept attacking the rim and succeeding, led by a pair of tough finishes to open the run by Casey Simmons. Isaac Celiscar connected with Aletan on a rim-rocking lob finish to get the crowd going.

“It just felt like we had great energy coming out of halftime,” Townsend said. “We got a bunch of good stops in the beginning and were able to have a great few strings of offense where we moved the ball well.”

The Lions trimmed Yale’s lead back to 12 around the 10-minute mark before Fox connected on his second three to push it right back to 15. It would stay around the 12-point range for a few minutes before Townsend’s third triple put the Bulldogs up by a 73-58 count with 6:59 to play.

After a pair of free throws from Gerard O’Keefe for Columbia, Townsend answered with another three and Simmons knocked one down on the next possession as well to make it 79-62. Aletan would bully his way inside for another basket to get the lead to 19 with 4:52 to play.

“I have a lot of confidence in my game, whether I start slow or I start fast,” Aletan said. “My coaching staff and my teammates have a lot of confidence in me and I’m very thankful for that. I just try to make the right play, whether it's scoring or finding a teammate.”

The lead ultimately peaked at 21 after Trevor Mullin hit a three late in the half, and hovered around that range before landing at the 91-74 final that gave the Bulldogs their second straight win to cap off a responsive weekend for the program.

Yale returns to action on Saturday for a rare single-game weekend in the Ivy League when it travels to The Palestra at 2 p.m. to take on Penn.

LIU vs. FDU WBB Photo Gallery

 Photos from LIU’s 59-58 loss to FDU on January 17, 2026:

(All photos by Bob Dea/Daly Dose Of Hoops)

Despite hard-fought loss, Temple honors Courtney’s memory properly

Temple played first home game since assistant coach Bill Courtney’s passing, battling Florida Atlantic on Sunday. (Photo by the Philadelphia Inquirer)

By Kyle Morello (@Kylemorello4)

PHILADELPHIA — Under normal circumstances, the talk on North Broad Street right now would be about how Temple dropped two measuring stick games against two of the better teams in the American Conference after its 79-73 loss to Florida Atlantic at the Liacouras Center on Sunday afternoon.

After winning their first three conference games, the Owls have now dropped to 3-2 in league play and 11-7 overall on the season, with questions still to answer on just how high of a ceiling this team has.

But if this past week has taught us anything, it’s that there is way more to worry about than what happens on the basketball court. 

On Tuesday, Temple announced that assistant coach Bill Courtney suddenly and tragically passed away at the age of 55 years old. It was the type of news that gives you perspective on what is really important in life. 

“He’s just a great person that got to know people,” said Temple head coach Adam Fisher, who worked with Courtney at Miami before hiring him on the Owls’ staff this summer. Fisher called him “one of his closest friends,” and said he spoke to Courtney “often” in his postgame press conference on Sunday. 

Courtney was a college basketball lifer. He played his college ball at Bucknell from 1988-92, earning all-Patriot League honors in 1991 and 1992. He went on to become an assistant coach at six different universities before earning a head coaching job at Cornell in 2010 after Steve Donahue left for Boston College. After being let go there and making a stop at DePaul, he would take a spot on Jim Larranaga’s staff at Miami in 2019, where he joined Fisher as an assistant. Courtney stayed in Coral Gables until the end of last season, where he became the interim head coach after Larranaga’s retirement in December of 2024.

“The guy never had a bad day,” Fisher said. “(He) kept everybody positive, upbeat. And a lot of people have said to me this week, ‘BC was a good friend,’ and it’s the truth. Because everybody he came in contact with, he got to know personally. And in this new world of transactional recruiting and NIL and transfer portal, he was old-school. He was going to build relationships, and he was just an incredible person.”

Fisher’s Temple team had a game in Memphis just over a day after the news of Courtney’s passing, but decided to play anyway.

“They thought that’s what Bill Courtney would want, and I know that’s what Bill would want,” Fisher said. “His mom told me that’s what he would have wanted.”

The Owls had a chance to win that one at the buzzer, but ultimately fell short in a 55-53 loss on Wednesday. It was a valiant effort on the court in most circumstances, and a courageous effort knowing the unimaginable news they received a day earlier. 

Both games were affairs from which the Owls could have walked away victorious. Temple led against FAU for over 26 minutes on Sunday, and got a combined 69 points from Aiden Tobiason, Derrian Ford and Gavin Griffiths. Still, it wasn’t enough to hold off the visiting Owls, fueled by an outstanding second half from freshman Josiah Parker, who had 19 points and 10 rebounds in the final frame alone. 

Temple will have an opportunity to bounce back and stack more wins in league play this coming week. They’ll face another group of Owls, Rice, on Wednesday, before traveling to San Antonio to take on UTSA Saturday. A pair of wins against those opponents would get Temple to 5-2 in conference play and help mitigate its two close defeats this week. The results may be disappointing to some, but that’s not how Fisher thinks his late friend would have seen it.

“I know the results haven’t gone our way this week,” he said, “but I do know he’d be proud of how we competed and how hard we played.”

Phil Martelli, Jr. prepares for whirlwind on and off court as he faces St. Joe’s for first time

Phil Martelli, Jr. faces off against his alma mater and former employer Monday when VCU hosts Saint Joseph’s, where his father was all-time winningest coach over 24 seasons. (Photo by the Providence Journal)

By Jake Copestick (@JakeCopestick)

RICHMOND, Va. — Through the lens of a head coach, Phil Martelli, Jr. sees Monday’s game against Saint Joseph’s as another tough Atlantic 10 game as his first season at the helm at VCU rolls on.

However, he certainly knows that there is a little more juice to the Rams’ next game when the Hawks come to town on Monday afternoon. 

When you have the last name that he does, and the history that that name holds at Saint Joseph’s University, Martelli, Jr. knows there will be some added weight for the matchup.

“I know it sounds like coachspeak, but I didn’t start thinking about this game until we got on the bus after Rhode Island, and started figuring out who had the scout and preparations with my staff,” Martelli, Jr. said.

“But I’m not an android. I’m not a robot. There’s history there, and they’ll be a different feel to it. I understand the emotions, but at the end of the day, it’s still VCU versus Saint Joseph’s.”

The history and emotions of course, tie back to his father, Phil Martelli, the all-time winningest coach on Hawk Hill. For over three decades, Martelli worked the sidelines for Saint Joseph’s, as an assistant coach for 10 years under both Jim Boyle and John Griffin, and for 24 seasons as the head coach.

Martelli stacked up 444 wins over his two decade-plus tenure as the head man for the Hawks, and led St. Joe’s to a perfect 27-0 regular season in the 2003-04 season, and an Elite 8 appearance that same year. That team, led by Jameer Nelson and Delonte West captivated the country, and had arguably the best season in the long history of the small Jesuit school off of City Avenue. 

As good as Martelli was as a basketball coach, he was a great ambassador for the school, and for the men’s basketball program as well. He was accessible to the fans, through his “Hawk Talk” radio show, and frequent appearances on the airwaves of SportsRadio 94.1 WIP with Angelo Cataldi. He was beloved on Hawk Hill. Phil Martelli was Saint Joseph’s. You couldn’t say one without the other.

Phil Martelli led Saint Joseph’s to 444 wins in his 24 years as head coach on Hawk Hill before being fired in 2019. (Photo by Saint Joseph’s University Athletics)

However, for a legendary career at a place where Martelli dreamed of coaching at, and for 34 years — over half of his life at the time — lived that dream, it didn’t end with a jubilant sendoff. Rather, it ended with his firing after the 2018-2019 season, a move that sent shockwaves through the Philadelphia basketball community, and the college basketball community as a whole.

Phil, Jr., who worked on his father’s staff as the director of program administration the previous year, had just wrapped up his first season as Jared Grasso’s associate head coach at Bryant, and still remembers getting a call from his father and receiving the news.

“My father called me the day before, and it just kind of took your breath away. It was shocking,” Martelli, Jr. said. “He gave so much to so many, and then it ended so abruptly.”

“I was bracing for when the news would come out. Bracing for not only the release of the news, but bracing for all the people that would be reaching out and bombarding you with questions.”

Eight years after the elder Martelli and Saint Joseph’s went their separate ways, Phil, Jr. and his brother, Jimmy Martelli, his associate head coach at VCU, will look across to the St. Joe’s sideline that their father owned for so long, and see a familiar face in Hawks head coach Steve Donahue on Monday afternoon. 

Donahue goes back a long time with Martelli as two basketball lifers entrenched inside Philadelphia’s tight knit basketball community. 

“The world is small, but the Philadelphia basketball world is smaller,” said Martelli, Jr. “It’s this interconnected, crazy web. Steve and my father go back to when I had hair, and my father probably still didn’t have hair. They go back to the late Harry ‘Bud’ Gardler, who gave my father his first job.”

Gardler gave Martelli his first coaching job as the junior varsity coach at Cardinal O’Hara High School in the esteemed Philadelphia Catholic League, after Martelli graduated as the all-time leader in assists at Division III Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania. While the JV coach at O’Hara, Martelli even coached a young Steve Donahue in his high school playing days. Gardler opened the door for Martelli in what was an illustrious coaching career. 

For Donahue, it was this experience playing under Martelli, and later Gardler as a varsity player, who was a St. Joe’s alum that played for Jack McKinney in the late 1960s, that helped spark his interest in coaching. Donahue is now in his 35th year of coaching Division I college basketball, and his 25th as a head coach. 

‘People are always amazed at how close the Philly basketball community is,” Martelli, Jr. said. “They can’t believe that this guy played with this guy, this guy coached with that guy, but I tell them, ‘yeah, that’s how it really is.’”

Donahue, currently in his first season as the head coach of the Hawks, had quite the journey to get there. After being let go from a fellow Big 5 school following a ten-year stint at Penn, Donahue was hired as the associate head coach at St. Joe’s by one of his closest friends in Billy Lange in May. Roughly four months later, Lange shockingly left Hawk Hill to take a job with the New York Knicks. The Hawks were left in a tough position, and Donahue, the lone coach on the staff with head coaching experience at the Division I level, and plenty of it, wasn’t just tagged the interim head coach, but the permanent one.

Martelli, Jr. recalled hearing about the news.

“I was off grid for a couple hours because I was on a plane to go recruit a kid at a prep school in New England,” he said. “My phone started blowing up and then I saw the news. Good for Billy and his family, and good for Steve and his family. But then it was back to work and I watched this kid workout for two hours.”

Although Martelli is no longer on the sidelines, you can be sure to find him at VCU games sitting behind the bench, watching both his sons coach at one of the premier programs in the Atlantic 10 at VCU. It’s an extremely rewarding thing for their family, that all these years later, Phil, Jr. and Jimmy are following in their father’s footsteps.

“It’s so cool to see, because it was reversed for so long,” Martelli, Jr. said. “I remember watching my father coach in the Sweet 16 against Rick Pitino and coach at Madison Square Garden. I was blessed to see it from one side. We’re even more blessed to see it from both.”

Even with the extracurriculars that surround Martelli, Jr’s familiar connection to the game, he is very much focused on the task at hand. His Rams bounced back with a win at Rhode Island on Wednesday night, ending a two-game losing skid, dropping close contests to Saint Louis and George Mason last week. Getting the win is the most important thing for Monday’s clash.

“Nothing else matters once we get inside the lines of that 94-by-50-foot court,” he said. “It’s a really hard Atlantic 10 game against a team that’s playing well. The preparation doesn’t change.”

Although Monday’s game will be played at the Siegel Center in Richmond, Martelli, Jr.’s Rams will be headed to Hagan Arena next year to face his alma mater. Neither Phil, Jr. nor his father have been back on Hawk Hill since his dismissal nearly a decade ago. Phil, Jr. hopes a reconciliation can happen.

Phil Martelli, Jr. (left) poses with his parents, Phil and Judy, after leading Bryant to America East championship in 2025. (Photo by the Philadelphia Inquirer)

“It is what it is,” he said. “Even if it was good, I probably wouldn’t have been back there, because I’m so wrapped up in the program that I’m at.”

“I would love to see it be fixed. For people other than myself, I’d love to see it be fixed.”