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.
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.
“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.”
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