City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
--

The two biggest assists in Saint Joseph’s basketball program over the weekend came from Tom Henson and Mike Folgia.

They’re not St. Joe’s student-athletes, or even managers or former Hawk players. But without the two of them, the Hawks’ sideline might have looked a little different at the beginning of Sunday’s game against La Salle.

“They’re my neighbors,” SJU head coach Phil Martelli said. “I had no chance of getting out of my driveway, and my plow guy couldn’t get there until close to 1:30, and that would have made me late and thrown me off my routine. So my two neighbors, Mike Folger and Tom Henson came over with their snowblowers and cleared my driveway so I could get out.”

Martelli might have thought about calling his neighbors early against La Salle, with St. Joe’s similarly stuck in the mud the same way the rest of the Delaware Valley was under the nearly two feet of snow the area got from Friday night into Sunday morning. But they weren’t needed to get the Hawks out of their jam against the Explorers, as a big run before halftime got St. Joe’s back into a game they would run away to win 69-48.

Down 11 early on to a La Salle squad intent on slowing the game down as much as possible, SJU turned the tide by doing something it hasn’t done a lot this year: forcing turnovers.

Though the Hawks came in averaging just 5.5 steals and 12.5 turnovers forced per game, they were able to force the Explorers into 19 turnovers thanks to a season-best 10 steals. Credit that to an aggressive on-ball approach led by St. Joe’s star wing DeAndre’ Bembry, who had four steals, as well as senior forward Isaiah Miles and sophomore Shavar Newkirk, who had two thefts apiece.

“Your reaction to them--dribble, dribble, dribble--is to back up, because we don’t chase people anyway,” Martelli said. “We challenged a little bit more than normally we would...I thought defensively, we were willing to grind and we grinded there.”

Five La Salle turnovers were a big reason why Saint Joseph’s was able to end the first half on a 20-3 run, turning a 19-8 deficit into a 28-22 lead at the break. Eight more Explorer giveaways in the first 10 minutes of the second half, and the Hawks’ lead was up to 16.

Everybody was affected, especially La Salle’s top three scorers--junior guard Jordan Price had six giveaways, sophomore point guard Johnnie Shuler had five and Cleon Roberts had four.

“It was surprising and alarming just how bad we were with the ball in our hands,” La Salle’s John Giannini said. “There were others, but the biggest factor was 19 turnovers and some bad shots, and we were really ineffective offensively against their defense.”

Bembry led the way for St. Joe’s with 16 points to go along with six assists and four rebounds, while Miles chipped in 14 and nine boards. Freshman point guard Lamarr “Fresh” Kimble had 10 points off the bench, part of 25 in total by the SJU reserves.

Now 16-3 overall, including a 5-1 record in Atlantic 10 play, the Hawks are quickly rolling towards NCAA Tournament consideration.

It’s not something Martelli is discussing with his team, which still certainly has a lot of work to do to hear its name brought up on Selection Sunday seven weeks from today. But he’s hopeful that this group will handle itself better down the stretch than the squad who went dancing two years ago, which lost its final two games of the regular season and needed to win the Atlantic 10 tournament to feel safe about its chances.

“We won 20 of 24 games, we showed up every night, and then when it got late, and they talked amongst themselves, we got tight,” Martelli said about that 2013-14 team, which was led by the senior triumvirate of Langston Galloway, Ronald Roberts and Halil Kanacevic. “We lost to GW and then we lost to La Salle at home, because they got tight, they started talking amongst themselves.”

The difference this year is that unlike in 2014, when nobody then on the roster had been to March Madness, the Hawks’ upperclassmen have the experience of playing deeper into the postseason as well as the various challenges that pop up along the way.

After welcoming Massachusetts to Hagan Arena on Wednesday, a road trip to Rhode Island (11-8, 3-3) will provide the next two opportunities to see how well St. Joe’s handles the escalating pressure of the season, even with the focus being on one game at a time.

“We just beat Rhode Island at home,” Martelli said. “This is going to be a bloodbath for the first five minutes, so how are we going to handle the bus ride up?”