City of Basketball Love

Zach Drapkin (@ZachDrapkin)
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Fortune is not favoring the Saint Joseph’s Hawks right now.

When things are not going well for a college basketball team, it’s almost as if everything that could go wrong finds a way to do so.

“Karma is a b****. And karma is kicking our ass, to be honest with you,” St. Joe’s head coach Phil Martelli said.

Last season, everything went right for Martelli’s Hawks, who finished as Atlantic 10 Conference champions.

Right now, the team is on the other end of the vicious cycle and nothing seems to be going to plan.

Pierfrancesco Oliva was ruled out for the year after knee surgery in October. James Demery missed the first 10 games of the season with a stress fracture in his foot. Top scorer Shavar Newkirk went down with a torn ACL 12 games into the season. Lorenzo Edwards underwent shoulder surgery in January. Lamarr Kimble fractured the fifth metatarsal of his left foot in early February and he too was proclaimed out for the year.

And now, to add insult to injury, point guard Nick Robinson is battling a bruised foot.

Literally nothing is going right for the Hawks.

“Last Friday, we were chartering to Saint Louis, so we were really in the big time. It was beautiful on Friday, seventy-something degrees. Our flight from Philadelphia to Saint Louis was delayed three-and-a-half hours,” Martelli said. “When you’re 26-4, that never happens. I’ve been there.”

On senior night at Hagan Arena on Wednesday, the Hawks’ slump continued, as a dominant 68-49 Rhode Island win sent away seniors Brendan Casper and Javon Baumann on not the highest of notes.

The defeat was the ninth straight for St. Joe’s (10-19, 3-14 A10), and it wasn’t very close. Rhode Island (20-9, 12-5 A10) led for the game’s entirety and was up by double digits for the final 27 minutes.

“I’ll call it the way it is. That really was a participation, that wasn’t a competition,” Martelli said. “We scored 49 points in a college game.”

St. Joe’s struggled facing the Rams’ rugged defense from the get-go. On the first play of the game, Chris Clover dribbled the ball off his foot for a backcourt violation. Within four minutes, the Hawks had given the ball away four times.

They racked up nine turnovers in the first half, which resulted in 14 points on the other end, and managed to score just 20 points on 9-of-26 shooting from the field in the period.

“We came out and turned the ball over. That has nothing to do with sluggish, it has everything to do with the skill of running, passing, and dribbling the ball,” Martelli said. “We need some grown-up plays here. We just don’t get enough grown-up plays right now.”

With Casper forced to play the point in Robinson’s place, the offense found itself in a funk that it couldn’t get out of all night.

Even foul shots were a struggle -- St. Joe’s made 9-of-20 from the line compared to URI’s 14-of-15 clip.

Perhaps the lone bright spot of senior night was the performance of freshman Charlie Brown, who put in a team-high, 13-point shift and knocked down a pair of three-pointers to set a new single-season freshman record for the school.

“The guys that had that record are pretty extraordinary,” Martelli said. “We’re just not a good team, but he’ll be recognized on the All-Rookie team.”

Rhode Island certainly did look like a good team on Wednesday night, boasting the top defense in the Atlantic 10 and holding up that reputation by limiting the Hawks to 38-percent shooting on the game.

The Rams went 4-for-26 from beyond the arc but still managed to shoot 44 percent, scoring half of their points from the paint. E.C. Matthews led the way with 13 points while Hassan Martin had 12 points and nine rebounds and Kuran Iverson had 11 points and seven boards.

It was a frustrating result for Martelli, who, in his 22nd season with St. Joe’s, feels as though there’s nothing else he can do.

Without his two best players, Newkirk and Kimble, a would-be starter in Oliva, and now having a banged-up point guard, Martelli is left with both limited depth and limited star power.

“I find the closest brick wall and run straight into it as many times as I can, because that’s what I’m doing. That’s what it feels like,” he said. “All I can ask them to do is to fill up their tank and to show up.”

“I know we’re losing, but our mindset is to win every game,” Brown added.

That’s exactly what St. Joe’s will have to do now in order to prolong their season.

The Hawks’ regular season finale is at Duquesne on Saturday, and it’s straight to the A10 Championship from there.

Martelli won’t get that far ahead of himself though.

“I have nothing about the conference tournament because we have a game on Saturday,” he said. “Everything that we’ve ever done here in 22 years is the next day.”

If he has to spell out his goal for the postseason, however, he’s got a clear one in mind.

“I want to take a couple of suits and wear them all."