City of Basketball Love

By Joseph Santoliquito (@JSantoliquito)
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(Ed. Note: This article is part of our 2022-23 season coverage, which will run for the six weeks preceding the first official games of the year on Nov. 9. To access all of our high school and college preview content for this season, click here.)
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Billy Lange likes to use the word “community” when describing the St. Joe’s basketball program. It makes sense. In the annals of the Hawks, there has always been a collection of Philadelphia playground legends that sprinkled the roster — and in their storied past, sometimes filled their entire roster.

The Philadelphia-St. Joe’s basketball connection was as stout as a Walt Whitman Bridge cable.

Names like Jimmy Boyle, Jim Lynam, Dr. Jack Ramsey, Mike Bantom, Cliff Anderson, Harry Booth, Jameer Nelson and Phil Martelli are instantly identified with St. Joe’s.

St. Joe’s basketball seemed to embody “The little man from the little school” overachieving mentality that Sports Illustrated emblazed across its February 16, 2004 issue with Nelson on the cover.

It’s what Philadelphia basketball fans identified with. It’s why a blue-collar city was married to the underdog Hawks.

That changed on March 19, 2019, when the beloved Martelli was fired after 24 years.

Suddenly, a traditionally embraced program became a pariah, with the school administration bashed by local and national media for the way it treated Martelli.

That spilled over to the basketball team.

Lange inherited that animus on March 28, 2019, when he took over the program and is scratching towards regaining that strong Philly bond.

“Every sage in the city of Philadelphia was crushing our basketball program. I tried not to take it personally, but it affected me personally, because I’m the head coach, right?” Lange told City of Basketball Love earlier this year in a story about former Hawk Jordan Hall.” I was a local guy with the 76ers who everyone loved and got free tickets from, to someone everyone tried to hurt what I was stewarding. I don’t think it was meant to hurt me, but unintentionally, it did.”

Winning is the ultimate panacea.

The loud problem has been the Hawks have not had a winning record since the 2015-16 season. It’s also the last time they played in the NCAA Tournament, reaching the second round, when they went 28-8 under Martelli.

This year, Lange will be entering his fourth season as head coach of the Hawks, who have gone 6-26, 5-15, and 11-19 under him (22-60, .238 overall).

Lange’s coaching staff includes John Griffin III, Justin Scott and John Linehan, who all have strong local ties to Philadelphia-area hoops.

The 2021 season took a nice jump, when the Hawks went 11-19 overall (5-13 Atlantic 10) and lost in the Atlantic-10 first round to La Salle, 63-56. The 11 victories equaled what Lange’s first two teams did.

The Hawks have a sound nucleus, starting with 6-foot-2 sophomore point guard Erik Reynolds II (12.1 ppg, 2.3 apg) along with former Roman Catholic star Lynn Greer III, who transferred in from Dayton.

“I love playing with Erik,” Greer said. “My four years of high school I never was able to play with another guard that can get me open. Playing with Erik, he’s very able to do that and he’s very able to score the ball at the same time. Us just looking for each other makes the game way easier.”   

With what looks like a solid backcourt, Lange’s attitude is about moving forward — not looking back.

“I don’t really think about it, it’s not my focus to think about what other people are thinking about,” Lange said. “I just don’t do that. I don’t have time to do that. Number one, I respect everything that’s happened before I got here. It’s part of the reason why I’m fortunate enough to be the head coach at St. Joe’s.

“The second thing is, I can only deal with what’s in front of me, right, and where we are right now, so expectations to me, I embrace them. I’ll take them on. This is the city of Philadelphia, this is Saint Joseph’s, this is a Big 5 school, this program has some pretty good history and I shouldn’t expect anything less than that.

“That’s what you want.”

Lange stressed he’s consumed with getting the Hawks back to where they were. That means recruiting the talent-rich Philadelphia area and its surrounding suburbs trying to convince local stars — and their coaches — that St. Joe’s is the place they want to go.  

Three years ago, Lange had to deal with a lot of closed doors. Those doors are beginning to creep open. When Lange arrived, the Hawks had some locals on the roster, like Ryan Daly (Archbishop Carroll), Dahmir Bishop, Chereef Knox (Imhotep Charter) and Taylor Funk (Manheim Central, Allentown)    

“The reality of the situation is that there were a lot of upset people three years ago,” Lange said. “I don’t take that personally, but it affected me personally, but it wasn’t aimed at me personally. And so, over time, what you try and do is you try to respect everyone. You just respect people. That’s what you do.

“You don’t take things personally. You don’t battle disrespect with disrespect. You battle disrespect with respect. You don’t battle gossip with gossiping. You battle gossiping by elevating other people. You don’t battle selfishness with selfishness. You battle selfishness with serving.”

Over time, the Hawks have improved under Lange. He’s attracted the attention of local stalwarts like Roman Catholic’s 6-7, 230-pound senior forward Anthony Finkley and senior guard Xzayvier Brown into committing to St. Joe’s and he makes it a point that he still holds tightly to the St. Joe’s foundation.

“The program is still good because of everything that happened before me,” Lange said. “Over time, if people are like, ‘Hey, I trust the guy, I see the direction of what they’re trying to go in,’ and if they want to be a part of it, that’s great. We’re just going to continue being the same people we are.”

Lange is building a culture. He’s “dripped” into creating some carryover, so when his roster reaches an optimum level of talent and experience, the Hawks will be running at the high-octane pace Lange expects.

“I believe we’ve done that,” Lange said. “We play with great pace, we play with great speed on both offense and on defense, and we’ve done a little bit of that on mostly the offensive end. We did a little bit of that on the defensive end.

“We’re a team that executes in special-teams type level situations. I believe we did that last year. We didn’t get the result, but with the process, these guys did a good job.”

When it comes together, Lange promises, the Hawks will be a fun team to watch.

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Joseph Santoliquito is an award-winning sportswriter based in the Philadelphia area who began writing for CoBL in 2021 and is the president of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be followed on Twitter here.