City of Basketball Love

Garrett Miley (@GWMiley)
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BROOKLYN, N.Y.--Phil Martelli, nearly a year ago, spoke to his team in the same locker room in the Barclays Center. This year it was a different speech being delivered.

The Hawks didn’t come to Brooklyn to defend their Atlantic 10 title. And they didn’t.

“We’ve got to walk out together, because we walked in together, and started in September together,” Martelli said. “It’s unfortunate. The toughest day of the year is tomorrow as a head coach, because you want to believe that you can fix everything if you just have one more day, and now we don’t have one more day.”

Saint Joseph’s shot a season low 25.5 percent from the floor and fell to St. Bonaventure in their opening game of the Atlantic 10 Tournament, 60-49.

Everybody, including First Team All Atlantic-10 selection and Saint Joseph’s leading scorer DeAndre Bembry, couldn’t put the ball in the basket. Bembry shot just 3-14 from the floor and 0-4 from beyond the arc, finishing with 12 points, six rebounds in the final game of his sophomore campaign.

“Yeah, I was making it very difficult for myself, a lot of the lanes, floaters, a lot of fadeaway jump spots,” Bembry said. “I didn’t really get my legs under me on most of them, and a lot of it was contested, as well. Just made it very difficult.”

Junior forward Isaiah Miles propelled the Hawks to a halftime lead of 28-23, scoring 15 first half points and connecting on three treys.

Senior point guard Chris Wilson didn’t end his career as a Hawk in the way he or anyone else had hoped, finishing scoreless and 0-6 from the floor with no assists in 28 minutes of action. On the heels of one of his best games as a Hawk and making a game changing clutch 3-pointer, Wilson was unable to ignite the Saint Joseph’s offense in Brooklyn.

Despite not ending his career on a high note, Martelli still sees a bright future ahead for his graduating point guard.

“Yeah, he’s going to graduate in May,” Martelli said. “He went to three post‐seasons. He’s got a championship ring. And I just said to him, the highest of the highs ‐‐ we’re in the same locker room when we played last year in the championship game. You know, he had the highest of the highs and now the lowest of the lows. He’s not going to be judged on this game…But he’s going to be successful.”

The Hawks played one of their better defensive halves of the season against St. Bonaventure in the first 20 minutes, holding the Bonnies to 33.3 percent shooting and just 23 points.

But then the wheels fell off for Martelli and company.

St. Bonaventure shot 48 percent in the second half and scored 37 points, including a 16-3 run spanning seven minutes of game time, to deliver a knockout punch to Saint Joseph’s and their season.

“Every time we scored a basket, we were playing a two‐three zone and it worked in the first half,” Martelli said.

St. Bonaventure had four guys in double figures that led them to a win in the second round of the Atlantic 10 Tournament. Youssou Ndoye scored a team high 18 points and corralled eight rebounds, while Dion Wright, Marcus Posley, and Andell Cumberbatch finished with 15, 13, and 12 points, respectively.

The season ends for Saint Joseph’s. On the way out will be graduating guards Wilson and Evan Maschmeyer and on the way in will be new backcourt players Lamarr Kimble (Neumann-Goretti) and Chris Clover (St. Joe’s Prep), and point-forward Pierfrancesco Oliva (Bergen Catholic). Saint Joseph’s will get a chance to fix the things Martelli wishes he could fix tomorrow.