This is a David story, within a David & Goliath story, with a strong Italian Flavor.

Jameer Nelson, at 5' 11'', a dwarf amongst giants, is St. Joseph's leading player, a candidate for player of the year, and the first St. Joe player to be featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

St. Joseph is a small Jesuit University with an enrollment of only 3850 students, founded in 1851 located in Philadelphia, drawfed by its Atlantic 10 Conference fellow members, Temple, Massachusetts, Fordham, Xavier, Dayton, Rhode Island, George Washington, Duquesne, St Bonaventure, La Salle, Richmond [Yes there are 12 teams in the Atlantic 10- It's called "new math" :)]

St. Joe's will be ranked # 1 in the Nation in the NCAA  Division 1 Basketball rankings with an undefeated 27-0 season. Ahead of Duke, Kentucky, North Carolina, and all the rest of the perennial powerhouses.

Phil Martelli, the revered coach of the St. Joe's Hawks, has them as the "top seed", but they still have to win 3 games in the Atlantic 10, and win 9 games in the NCAA tournament to be National Champs.

A Fairy Tale.? Perhaps,but I'm sure hoping they are going to make things interesting.

PS. Curiously Gonzaga University, also a Jesuit University near Spokane Washington, with just 5400 students is # 4 in the Rankings.
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Thanks to Bob Mariani

PERFECTLY PLAYED REGULAR SEASON FOR ST.JOE'S
Now No. 1 Hawks set sights on A-10 tourney, Final Four

By William Gildea
March  06, 2004

PHILADELPHIA - The game was only a pretext for the celebration. By the time the Saint Joseph's Hawks soared to a 40-point lead against overmatched St. Bonaventure, the noise in their sweet old bandbox of a campus gym seemed enough to knock down the walls had they not been made of heavy-duty cinder blocks from the post-World War II era.

With little St. Joe's on the verge of completing an improbable perfect regular season of 27-0, bedlam erupted from a packed-in crowd of 3,200 that included almost a thousand screaming, chanting, singing students; everyone standing and cheering; scores of sign-wavers and No. 1 foam-finger-pointers; a blasting pep band that never sounded in need of a second wind, and a mascot Hawk that raced around flapping its wings — continuously! How often can anything in life be perfect?

A perfect regular season is something no NCAA Division I men's basketball team had accomplished since 1991.

With four minutes to play Tuesday night, a man took a microphone to beg the student body not to swarm the floor at the game's end. He promised a ceremony worth their while if only they would hold still, and when the rout mercifully ended at 82-50 after every Hawks benchwarmer had gotten to play, with one sub even scoring his only basket of the season to create even more hysteria, all Hawkdom stood in place as its bald-headed and beloved coach, Phil Martelli, orchestrated the postgame proceedings.

If Martelli loves to coach, he just as clearly loves to talk. Taking the mike near mid-court, he praised the students for their hearty yet mannered support, hailed senior Jameer Nelson as the nonpareil in a rich Hawks hoop history and announced that the point guard's No. 14 jersey would be retired, and thanked all his players whom admirers cite as a "true team" for their disciplined and selfless play.

"And, by the way," Martelli told the crowd, with a distinct combativeness in his voice, "they're far from finished. We've got nine games left."

That would mean three more games in what promises to be a difficult Atlantic 10 tournament this week at University of Dayton Arena, followed potentially by six more games in the NCAA tournament, which would put St. Joe's — currently ranked second — in the national title game April 5. The majority of basketball observers consider the likelihood of that happening minuscule, but no matter what may come for St. Joe's, to minimize what has already happened on the west side of a college hoops-crazed city is to miss the pure joy to be derived from a special accomplishment. UNLV ran the table in the 1991 regular season, and before that, no team did it since Larry Bird's 1979 Indiana State Sycamores.

Until now at least, the students' chant had come true: "The Hawk will never die."

"Something like this you can't imagine," Delonte West, Nelson's back-court partner from Greenbelt and Eleanor Roosevelt High, said in St. Joe's closet of a locker room. "Our team is hard-working. You hope you do the best you can. But to finish up a regular season undefeated and 27-0 ... I'm just soaking it all in right now."

Modest surroundings
Arriving at Saint Joseph's is like coming home. You're welcome — all of Martelli's practices are open. Open practices! It's almost unheard of in Division I basketball. If you want to watch practice, walk on in.

All around, there's family. Consider early Monday morning, in the half light of a new day. An older man pulled on a door of the gym shortly after 7 a.m., when Martelli had scheduled practice so the players would not miss classes. (At St. Joe's, practices are scheduled to fit in with studies, not the other way around.) The particular door the man tried happened to be locked, so he moved to another one. He had on a white cap, making it hard to see his face, but as he approached, it turned out he was none other than Jack Ramsay — the "Dr. Jack" known for his basketball commentary.

Here on campus, he's known as the father of St. Joe's basketball. Ramsay was a gritty player for St. Joe's who became one of 11 alums to coach their alma mater, and the last time the Hawks enjoyed as high a ranking as they do now was during the 1966 season, under him. His name is hung on a banner near the ceiling, next to the team's retired numbers. In a sense, Alumni Memorial Fieldhouse, which opened in 1949 and is trimmed neatly in the team colors of crimson and gray, is his building.

"The school hasn't changed all that much since I started here in the fall of 1942," he said, taking a seat in the second row of bleachers, scrutinizing the players on the court. What he saw was a team in the image of his own.

"They don't rebound well. They have to find a way to overcome that," said Ramsay, watching the "screens" and defensive "switches" Martelli was calling for out on the court. "But they do many things well. Nelson penetrates the defense and creates open shots. And they move the ball so well — to an uncommon degree. They play so hard, and together. They're a team. And those are qualities that can't be dismissed."

After practice, Martelli asked Ramsay — and two other former Hawks, Jim Boyle, also a former St. Joe's coach, and John Tiller — to speak to the players, who gathered in a semi-circle.

"You're going to hear from all sources that you're not good enough, you're in over your heads," Ramsay told them. "I've been around long enough to know you can't satisfy everybody. Just go out and play. Satisfy yourselves."

The players applauded each of the three speakers, Martelli thanked them, and then the coach repaired to his office. The cramped room, with a slanting ceiling and stuff piled everywhere, is like nothing to be seen at places such as Kansas and Indiana and Duke and North Carolina, any place like that.

The room speaks to the modesty that Martelli preaches to his players and proclaims of his program. As Nelson, Martelli's greatest discovery, made in nearby Chester, Pa., explained: "The big-time schools were coming after me. But I already had my mind set where I was going to go. It didn't matter how much attention the others gave me. Plush arenas, plush locker rooms, they're given to players, you never earned that. You come into this setting, you say, man, I'm just going to work hard. I've always worked for what I've gotten. And you know, after four years, it's going to be tough missing these people here, but I've got to leave one day."

"I saw him when he was a junior in high school," said Martelli, clearing a place to sit in his little office. "The assistants had seen him and I has asked about him. They told me that he was too small. But I said, well, let me go look. And I saw him play in a district playoff game. Big game. Packed house at Villanova. He took no shots in the first half. He had one point at halftime. But he had completely dominated the game. It was as if there was nobody else in the game but him. And that was it for me. I knew I had to have him. I knew I would do whatever, within legal bounds, I could do."

St. Joe's was coming off three losing seasons before Nelson's arrival. In similar fashion, the coach added West, a left-handed junior, before anyone else could strike. "In Delonte's case, what people didn't know was that he had a love of basketball that was unquenchable," Martelli said. "Every time I spoke to him in the recruiting process, I'd say, 'What are you doing?' He'd say, 'I'm working on my game. I'm going to shoot. I'm going to lift. Whatever.' And that's what I wanted. I want to have guys on my team who believe they can be great and are willing to let me push them to be great."

There are no surprises about Martelli, said Nelson. Then, he added with a smile, he found one surprise.

"He gets his hair cut a little more often than I thought. I didn't think a guy that bald gets his hair cut so much. Seriously, how much can be possibly pay for a haircut?"

Airing it out
At practice, Martelli, 49, wears a loose-fitting blue jersey that still can't hide his stomach, baggy red shorts and well-worn sneakers. "He's a gym rat," said Boyle, who was an assistant coach at Widener when Martelli played there. "He's the quintessential Philadelphia Catholic league point guard. Which means, he knows the way the game is supposed to be played."

Martelli's life has been basketball, and since ninth grade, his goal has been to coach St. Joe's. He worked as a high school teacher and coach in the area before becoming an assistant at St. Joe's for 10 years. Nine years ago, he became only the third non-graduate to take over the job he seemed destined for.

Martelli and his wife, Judy Marra, who played basketball for three-time national champion Immaculata in Philadelphia, have three children. Phil Jr. graduated from St. Joe's last year after playing on the team for his father. As someone at the school noted, he didn't treat his son like "just another player"; he treats all his players as if they were his sons. "The most important job I've ever had," he said, "is that of a parent."...

"I've heard everything," he said... I've heard stuff about my clothes, my hair — some of that is fun. The one thing I am sensitive about is running up the score. I would never want to hurt somebody else's feelings. These are kids on the other team, too, just like my kids only in a different circumstance...

At midday Monday, Martelli hurried across campus.... Martelli rushed into a large room in the student center and took his place on what looked like a TV talk-show set. It was, sort of. He was about to tape "Hawk Talk," a television program in which Martelli is not the guest but the host, a hoop version of Letterman or Leno.

"Remember this," Martelli shouted to an audience of students as the tape rolled. "Here is the greatest player in St. Joe's history and the greatest coach in St. Joe's history." Wild applause greeted Nelson and Ramsay...

Students began assembling outside the fieldhouse for Tuesday's 9 p.m. game at 2:30... Moments before the tip, everyone fortunate to be inside was elbow to elbow. The crowd quieted only to honor the team's seniors....

Late in the game...Martelli removed the starting players from the game for the last time at home, one by one. And, finally, he took out Nelson. The place was in an uproar as the star player hugged his coach.

MSNBC - Perfectly played regular season for St. Joe’s
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4468404