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Phil Martelli Returns to Saint Joe’s Campus
By Matt Schultz
Published:
I scrolled past this truly excellent post earlier on:
Hell yeah. There he is. The man himself. Phil Martelli back in Hagan Arena. It’s about damn time. This is long overdue, but nevertheless, I will take it. Nature is healing…
For those who haven’t been keeping up with all the other Saint Joe’s basketball stuff I’ve been writing on this website — some of it pretty emotionally charged, in retrospect — here’s a quick recap on why Phil’s Hawk Hill comeback is a big deal:
Saint Joe’s fired Phil in 2019 like absolute dipshits. It was not a harmonious breakup, and it wasn’t received well by pretty much anyone. Phil coached the Hawks for 34 years and was the head coach for 24 of them. He was the National Coach of the Year in 2004 after an undefeated 27-0 season with Jameer Nelson and Delonte West that ended with a trip to the Elite Eight. He’s a great coach and a Philadelphia basketball legend. He’s also just an all-time great guy who went above and beyond as an ambassador for the university for over three decades. The fact that the new (at the time) athletic director, Jill Bodensteiner, let him go so unceremoniously was, to put it mildly, very messed up.
She went on replace Phil with Billy Lange, who’d go 81–104 (.438) in six years on Hawk Hill without making a single NCAA tournament, and would bail on the program a few weeks before the 2025 season to take an assistant job with the Knicks. Jill didn’t stick around for long after that — she recently became the commissioner of the Horizon League, which just goes to show that apparently you do not have to do well at your job in order to move up to a bigger job.
In the seven years since the firing, Saint Joe’s and Phil didn’t publicly interact at all — until a little over a month ago, when the school posted this on Instagram for Phil’s birthday:
New athletic director Ash Puri and Phil also had this interaction on X:
When those birthday posts first went out, I spent a considerable amount of time wondering if old wounds were finally healing… If perhaps a new day was dawning… If Phil was finally going to be welcomed home… Whether he’d accept the invitation…
And today we have the answers. It’s all happening. We’re moving in the right direction here, and I couldn’t be more pumped about it. I don’t even mind that the Saint Joe’s IG photo was taken from 60 yards away for some reason:
It’s all good. I don’t need the camera to be close. I don’t care that I had a zoom in a good amount to confirm that it is indeed him. I’m okay with the image getting all pixelated post zoom-in:
Phil is back on Hawk Hill, and that’s all the matters. That’s what’s up. Hell yeah.
The only thing left to do now is to name the court after him. And hire him, if he’s down to come back to SJU. How fun would that be? Phil in some sort of big-picture/advisory/culture-setting role or something, if he’s interested. Would be pretty sick. But definitely name the court after him first. That’s an easy one. Martelli Court. Let’s get that rolling.
Matt Schultz is a comedy and sports writer from Philadelphia. He’s written extensively for ClickHole, The Onion, and Conan O’Brien’s Team Coco. His work has been featured in Vulture, Deadspin, The A.V. Club, Paste Magazine, and other publications. Much of his sports journalism can be found on college basketball websites that don’t exist anymore (PhilaHoops Heads rise up…) email: M.Schultz@sportradar.com