PICTURES: St. Joe’s Men’s Basketball celebrates season at banquet

The St. Joe’s men’s basketball season officially came to an end tonight with the annual awards banquet held at the Campion Banquet Center. The marathon event which head coach Phil Martelli likened to an episode of Roots last nearly five hours, only five minutes of which included a highlight video, and saw the team dish out a number of personal accolades and show thanks to the many people involved with the program on and off the court. Here is a gallery of the night’s biggest highlights:

(All photos by Matthew De George ’10)

Esteemed Athletic Director Don DiJulia offers his remarks on the evening.

Senior captain Garrett Williamson takes home the biggest piece of hardware on the night in the John P. Hilferty Memorial Award as Most Valuable Player.

University president Timothy R. Lannon, S.J., offers a few words before dinner.

Phil Martelli tries to slip into the banquet hall under the radar to get the festivities under way.

Former Hawk standout guard Rap Curry welcomes former player and head coach John Griffin into the SJU Basketball Hall of Fame.

Senior managers Brittany Keesling and Molly Porth are honored with the Daniel J. Cummins Award for spirit.

Darrin Govens is the recipient of the William F. Maher Memorial Award for loyalty.

Phil Martelli presents Brienne Ryan with the William J. Bennet Memorial Award for dedication and service to the program.

Bill Phillips, ’02, takes to the podium to speak at his enshrinement into the St. Joe’s Basketball Hall of Fame.

Head Coach Phil Martelli closes the night with some final remarks on the season.

CJ Brown earns the Patrick D. O’Pake Memorial Award as the team’s unsung hero, presented by assistant coach Dave Duda.

Garrett Williamson receives the Robert F. O’Neill Award as the team’s most improved player. He also won this award as a sophomore.

A full house of some 300 people were on hand to celebrate the 2009-10 Hawks.

Pat McGrory, ’94, a former Hawk mascot, is awarded the Michael J. Conway Memorial Award for his work with the Hawk Hoops booster club.

Joe Lundardi, Master of Ceremonies for the evening, gets the night started with a little NCAA Tournament Expansion humor.

Rhode Island ends St. Joe’s season with hard fought 87-76 win

There may not have been any points bigger in the last four years than Lamonte Ulmer’s 1,000th.

The senior forward’s historic tally came when his team needed it most, cleaning up a missed free throw and laying the ball in to push the lead back up to nine and all but clinch an 87-76 victory for the Rams over St. Joe’s. The win sets up a date between the Rhode Island and St. Louis on Friday in the A-10 Quarterfinals in Atlantic City and keeps their dreams of an NCAA berth alive.

“I’m disappointed in the result,” said St. Joe’s head coach Phil Martelli. “I’m happy for our players that they go the chance to experience postseason play, and really maximize the effort, and we still leave not good enough.”

St. Joe’s vs. Rhode Island LIVE game blog

10:29- That’s all for tonight as I brave the wilds of New England on the way home. Thanks for tuning in all, game story’s above. This is Matthew De George, signing out on his final St. Joe’s men’s basketball game. Have a good night

8:58- Crosgile misfires on a three, and the Rams run out the clock with an 87-76 win. Postgame recap and coverage in a bit…

8:57- Cothran hits one of two from the line, but Ulmer again cleans up the mess, earning a trip to the line. Cothran leads the Rams with 15 points tonight, all in the second half. Ulmer hits both, and the Rams are up 87-76 with 23 ticks left.

8:56- Govens lays up and in, and Prescott, in for Williamson, fouls Marquis Jones, who misses both.  Crosgile lays the ball in to cut the lead back down to eight, 84-76.

8:53- Hilliard commits his fourth foul on James, who makes one, but Govens turns the ball over, and Williamson picks up his fifth foul of the game, ending his college career. He finishes with eight points, 10 rebounds, and seven assists.

Ulmer misses one of two, and were it not for his put back earlier, this finish could be much different. The Rams are just 14-22 from the line, and have at least five of those misses down the stretch.

For more play-by-play, keep reading here…

Your guide to the stretch drive

Just about four months ago, as everyone on Hawk Hill awaited the forthcoming basketball season with the ever so alluring and deceptive hope that accompanies each fresh season, St. Joe’s fans  (this one included) sat back and looked at a somewhat bleak outlook and told themselves, “It’s not that bad. It won’t be that bad. Right?”

Well, we were wrong. And now the possibility that hung so forebodingly in the shadows all season long has been brought to the forefront as realistic as can be: the Hawks failing to qualify for the Atlantic 10 Tournament.

Now, before we go forward, let’s just make something eminently clear. This team, even if it does sneak somehow sneak into a 12-seed in the conference tournament, isn’t  going anywhere. These last two games of the regular season aren’t a prelude to a miraculous run from the back of the back to the Big Dance in the homestretch. Inclusion in the top 12 of the A-10 is at best window dressing, and possibly undeservingly so, for what has been a very rough season. It may be akin to making sure all the tables in the main dining hall of the Titanic were neatly set just before hitting the iceberg, but it’s still something, albeit small, to hang their hats on. And who are we kidding, it’s a pride issue, and possibly a recruiting issue.

But even with that in mind, because we have to fill space on this blog somehow, here’s how things shake out:

St. Joe’s-St. Louis LIVE game blog

10:00- The Billikens have been anything but a good luck charm for St. Joe’s, who dropped their fourth straight game against St. Louis, 56-52.

St. Louis held the Hawks to just 20 points in the second half and under 30 percent shooting to seal the win at the Hagan Arena.

“We’re the youngest team in America, so the kids did a great job with that,” said St. Louis head coach Rick Majerus, who’s team has been in Philadelphia since last Thursday, and may not leave town until at least Friday due to the inclement weather. “We did a lot better the second half and really manned up. I thought our defense was good.”

Cody Ellis led the Bills with 13 points, including three three-pointers. Christian Salecich had 11 points, nine of which came in the first half, while Kwamain Mitchell and Willie Reed chipped in nine and seven, respectively. It’s the Billikens’ second straight win in Philadelphia after they took care of business at La Salle over the weekend.

Garrett Williamson led the way for St. Joe’s with 12 points. Todd O’Brien recorded his second career double-double with 12 points and 10 rebounds despite foul trouble throughout, and Idris Hilliard was also in double-figures with 10, all in the first half. Darrin Govens added eight points and four assists on an atrocious 3-13 shooting and 1-5 from three.

The St. Joe’s offense faltered for much of the game, including four missed lay-ups in the first that could have added to their halftime cushion, and couldn’t respond to St. Louis’ best punch.

St. Joe’s-St. Bonaventure game moved to Sunday

With the threat of impending snow, the St. Joe’s men’s basketball game against St. Bonaventure has been moved from Saturday to Sunday.

The game was originally scheduled for 4 p.m. Saturday, which would fall right in midst of the winter storm warning for the Philadelphia area. Instead, the game will take place on Super Bowl Sunday at 1 p.m. at the Hagan Arena.

All activities at Saint Joseph’s University have been canceled for Saturday.

– Matthew De George ’10

Turning a corner, but to where?

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. They don’t mention what happens on instance number seven.

That’s the position many St. Joe’s fans are in now (thought the estimate of seven is very low) after falling into the oh-so-familiar trap of buying into the heightened expectations that a handful of consecutive wins creates.

The loss to UMass was especially tough to swallow, as will be most from here on out, because the win over Dayton gave everyone a tantalizing view of what the Hawks are capable of. Yes, last night’s effort was tempered by the fatigue of three games in five days, something largely out of the team’s control. But the loss still stings, and you can’t help but think that if the circumstances were different, the result might have been as well.

After the Penn game, I went though a checklist of things that needed to happen for the St. Joe’s streak to continue. Here’s the report card from UMass:

Minutemen dump tired Hawks, end three-game winning streak

A third game in just five days finally caught up with St. Joe’s, as they had their three-game winning streak stopped at the hand of UMass, 87-80.

Ricky Harris led all scorers with 23 points, and the Minutemen pulled away thanks to four second-half threes by Freddie Riley.

“[It’s] very disappointing,” St. Joe’s head coach Phil Martelli. “We disserve better because we had been playing better. We looked tired, and we thought tired. We didn’t fight through when we had chances in both halves. We worked our tails to get back and get the lead in the second half and we step off a known three-point shooter [Riley] for them to tie it.”

Garrett Williamson, ’10, led the way with an impressive line, highlighted by a double-double of 16 points and 10 assists. He also swiped six steals, three bocks, three rebounds, and no turnovers.

“We got a team like that and we were on the ropes with them, but we never got that knockout punch.” Williamson said. “We never really had that surge of stops and good possessions on offense that we’ve had these last few games.”

There goes Dayton, now what?

Who ever came up with the idiom “once bitten, twice shy” was never a St. Joe’s basketball fan. Keep that in mind as I jump in my inner tube and float out into the shark tank that is optimism about this program.

Last night’s win over Penn puts the Hawks at 8-11 with 11 games to play. And a crazy little thought popped into my head on the walk from the Palestra to 30th Street Station: what does this team have to do to salvage a .500 season?

The obvious answer, which hit me not unlike a splash of water from the 42 bus heading up Walnut Street, is to go 7-4. But is that something that this team, who looked dead in the water and could have folded after losing eight of nine and were on their way to another loss at halftime at the hands of Fordham at home, is capable of?

Here’s what’s left for the Hawks:

Hawks stay hot in rout of Penn

It started out dicey, but by the end of the night the Hawks made no mistake in romping over Penn, 85-64. The win is their third in a row and just their second away from the Hagan Arena all season, joining their victory over Boston College at the Paradise Jam in the US Virgin Islands.

The game got off to a nervy start as neither team was able to impose their will offensively, and the teams were deadlocked at 27 with 5:41 left in the half. Compounding it for the Hawks was foul trouble for Garrett Williamson, ’10, who had to sit the last 9:45 of the period with two fouls.

But even without their senior marathon man, the Hawks mounted a charge into the halftime break, and finished with a 13-0 spurt to take a 40-27 edge.