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.”

Hawks earn spot in Atlantic 10 Tourney with win over La Salle

On the day in which they were honored at half court prior to tip-off, St. Joe’s seniors delivered a dominant performance, ensuring they would be college basketball players for at least one more game.

Garrett Williamson led all scorers with 18 points, including 10-10 from the free throw line, and Darrin Govens added 14 first half points and 17 on the game to lead the Hawks to a 74-59 win.

“We approached this game like a playoff game,” Williamson said. “It was either win or go home. I feel like we came out here with a mature approach, real methodical.”

The Hawks’ win assured them a spot in next week’s Atlantic 10 Tournament. They earned the 12th seed thanks to UMass’ upset of Rhode Island, which slotted the Minutemen into 11th in the final standings, and officially put an end to the Explorers’ season. The Hawks will likely travel to fifth-seeded Rhode Island for their first round game.

St. Joe’s-La Salle LIVE game blog

5:52- And there he is!! Martelli calls time with 57.6 and inserts Brown for O’Brien, much to the delight of his sizable cheering section in the crowd. He manages a rebound, but misses the put back before Martelli calls timeout to get his two senior starters out for a standing ovation. The Hawks run out the clock, the ball in Brown’s hands, with a 74-59 win and a berth in the A-10 Tournament. Postgame comments momentarily.

5:50- Jones does it again with a stop-and-go move that gives him a lane to the hoop to stretch the lead to 16. Williams answers with a bucket, but Govens gets hacked by Mekongo, his fifth foul, and makes one of two to restore a 15-point spread. I hear chants of “WE WANT C.J.”!

5:49- La Salle commits its 12th turnover of the night as Giannini turns to his assistants and claps in resignation. Murray’s three-point attempt doesn’t help matters, and sends the normally boisterous coach to take a seat for one of the first instances all night.

5:46- Williamson hits two free throws out of the break, and Grant nearly strips Jones after Mekongo misses a three. But Jones instead heads to the line, and hits both to stretch the lead to 14, the biggest margin of the day, 71-57.

5:43-  JONES TO THE BUCKET! He hits a lay-in driving right to left, up and under a defender to move the margin to 10 at 67-57 with 4:09 to play. As Bill Raftery would say, “a little early onions from the youngster!”

He’s got 12 off the bench, one of four Hawks in double-figures today. The score stays that way into the final media timeout with 3:39 to play.

Also, in Amherst, the Rams hold a slim 50-47 lead. And the Explorers’ postseason hopes.

For more play by play, click here…

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.

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:

St. Joe’s-Dayton men’s basketball live game blog

10:00- I’ll leave you with this final, parting thought: there is now way I would take credit for calling this victory, as my earlier score prediction testifies. But I did say this in my blog on the Towson game Monday night:

No one expected this team to beat URI at the Ryan Center, but none of the other games are out of the realm of possibility. A win over Dayton would take a gargantuan effort, but the team that played against Villanova could get it done.

This team put forth one hell of an effort tonight, and they won because they wanted it more. They won a lot of hustle plays that won’t show up in the box score, and used that desire to overcome a team that was clearly superior in terms of skill and athleticism. For all the other things this mediocre team has done wrong this season, they deserve all the credit in the world for tonight’s effort.

That’s all for this evening, one that will go down in the St. Joe’s history books. Goodnight everybody!!

For full game story, click here…

St. Joe’s-Towson men’s basketball live game blog

9:50- That’s it for tonight, as the Hawks escape the Hagan Arena with a hard-fought win. Join us on Saturday night at 6 p.m. from right here with all the action as the Hawks take on conference foe Dayton. Goodnight everybody!!

9:45- You’d hope it would be more comfortable for the Hawks, but in the end they were able to escape with a win tonight over Towson thanks to a strong second half. They outscored the Tigers 41-28 in the second stanza to reverse a six-point halftime deficit. The shooting effort was much better from St. Joe’s, who went 10-23 (43.5 percent) from the field, and five of 10 from three-point land. They also hit their free throws down the stretch, converting on 16 of their 19 trips to the charity stripe in the second half.

Idris Hilliard led the way for the Hawks with 20 points, 12 of which came in the second half. Justin Crosgile chipped in 13, the second straight game he has hit three threes, while Garrett Williamson, who played all 40 minutes, joined them in double-figures with 12. Darrin Govens managed nine points to go along with six assists despite a woeful shooting night (3-15 from the field, 2-10 from three), and Carl Jones had eight.

Todd O’Brien led the way on the boards, with 11 rebounds for a St. Joe’s team that held a 19-14 edge on the glass in the second half. St. Joe’s also committed a season-low tying eight turnovers.

“The players deserved to have something good happen to them because they really did a terrific job yesterday,” said Martelli, whose team held up nicely after a long Sunday that started at 4 a.m. when they arrived back from Olean and continued until past 11 p.m. thanks to academic meetings, video study, and practice. ” They needed something good to happen. When the ball didn’t drop in the first half, we sagged.”

The Hawks also stepped up the defensive effort after halftime, limiting the Tigers to just seven made field goals on 26 attempts (26.9 percent). They held Josh Thornton in check, who had just seven points in the second on 2-10 shooting and 1-6 from behind the arc. He finished with 23, while Jarrel Smith ended up with 17 points, 15 of which came in the second half. The Towson bench accounted for 44 of their 57 points, and no one other than Smith and Thornton topped four points on the day. Robert Nwankwo had 14 rebounds in the losing effort, while leading scorer Calvin Lee was held to just three points (1-7 shooting) and no rebounds in 28 minutes.

Martelli credits Prescott for a lot of that defense, as he helped quiet Thornton’s first half onslaught. But it was the offensive adjustment that also helped turn the tide. The Hawks had open looks in the first and struggled to connect, but four quick threes to open the second half created some gaps in the Towson zone defense, and with a little patience, gave Hilliard the room he needed to operate.

“It wasn’t really a change, but in the first it just felt like we were passing around the zone too much and not attacking it, so we came in at halftime said we had to attack the zone more, and we did that,” said Hilliard. “Once a couple guys started hitting threes, I caught the ball a couple times and was surprised I was so wide open.”

“I was pleased with the patience that we showed,” Martelli said. “We’re a team that wants to play obviously quicker, and I had a fear when we came in that with all that matchup that they do that we would just rely on jumper, jumper, jumper. In the second half, we made a concerted effort to put the ball in the lane. Idris had some good finishes in the bucket area.”