Administration shooting for stars, so Martelli’s record fell short
After a long day of the media rounds, Jill Bodensteiner’s sincerity doesn’t dim when calling it the hardest decision she’s had to make.
Sunday, the Saint Joseph’s University athletics director of less than a year informed Phil Martelli, the school’s basketball coach for 24 seasons, that he no longer held that position.
“I left the comforts of my home in Northwest Indiana in part because of Phil Martelli and have a tremendous amount of respect for the man and everything he’s done,” Bodensteiner said.
The paeans to Martelli are numerous. They grow in direct proportion to how much time someone spent around the coach and Delaware County native, one of the people who embodied the spirit of Big 5 basketball like few others. They only pale in comparison to praise for Martelli away from the court, as the central face (non-winged variety) for a college community for more than two decades.
But Bodensteiner wasn’t brought in from Notre Dame to venerate. She seeks to innovate. And in seeing the Hawks struggle through an injury-plagued season, their third straight nonwinning campaign, she felt the time was right to make a change.
It wasn’t comfortable. But she felt it was necessary, even if it meant one of the most respected coaches in the nation was shown the door unceremoniously.
“My whole philosophy is that we’re doing it for the student-athletes, to maximize their potential, as students, as people and as athletes,” Bodensteiner said. “Phil was no doubt checking the student and person boxes. But I didn’t feel at this time that I could look myself in the mirror and say that we were maximizing the potential of our student-athletes as individuals and as a team on the court.”
The thing is, for most of his 24 seasons, Martelli specialized in doing just that: Maximizing return at a school that financially can’t compete with college basketball’s top dogs. He had a 444-328 record at Saint Joe’s, winning six Atlantic 10 regular-season titles and three tournament crowns. Seven times his teams appeared in the NCAA Tournament, six more in the NIT. He was the national coach of the year in 2003-04 for an unbeaten regular season and an Elite Eight trip. He has two players in the NBA, a third in Jameer Nelson who completed a successful 13-year career and a slew playing prominently in Europe.
In a season where the Big 5 has feted one of the most respected members of its fraternity, Fran Dunphy, on a year-long transition out of coaching, Martelli’s departure seems particularly abrupt. Bodensteiner considered something similar, but in the absence of a coach-in-waiting like the Owls’ Aaron McKie, the situation warranted immediate resolution.
“Did I wish it would’ve ended differently? Yes, and I did consider every possibility,” she said. “I wish it could’ve ended differently. But what’s best for the student-athletes isn’t always what’s best for the coach in these situations.”
Just as important to Bodensteiner’s perspective of Martelli is the first part of her opening sentiment. Her appointment, by design, brought an outsider’s perspective. Don DiJulia served as athletic director for two tenures and 35 years at his alma mater. Like Martelli, he could’ve jumped ship to a bigger job but didn’t. And the line in athletics between loyalty and stagnation is perhaps thinner than we think. When DiJulia announced that he would be stepping down at the end of the last academic year, eyes around the city turned to see if Martelli would survive the regime change. He was given a chance, but ultimately found wanting.
That decision comes from someone steeped in using athletics as the face of a college. You’ll notice the glaring difference between Notre Dame, a relatively small Catholic institution, and the land-grant behemoths it perennially plays in bowl games on the gridiron. In her public statement about the change, Bodensteiner labeled the basketball team “an important strategic asset for the university.” In our conversation, she identified the imperative for athletics to be “a differentiator” in a crowded landscape. In that regard, consider Martelli guilty of not generating sufficient ad impressions come March.
That the announcement coincided with the Catholic Feast of St. Joseph and thus one of the university’s largest one-day fundraising campaigns, Bodensteiner offered, “cynics could say that,” and said the timing depended on when Martelli chose to inform players, which was Tuesday morning.
Within the extremes — DiJulia as crusader for status quo, Bodensteiner as disruptor — exists an inescapable truth: Saint Joseph’s is not Notre Dame. It’s not (alumni avert your eyes) Villanova. Not on the court, not on the balance sheets.
Saint Joe’s has threequarters of the students Villanova does and just over half of the Fightin’ Irish. Its endowment is about a third of Villanova’s and 45 times smaller than Notre Dame’s.
Within those limits, Martelli’s accomplishments shine brightly. Since 2001, he brought the Hawks to the NCAA Tournament six times. That’s sixth-most among the 17 current or former A-10 members. Of those above the Hawks, Xavier and Temple joined larger leagues, VCU is a public school with 30,000 students and Davidson earned five berths by winning the inferior SoCon.
Compare Saint Joe’s success to peers of comparable size — Rhode Island (two tourney berths since 2001), La Salle (one, to the Sweet 16), and Fordham and Duquesne (zero) — and they look a lot better.
“I’m not going to set wins and losses or x number of appearances in so many years,” Bodensteiner said. “I was brought in to make Saint Joe’s athletics excellent. It’s an expectation that we’re going to compete and we’re going to compete for A-10 championships on a regular basis, that we’re going to contend for NCAA tournament bids.
“Maybe at the end of the day I’ll be proven crazy and that I aimed too high, and if so, I’ll earn that. But for now, I want us to compete to Atlantic 10 championships every year, and we’ve shown that we can get the talent in here to do that.”
Maybe the next Shaka Smart is waiting for Saint Joe’s to call. Maybe there’s an assistant at a Power 5 program ready to make the Hawks his first headcoaching gig. Anyone who watched them this year know there’s plenty of room to improve.
But there’s also a long way to fall from what Martelli accomplished and, in the seedy game of college athletics, the way he accomplished it.