New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Geno is ‘shocked’ by Martelli’s dismissal
STORRS — Geno Auriemma met Phil Martelli at a basketball camp run by Immaculata’s Cathy Rush in 1979. The two bonded immediately and Martelli asked Auriemma if he’d give up his part-time position as assistant women’s coach at St. Joseph’s to join him as boys assistant at Bishop Kenrick High School.
The pay was $400 a year, but Kenrick was Auriemma’s alma mater and he had no idea what direction the women’s game would take. Geno took the job. Rush and Auriemma would become Naismith Basketball Hall of Famers. Phil Martelli would become St. Joe’s.
When we first spoke about their relationship in 1997, Auriemma called Martelli his best friend in coaching. He talked about how Martelli had bought a house a block away from where he grew up in Norristown, Pa. How they’d be together constantly and on Friday nights after games, he and Kathy and Phil and Judy would talk deep into the night. When the young wives went to bed, they’d talk basketball forever. More than once, he woke up on the steps of Martelli’s foyer.
So you knew any question Thursday about Martelli, 64, getting fired at St. Joseph’s after 24 years as head coach and 34 years
total at the school would hit Auriemma hard.
“I was shocked,” Auriemma said. “St. Joe’s is who he was. It was who his family was. His identity. He and St. Joe’s were one and the same.”
Auriemma once said the UCLA athletic director could have rushed in with a job offer at Martelli’s introductory news conference at St. Joe’s and Phil would have flat turned him down.
“St. Joe’s is his dream job,” Auriemma told me when I worked at the Hartford Courant. “If you grow up in Philly when we did and somebody tells you someday you’ll coach St. Joe’s, that’s like growing up in New York to coach the Knicks.”
So even at the podium before the start of the
NCAA Women’s Tournament, you knew the answer to the question could turn raw. Yes, the Hawks had three successive losing seasons, but the logistics of Martelli’s firing and the school’s release of how it was looking “to develop a sustained culture of excellence” had struck a wrong note with many. Martelli had taken the Hawks to seven NCAAs and six NITs. He went 444-328. He got to the NCAA as late as 2016. His team in 2004 won its first 27 games and captured the nation’s imagination. Martelli was St. Joe’s. Martelli’s firing on the feast of St. Joseph seemed merciless.
“I just know in today’s day and age when you get a new athletic director, you get a new president, things are going to change,” Auriemma said. “Everybody wants to make a name for himself. Everyone wants to put a stamp on their program. You read some of the quotes. It’s always the same. Like thoughts and prayers to the people who die in horrific massacres. ‘We wanted to give our studentathletes a better experience.’ It must really suck to have that experience, to go to college for free and have somebody who cares about you, who loves you, who coaches their butt off for you.
“That means every coach who has a losing record should get fired immediately, because their kids aren’t having a positive experience. Why don’t you just say, ‘We’ve been forced to change coaches because we’re not winning enough games and the boosters are complaining.’ Don’t give that same old crap. It could be Charles Manson and if your team is winning 35 games every year nobody gives a goddamn.”
When we spoke about their relationship again in 2014, Auriemma broke out his iPhone and held up a picture of him reading to his and Martelli’s and Jim Foster’s kids. They spent plenty of time at the Jersey Shore. When Auriemma won his first national championship in 1995, the first telephone call wasn’t from President Clinton. It was from Martelli. In 2000, Martelli was one of the first on the floor in Philly when Geno won his second of 11 NCAA titles. His son Mike played for Martelli.
“I spoke to him yesterday and last night,” Auriemma said.
How he’s doing?
“As you would expect, not good,” Auriemma said. “This wasn’t a guy coming from California to coach at Saint Joe’s and it’s a job.
This is a guy who lives and dies and breathes every minute Hawks basketball.
“This has been over half his life. It’s hard. It’s sad.”
Auriemma said he understands when a new AD like Jill Bodensteiner arrives from Notre Dame to replace retiring AD Don DiJulia in June, changes happen. What he didn’t like, not one bit, was the way it went down. Martelli, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, was given a choice by school president Mark C. Reed and Bodensteiner, to announce he was resigning or retiring. He said no. He was fired.
“I don’t think it’s a certain bitterness,” Auriemma said. “I think I look at it both ways. It’s more of a statement where the business of coaching and college athletics are right now. In the world of boosters and donors, you see it happening everywhere. I want that coach out. That coach is out … It’s not like at St. Joe’s they’re going to fire the offensive coordinator in football. Basketball is the No. 1 thing. That’s the focal point. I get the business of it. That doesn’t mean it goes down any easier. Obviously, it’s more emotional when it’s a friend.
“There’s got to be a variety of ways that this could have been handled that made it more reflective of all of the years he spent there and made it more of an appreciation for what he did for the university and the transition to the next coach.”
In the past few days, Fran Dunphy at Temple and Martelli at St. Joe’s saw their Big Five careers end. Auriemma called them coaching icons. At least Dunphy was given a final year and his top assistant Aaron McKie would succeed him.
“It would have showed a lot of class on St. Joe’s part to say we’re going to give you one more year, and Phil has to make a decision. My guess is he probably would have said yeah, I’ll take a shot at it. What if all of a sudden you win the conference tournament and two games in the NCAA Tournament? You don’t know.”
Auriemma knows this. From Coaches vs. Cancer to so many other things, Auriemma said, nobody did more for his community than Martelli. He also knows Martelli isn’t ready to give up coaching.
“Phil’s nonstop, morning to night,” Auriemma said. “I wish I had the same passion and energy for coaching and his team and players and community. He’s got his hands on everything. It’s not like he’s tired. He hasn’t forgotten how to coach the last couple years. Oh, yeah. He wants it. Somebody would be doing themselves a favor saying ‘We need to stabilize our program’ and maybe it’s a couple years. He’d be perfect.
“You know he’s going to do it the right way. He’s going to represent the school and get the student body and community involved.”
Hey, Auriemma said, maybe he’d hire him as a consultant or player personnel director.
“And I’d pay him a lot more than the 400 bucks he paid me,” Auriemma said.