A Soaring Season

In 2003-04, the St. Joseph's Hawks became the most unlikely and captivating story in college basketball.

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In 2003-04, the Saint Joseph’s Hawks became the most unlikely and most captivating story in college basketball. Led by two compelling leading characters, outspoken, media-friendly coach Phil Martelli, a Philadelphia gym rat who had dreamed about coaching St. Joe’s ever since seventh grade, and undersized but dominant point guard Jameer Nelson, the Hawks finished the regular season with a 27-0 record as the only undefeated team in the country.

They did this despite having an underrecruited team from an underfunded program housed in underwhelming facilities, where players shared the weight room with students, professors and the general public. Martelli’s tiny, cramped office was more like a closet, and their home court was a mere gym that wasn’t even as modern as many neighboring high schools'. Everything about this mom-and-pop operation felt small-time — everything, that is, except the team, which incredibly rose to be unanimously ranked No. 1 in the country and became the envy of traditional powerhouses like Kentucky, Duke, North Carolina and UCLA.

The underdog Hawks, perhaps buoyed in part by the school’s never-quit motto of The Hawk Will Never Die and its ever-flapping Hawk mascot, captivated not just Saints Joseph’s students, alumni and fans, but the entire city of Philadelphia and countless fans across the entire nation. They all were pulled by the notion that you don’t have to have the best or be the biggest to be the best and beat the biggest.

Nelson, whose game dwarfed his generously listed height of 6 feet tall, would go on to win the Naismith Player of the Year Award while Martelli would be honored as the John Wooden Coach of the Year after the season. Both Nelson and fellow guard Delonte West, a lightly recruited athletic junior wing who transformed himself into a pro with a work ethic that never had been seen before or since on Hawk Hill, would be drafted into the first round of the NBA after the season.

The Hawks were a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament for the first time ever but lost a heartbreaker in the Elite 8 to John Lucas III and the Oklahoma State Cowboys. To this day, many believe that Saint Joseph’s might have won the NCAA title had they advanced past Oklahoma State. Nonetheless, the underdog Hawks showed everyone in the country that season that, no matter the odds stacked against you, anything is possible.