Scrappy St. Joe's goes down fighting

SPOKANE, Wash. - Standing in a hallway just outside the St. Joseph's Hawks lockerroom at Spokane Arena, Phil Martelli knew the emotions inside that little room. He respected those emotions.

"I'm not into 'lift your head' and all that kind of stuff,'' Martelli said. "They took it hard.''

It would take a couple of days, the Hawks coach added, for them to look in the mirror, "and see the man in the mirror is a champion.''

Early on, you weren't sure if the Hawks belonged on the same court as the Oregon Ducks. Then somehow St. Joe's was the team in control down the stretch, the top seed of the NCAA West Region on the ropes.

Martelli looked at it clinically. He saw a few too many turnovers. More to the point, uncharacteristic turnovers.

You could have predicted Hawks star DeAndre' Bembry would put it on himself that he lost the handle on the ball when the Hawks were down three in the last 30 seconds. No miracle ending to be had.

"It was right there,'' Bembry said. "Last turnover I had -- you never know what could have happened.''

Oregon had a tough shooting night, but buried a couple of late ones, earning the trip to Anaheim and the Sweet 16.

The mood among the Hawks was, who cares if the Ducks were the top seed?

"They were the next team on the schedule,'' Martelli said.

The final Sunday night goes down as 69-64. That doesn't tell the half of it. The Hawks had held it together just enough in the first half to survive to the second, and the paths that had been closed were back open for business in the usual ways.

This Hawks group did far, far more than merely fight back. For a possession or two, the Hawks seemed to have it under control, up 58-51 with 5 ½  minutes left.

They don't give you a free ride in the NCAA tournament. At some point, you're going to find a mountain to climb, some team that performs feats you haven't seen much of back home. A group which makes your own life so difficult, where shots that seem like clean looks are being sent away, paths you're used to navigating suddenly closed for the evening.

Asked about the first-half difficulties for his team that Oregon presented, Martelli was dead honest about the reason.

"The DNA,'' Martelli said. "Like whatever they got at birth --- long, size, speed. They didn't get that when they got to Oregon. I'm not being disrespectful of anything at Oregon. … They got that at birth.''

This 28-8 Hawks team was special because the puzzle parts fit together so seamlessly, a miracle in itself since these were mostly the same guys who had won 13 games last season. They return to Hawk Hill on Monday with the second highest victory total in school history, and the greatest one-year improvement in school history.

"Skin of our teeth," Hawks freshman Lamarr "Fresh" Kimble said of how close the Hawks had come to pulling it off.

"We just didn't make plays in the last minute and a half," Martelli said.

Kimble, pride of Neumann-Goretti, came off the bench for Newkirk stretching his arms and chewing his gum. Kimble had taken three shots in the first half and missed them all. HIs first possession this time, the ball went to him in the left corner and Kimble buried the three-pointer for the first St. Joe's lead of the game, just over 8 minutes left. Right after Kimble pulled off one of his crafty moves, faking a pass with his eyes, keeping the ball for a layup. But everyone on the team probably has a play they desperately want back. For Kimble, it was losing the handle on the ball on the possession after St. Joe's had grabbed that seven-point lead.

Even at halftime, how the Hawks were still within 32-27 was something of a mystery. Even the fact that Oregon had shot just 33.3 percent and made just 2 of 13 three-pointers didn't fully explain it. Foul trouble forced Martelli to jerry-rig a lineup together that certainly wasn't Plan A.

For a few late first-half possessions, the Hawks had both their point guards with both their backup inside players, plus Bembry. St. Joe's was just barely hanging on. That five-point deficit was absolutely a best-case scenario.

Miles, Friday night's game-winning hero, sat on the bench holding a towel for over 10 minutes of the first half. He'd picked up two quick fouls at the offensive end. Late in the half, Aaron Brown sat next to Miles after his third foul. Brown had been keeping St. Joe's afloat offensively.

Somehow, with Bembry and Miles combining for four points, the Hawks got into the locker room down by five. It seemed like even when St. Joe's found an open lane for either a jumper or all the way to the rim, some Duck would appear out of nowhere and change the equation. Oregon had five blocks by halftime.

St. Joe's averages 10 turnovers a game and had eight by halftime. The good news for the Hawks was that they weren't open floor turnovers. Oregon only had one steal. Oregon had only three turnovers but the points off turnovers were six for Oregon, five for the St. Joe's. No idea how that was even possible. It was that kind of night.

Bembry, who has some pretty special DNA himself, said of Oregon's zone: "They've got big guards in the front that got their hands on a lot of loose balls. It's really a good crazy matchup zone. You've got to just find smart plays.''

Martelli stayed in tell-it-like-it-is mode. That first half counted too.

"I thought everybody would be like, 'oh, it's OK,' '' Martelli said of the halftime. "But they had to know that wasn't acceptable play in the first half. I mean, we were grabbing. We don't grab. We don't foul like that. But we were. I'm saying this out of love and respect for my team. We had some little boys play in the first half. We fell down, we banged into each other. So it got to them a little bit.''

Of course, he was proud of his team. Martelli is an immensely proud man and this team represents one of his proudest accomplishments. He'll talk to you for hours about what this group means to him. But that's for another time. An accomplishment for the ages was in their hands and they couldn't quite hold on.

"There's no finger pointing,'' Martelli said. "They came into the building as champions, they're going to leave as champions, and I've been honored to work with each one of them since August."

mjensen@phillynews.com

@jensenoffcampus