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Former St. Joe’s star Marvin O’Connor has a Point Breeze sandwich shop paying tribute to local hoops | Mike Jensen

Two decades back, O'Connor pulled off one of the great individual feats in basketball.

Former St. Joseph's basketball player Marvin O'Connor stands for a portrait at the Fresh Works shop he co-owns in Philadelphia's Point Breeze section.
Former St. Joseph's basketball player Marvin O'Connor stands for a portrait at the Fresh Works shop he co-owns in Philadelphia's Point Breeze section.Read moreTIM TAI / Staff Photographer

The cheesesteak and hoagie stand at 21st and Reed in Point Breeze is arranged in the classical urban style -- “pay over at the left window,” said the man at the right pickup window. Saturday just after 2 p.m., business stayed brisk on a busy corner on a sunny day, a middle-aged man waiting for his order, three younger women by the pickup window, a car from the suburbs flashing emergency lights in the crosswalk while the driver paid for a call-in order.

Behind the grill, a co-owner, and inspiration for the mural by the pickup window. It wasn’t his idea, Marvin O’Connor said of the mural. When their Fresh Works franchise opened last year, co-owner Tim Foy “thought it would be cool to recognize some of the guys from this area,” O’Connor said. “A pretty good idea.”

There are lots of cheesesteak and hoagie emporiums around the region. How many are co-owned by a former Big 5 player of the year? The mural doesn’t just feature basketball players, but nine familiar faces, all from South Philadelphia. In the center, right shoulder slightly hunched forward, ball in his left hand, there’s O’Connor. Just to the right of Temple’s Nate Blackwell, to the left of La Salle’s Donnie Carr.

Up above in this South Philly pantheon, left to right, Rasual Butler, Lionel Simmons, Dion Waiters. The bottom row, more royalty, left to right, Rab Townes, Terrell Stokes, Rashid Bey. (If anyone is offended by not being up there, another mural is in the works, O’Connor reports.)

“I wanted to keep it local, to celebrate those guys,” said O’Connor, who grew up down the road in the now-demolished Passyunk Homes, was a star at Simon Gratz before a year at Villanova and then a transfer to St. Joe’s. “But I wanted to keep it local.”

To the left of the menu is the mural, featuring insignias of the Big 5 schools, O’Connor’s own alma mater right in the middle. (Also, a little sign, Cash Only, Thanks.) Chicken fingers are sold as Big 5 combos, and each Big 5 school gets a smoothie flavor.

The biggest menu nod to hoops is not to the co-owner but to a deceased local hero. The Rasual Butler Combo is the big ticket, a Buffalo Chicken Cheesesteak with a side of waffle fries, $12.50.

There’s a hole on the wall, though. A more egotistical man would already have the details up there, since 20 years ago, O’Connor, a 2013 Big 5 Hall of Fame inductee, pulled off one of the craziest individual feats in basketball, any level.

“You bring my name up, that’s going to come up, then going off against Stanford,” O’Connor said.

Monday, St. Joe’s renews its rivalry with La Salle, at Tom Gola Arena. Two decades ago, O’Connor put his stamp on that game, in that same gym. The Inquirer wrote a story about it, separate from the game, detailing how Marvin O’Connor scored 18 points in the final 59.8 seconds.

“We lost by one,” O’Connor said.

Right afterward, that’s what stuck with him.

“We were going in on a [10-game] winning streak,” O’Connor said. “We had just gotten ranked [18th] that week. That’s all we were thinking about. When the game was over, I was just down about the loss.”

How many points in how many seconds? O’Connor had no idea.

“I’m just playing the game,” O’Connor said. “I’m not counting buckets.”

In the postgame press conference, O’Connor is pretty sure it was Dick Jerardi from the Daily News who said, “Do you know what just took place?”

“Yeah, we just broke a winning streak.”

Ray Parrillo’s Inquirer story, noting that St. Joe’s trailed by 10 when O’Connor’s spree began, got it all into two paragraphs: “He started by nailing two free throws with 59.8 seconds to go. On his next trip down the floor, O’Connor drove for a basket with 54 seconds to go. With 37 seconds left, he drained a three-pointer to bring the Hawks to within 81-77. After a layup by Frank Wilkins cut La Salle‘s lead to 83-79, O’Connor was fouled by Rasual Butler behind the three-point stripe. He made all three free throws with 22.5 seconds remaining, and it was 85-82.

“O’Connor followed with a three-point basket with 16.3 seconds left, a layup with 8.6 seconds to go and another three-pointer with 2.2 seconds on the clock.”

That’s right, eight points in the last 16.3 seconds.

“We tried to commit a foul,” O’Connor, who finished with 37 points, said 20 years later of how maybe he could have gotten one more bucket and the win.

“When he started scoring like that, I figured, ‘Oh man, we better make every one of our free throws or else.’ It’s a good thing we did,” La Salle’s Victor Thomas said that night, after scoring 26 of his own.

The thing about history, you never know how it keeps playing out. You don’t know, dueling with Rasual Butler, that you’re going to honor him 20 years later, after the longtime NBA player died in a car crash in 2018.

O’Connor’s greatest Butler memory wasn’t playing against him, he said, but with him on a Point Breeze travel team coached by Bill Williams.

“He was a year under me, a guy you were trying to help bring along,” O’Connor said. “I found so much joy in a guy who was that hungry that young.”

O’Connor went on to do his own things. That Stanford game? Here’s the Los Angeles Times first paragraph the day after: “When Marvin O’Connor fouled out with 12 seconds left in St. Joseph’s 90-83 loss to Stanford, the crowd at Cox Arena rose almost as one, Stanford fans included.”

He’d scored 37 points in the NCAA Tournament second-round game. It’s just life that his two most memorable performances couldn’t quite bring a victory. The man made his mark and nobody locally has forgotten, certainly not the stream of hoops folks who have made their way to 21st and Reed.

How are the cheesesteaks? Big-time, holding up with any in the city. You’d expect nothing less, though, seeing the “extremely busy” man behind the grill, knowing what he can put together if you just give him a minute.