Hawks live on after epic comeback

NEW YORK - You know the saying St. Joseph's folks like to go by, no need to repeat it. On Friday afternoon, the Hawks really put their mantra to a basketball test. They were still flapping but looked dead, down 16 points right after the half in the Atlantic Ten quarterfinals. They had just gotten to Brooklyn and it looked like they'd be right back on the Turnpike heading south, dragging along a three-game losing streak into Selection Sunday.

In a basketball history that goes back over a century, St. Joe's hadn't had too many comebacks like Hawks fans saw at the Barclays Center, with stakes so high - down 16 in the second half, winning 86-80. Maybe St. Joe's, now 25-7, didn't need another W to get into the NCAA field. It just seemed that with an L they were destined to sweat out the weekend. At one point in the first half, George Washington had dropped nine of 10 three-point tries.

"I often say to these guys, Look we have a game plan and if the other team beats the game plan by making open shots, then shake their hand and get on the bus and go home," Hawks coach Phil Martelli said afterward. "At halftime, I told them, 'I didn't mean at halftime do we shake their hand and go home.' "

Martelli immediately added that eyes "were up" in the locker room at the break, the Hawks down by 14. "They were quiet,'' Martelli said. "They were nervous."

What was the state of their nervous systems? How much did they feel like they were playing for their lives? Isaiah Miles kind of laughed. They stayed confident, he said.

"We are playing for our lives - it's win or go home," Miles  "That's in our minds."

"Only for this tournament," Martelli interrupted. "Only for this tournament. Anything else is a waste of time. . . . We have not had any discussion about next week."

My usual working theory about conference tournament games when one team comes in off a bye and the other played the day before is that the team that played the day before often has the better first half, early in a rhythm, but the advantage swings to the rested team in the second half. This game was a dramatic example of that. The Hawks stuck to their offensive game plan of driving to the hoop against GW and actually made 58 percent of their shots in the first half, but that didn't matter much the way the Colonials kept dropping threes.

After the break, the energy advantage turned toward St. Joe's and the Hawks mostly kept their poise. James Demery, struggling lately, provided a huge boost off the bench, grabbing offensive rebounds on consecutive possessions when the Hawks were still climbing the long hill. His teammates later called Demery the MVP of the comeback.

That honor was shared, as Demery, DeAndre' Bembry, and Aaron Brown, the team's three wing players, combined for 36 second-half points, as Martelli mostly kept all three of them out there together.

Freshman Lamarr "Fresh" Kimble also provided a boost that went beyond the stat sheet. His key pickpocket goes down as one steal, but when that steal comes with GW up two points with 61/2 minutes left and Kimble then hits Demery for a three, the box score just can't explain the significance.

"He hasn't had a three since before the first debate in the presidential cycle that's been going on," Martelli said. "That's not a joke."

Of a late zone that made particular sense since Isaiah Miles had four fouls, "all credit goes to Mark Bass," Martelli said of his veteran assistant. "He was on me about what we call makes and misses." Martelli said he was good to go with it once St. Joe's fully caught up.

Martelli talked about the whole thing being a street fight.

"If you've ever been in a street fight, you don't know where the punches are coming from and you're just trying to cover up," he said. "That's really what was going on."

Even as Martelli talks of working to keep bracketology out of his head -  "I don't know where we were, I chose not to - he referenced how the rest of the weekend would have not have been enjoyable if the Hawks were on a three-game losing streak.

"But campaigning wouldn't do anything, putting more pressure on them wouldn't do anything for us for this game, for this moment," Martelli said.

His point: A champion never worries about what happened or what will happen.

"We had this moment in time and it took every ounce of our strength for 40 minutes," Martelli said.

He couldn't leave it at that. Martelli added, "I'd have been [ticked], though, if we weren't in."

The quips will never die, as the Hawks live on after a memorable one.

mjensen@phillynews.com

@jensenoffcampus