It's quite a burden. Ask the Sixers. Ask the Eagles.
The Saint Joseph's Hawks have hauled a beleaguered, championship-starved city on their broad shoulders through a five-month run that met its sudden end on Saturday night up the New Jersey Turnpike -- in the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament.
By now you know the story. St. Joe's: the fair-haired boy of big time college basketball, the Jameeracle on 54th Street. And, of course, the "Little Man from the Little School that's Beating Everyone."
By 19-and-0, they'd landed the cover of Sports Illustrated. By 22-0, all their games were being televised locally. By 27-0, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News printed near-daily posters and inserts on the Hawks, running feature stories on all things St. Joe's: from their president, Father Lannon, to their colorful corps of walk-ons, to the Hawks' dance team.
Martelli's Hawks dared conventional basketball wisdom with their undersized roster, disproving pundits all the way to the first 30-win season in program history.
Now, so it seems, all that remains is a wish that there was a different ending to the story.
Early-round losses in the tournament by Kentucky, Stanford and Gonzaga brought to light how fragile the whole thing can be. But the Hawks persevered through the opening rounds, ousting Bobby Knight's rough-and-tumble Texas Tech side, and edging a battle-hardened Wake Forest side from the big bad ACC.
All this led to Saturday night's Regional Final, when the Hawks overcame a subpar shooting performance to go blow-for-blow for 39 minutes with an Oklahoma State team ranked No. 4 in the country.
Trailing by two points with under a minute to play, the Hawks badly needed a basket. Badly.
Calm, Pat Carroll set a screen for Jameer Nelson at the top of the key. When a pair of defenders collapsed on the Player of the Year, he fired the ball back to the southpaw Carroll, who drilled an ice-water-in-his-veins longball from the top of the key to put the Hawks ahead -- ironically, the very same shot he'd airballed at the buzzer against Auburn in last year's first round.
But time still remained.
As the Cowboys set up for a shot with the final seconds ticking away, OSU's Joey Graham stumbled and the ball came loose. The entire Delaware Valley leaned forward as Carroll left his man to lunge for the ball -- a steal that would have almost certainly sent the Hawks to the Alamodome.
It was the same sort of defensive gamble that has spurred Saint Joseph's frenetic ball pressure defense all season long.
Graham, however, managed to recover his handle, and a fallen Carroll could only watch as his defensive assignment -- junior guard John Lucas -- received the pass and calmly sank the three-pointer that put the Cowboys ahead for good.
Nelson's game-tying attempt from the foul line bounced off the front of the rim, and the buzzer coldly sounded. Crumpled on the hardwood, Nelson had his eyes filled with a glassy look that seemed to reflect a disbelief shared by the Hawks' legions of followers: the season was over.
But how those images will endure.
Long after the tears have dried, Big 5 devotees will remember how the Hawks single-mindedly ran the table during their regular season, winning 27 times in 27 tries. (This, of course, playing in a conference so weak they only sent two teams to the Elite Eight.)
They'll always remember Nelson's 38-footer to sink Old Dominion. They'll remember West's sterling 12-for-12 shooting performance at Xavier.
They'll remember Tyrone Barley putting Chris Paul in his pocket -- limiting the ACC's golden boy to 2-for-6 shooting from the field -- for the better part of the Regional Semifinal.
But for those that spent time with these Hawks, their high character and conduct off the court will be celebrated as much as their considerableaccomplishments on it.
No team has ever handled success better than St. Joe's. No member was bigger than the team, no player followed a separate agenda. As the wins piled up and the spotlight intensified, the Hawks never gloated, never preened.
"I still don't think we're that great," Martelli would insist. "I think we're really good, and we're headed to great."
So it ends for the little kid from Chester who, in the span of four years, went from a marginal recruit to the National Player of the Year -- and the best Big 5 player in a generation. With his integrity, character, dedication to his school and passion for the game, Nelson showed a nation that the Hawk will never die.
"He's gone in terms of a uniform but he'll never be gone from St. Joe's basketball," Martelli said at the OSU postgame press conference. "The numbers are astounding, the wins are astounding, but the humanness which he did it all will be an example that will last a lifetime."
These Hawks were proof that great things happen to great people.
Quite a burden, indeed. But what a group to take it on.
Well done.
