St. Joe's suffers rare second loss at home

A strange thing has been happening at Alumni Memorial Fieldhouse this month -- Saint Joseph's has been losing basketball games.

First it was Xavier, who walked out with a 62-58 win. And last night it was Charlotte, one of the Atlantic 10 conference's new members for this season, that downed the Hawks 57-50.

For a while it seemed that St. Joe's would knock off the more physical 49ers. The Hawks led at halftime, 31-24, and were up 41-32 with 13:06 to go in the game.

But the St. Joe's shooters went ice-cold in the second half. The team made only 7-of-31 field goal attempts in the final 20 minutes, and Chet Stachitas and Rob Ferguson were the only Hawks to score in that span.

Meanwhile, Charlotte erupted for an 18-0 run over a seven-minute span midway through the half to take a lead that it would not relinquish.

With 4:06 remaining in the game, Stachitas finally woke up his team, and their rabid fans, with a a three-pointer to make it 50-44. The Hawks cut the deficit to two with 1:31 remaining, but could get no closer.

"This game is numerical -- two guys scored in the second half for us," St. Joe's coach Phil Martelli said. "It's not a mystery. It's a shame, but it's not a mystery."

It also wasn't too surprising that Stachitas was the game's leading scorer with 17 points, although he only went 4-of-13 on three-point attempts. Curtis Withers, a powerfully built 6-foot-8 forward, recorded a double-double with 13 points and 14 rebounds.

This was the second game in a brutal two-week, five-game stretch this month for St. Joe's, who began with a 82-70 loss last Saturday at No. 17 George Washington. It continues Saturday against La Salle at the Palestra, then heads to the Central time zone for a game at Saint Louis, the A-10's other new team this season. It concludes Jan. 28 with the Big 5 Hall of Fame game against Penn at the Palestra.

Martelli insisted that "this was the next game, so it was the most important game," but he also admitted that the Hawks' struggles this season have had a psychological effect on the players, especially when compared to recent years.

"St. Joe's is used to winning -- I'm not sure that this team believes that," he said. "It's like the dyke has some holes in it and you can't put your hand in all of them."

On the other side of the floor, Charlotte coach Bobby Lutz was full of praise for the Hawks and their fans.

"I thought their fans were fun -- I was talking to their students before the game. They're terrific," he said. "It's refreshing, to be honest."

This visit to Hawk Hill was one of many firsts this season for Lutz and his team as they adjust to life in the Atlantic 10 -- especially when it comes to road games. Teams from Conference USA, where the 49ers previously played, don't visit the Northeast all that often.

"They're different cities," Lutz said. "It is an adjustment -- we worried about the traffic and were at La Salle two hours early."

Still, Lutz almost learned the hard way about one of the oldest adages in his new conference -- the one about the Hawks never dying.

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