Saint Joseph's coach Phil Martelli said he was "shocked" that the better team, the New England Patriots, did not win the Super Bowl. He was less shocked that his Hawks beat Villanova easily last night, although the Wildcats' 14-game winning streak in the Big 5 had caused more fickle minds to wonder.
"It's cyclical," he said. "It comes and it goes." With four upperclassmen in their starting five, this year was the Hawks' turn, he said.
Then, reflecting on Villanova's stretch of domination, Martelli knocked the Wildcats off their appointed perch in one breath and put them back on it in the next.
"I think that - and I don't mean to be disrespectful to the people in this room - it was overdone," Martelli said of the 14-game win streak. "I would suggest that it was a little overdone about the dominance and the preeminence and all that stuff."
Then he admitted the reality of that "stuff."
"They are the preeminent program in Philadelphia. I'm not changing what I said last year," Martelli continued. "This team, my team, is better than their team - this year. Their program is the preeminent program in Philadelphia, and I'm not ashamed to say that."
But Martelli said he was irked by the implication that Villanova was too good for the Big 5 model to last.
"There was a tone . that would indicate that maybe we should blow this thing up," he added, referring to the breakup of the Big 5. He also shied away from suggesting that last night's game restored a more equitable landscape to the city's basketball scene.
"We weren't playing for anybody other than Saint Joseph's tonight. We weren't playing for the city or to save the Big 5," he said. "That's for the Crusaders, and in the Crusades a lot of people were slaughtered. So we're not really interested in doing that."
Like it or not, the Hawks destroyed the perception of Villanova's invincibility in the city last night.
Then again, if Villanova had ever been anointed King of the Big 5, it was news to coach Jay Wright.
"Is he serious?" Wright asked of Martelli. "I can never tell."
