Phil Martelli Sr. will watch his son Phil Jr. coach in the NCAA Tournament: ‘Stressful is the right word’
The elder Martelli made the NCAAs seven times as coach at St. Joe's. His son has reached it for the first time as coach of the Bryant Bulldogs.
Less than 24 hours before the biggest game of his life, Phil Martelli Jr. got a visit from his parents. They ate pizza and salad at his home in Smithfield, R.I., and talked about his 12-year-old daughter’s upcoming play.
“Annie,” Martelli said. “She’s one of the orphans.”
His mother and father listened closely as the younger Martelli read through his children’s report cards, grade by grade, making sure to include their teachers’ comments at the end.
Judy Martelli thought her son seemed calm, until she realized something.
“He’s probably like Phil,” she said. “It’s all on the inside.”
“Phil” is Phil Martelli Sr., the all-time winningest basketball coach at St. Joseph’s University. From 1995-2019, he collected 444 wins, seven NCAA Tournament berths, and 11 NIT appearances. Over those 24 seasons, he became a fixture in the Philadelphia basketball community, and still is today.
Phil Jr. (”Phillip” to his parents) is now building a resumé of his own. He was named head coach at Bryant University in November 2023, and has quickly turned the program around.
At first, the Bulldogs were a team in disarray — technical fouls, emotions running wild — but that’s no longer the case.
It certainly wasn’t on Saturday morning. In the America East Conference title game against Maine, Bryant looked poised. The Bulldogs (23-11) dominated from start to finish on their home court in Smithfield while playing selfless basketball.
Both Judy and Phil, watching from the stands, were impressed. They were also incredibly anxious. Judy had trouble falling asleep the night before. Phil spent the game talking to himself, under his breath.
“He was saying things like, ‘They’ve got to get that kid,’” Judy said. “‘They’ve got to close out.’ ‘Move it up.’ It was almost like he was in his own little world.”
Despite his parents’ stress, Phil Jr. coached his team to a 79-59 win, earning the Bulldogs an automatic bid in the NCAA Tournament for the second time in school history. They are the 15th seed in the South Regional and will play Michigan State (27-6) in the first round on Friday.
As players hugged and students stormed the court, Judy and Phil found their son.
They gave him a long hug. Phil Jr. knew exactly what they’d gone through.
“In some ways, I like that my dad has to live and die over on that other side,” he said. “Because I did that for so long. But I also know what those feelings are like. To watch the person that you care the most about succeed, and all of the emotion that comes with it.”
Path to coaching
Phil Jr., 43, was going to his father’s basketball games long before he started at St. Joe’s.
When he was 3 years old, and Martelli Sr. was coaching at Bishop Kenrick High School in Norristown, his father brought him onto the court to meet his players.
“I wet my pants,” Phil Jr. said. “Luckily, I don’t do that now.”
By the time he was in middle school, Phil Jr. had narrowed his career path to two options: becoming a college basketball coach or an on-air personality at 94 WIP. The coaching won out, and he dove right into it.
Throughout high school, the younger Martelli coached CYO basketball and worked in the summer league at St. Bernadette’s in Drexel Hill, where he grew up. He also spent summers coaching in the Sonny Hill League and the Narberth League.
It gave him a low-pressure environment where he could make mistakes. Phil Jr. still remembers a game when he sent six players out of a timeout, and another when he needed to foul late in the game, and didn’t.
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“Those were lessons I learned at the time that helped me form my coaching identity,” he said.
His education continued at St. Joe’s, where he played for his father from 1999-2003. Phil Jr. didn’t get much time on the court, but benefited from seeing the head coach interact with his teammates, up close.
It further confirmed what he already knew.
“That he just cared,” Phil Jr. said. “Checking in on guys — and every guy. The 13th guy, the walk-on.”
In 2002, freshman guard Dwayne Lee’s mother died. Martelli Sr. made sure every player — including his son — was on the team bus to Jersey City for the viewing.
Moments like these stuck with Phil Jr., who decided he would coach with empathy. He took lessons from other stops where he worked as an assistant — Central Connecticut State in 2003, Manhattan College from 2005-06, Niagara University from 2006-11, Delaware from 2011-16 — but always held on to his father’s ethos.
“It’s something we talk about on our staff,” Phil Jr. said. “There are going to be times where we have disagreements. There can be times we have to get on them about something. They’re going to screw up. We’re going to screw up. But you just make sure they know we care.”
After a brief stint with the G League’s Delaware 87ers in 2016-17, and St. Joe’s, where he worked as a director of program administration in 2017-18, Phil Jr. arrived at Bryant. He rose from an assistant coach to an associate head coach to a head coach in just five years.
He said he has leaned on his whole family for support. Judy was a member of the Immaculata College Mighty Macs, who won three straight national championships from 1972-74, earning them a spot in the Basketball Hall of Fame.
His brother, Jimmy, is an assistant coach at Penn State. His wife, Meghan, played in the Division III national championship in 2003 with Eastern Connecticut, and now coaches middle school basketball in Smithfield.
“You want to be excited about your team winning, but then you’re like, ‘All right, now I’ve got to get glued to this TV and watch their games,’” Phil Jr. said. “And then you’re living and dying on whether they win or lose. And then you’re on to the next game.
“There’s no relief. But it’s also a beautiful thing in a funky way. It’s very much a family affair.”
Like Phil Sr., like Phil Jr.
When Phil Sr. watches his son coach, it’s like he’s watching himself. Phil Jr. refuses to sit during games, just like his father. He will occasionally chirp at the referees, and has gotten a few technicals, but isn’t a lunatic on the sideline.
He thinks they walk the same, and stand the same. But there are other similarities that the longtime head coach isn’t even aware of.
Bryant’s game-day shootaround is based on what Phil Sr. ran at St. Joe’s. So is Phil Jr.’s message on his whiteboard before games.
“Matchups, with three offensive keys, three defensive keys, three special keys,” Phil Jr. said. “It’s a mirror image of what he did.”
Every night before a game, Bryant will end its practice with a foul-shooting drill called “win the game” — another Phil Sr. staple. But the biggest influence the longtime St. Joe’s coach has had on his son is in how treats people.
Phil Jr. will ask his father for advice on logistics, scheduling, but above all, on how to relate to his players.
“That’s really the only thing we talk about,” Phil Sr. said. “I’ll say, ‘Just make sure you hug that kid up a little bit.’”
“People will ask me how much I talk to my dad, does he call me after every game, and it’s not like that,” Phil Jr. said. “It’s not X’s and O’s. He doesn’t say to me, ‘Hey, you need to be playing more zone.’
“It’s always, ‘Are you giving your guys everything you’ve got? Are you being there for them as people?’ And that’s something I always hold with me.”
This is a new phenomenon for the Martelli parents. Phil Sr. is not used to quietly sitting during games. Judy gets more anxious for her son than she did for her husband.
“Thank God [Saturday] was in the morning, because I tell you, if it had been an 8 or 9 o’clock game, I wouldn’t have lasted,” Judy said. “They would have had to take me to the ER, my heart was pounding so fast.”
Added Phil Sr.: “Stressful is the right word. Watching it was hard. But think about that. I’m using the word ‘hard,’ and he’s coaching the game. It’s not really hard. It was stressful.”
Now that their son is in the NCAA Tournament, that emotion will undoubtedly be turned up a notch. But regardless of how it all ends up, Phil and Judy will be at every game.
“Wherever they’re playing, I’m going,” Phil Sr. said.