Editor’s note: The following is an edited excerpt from Aaron Bracy’s A Soaring Season: The Incredible, Inspiring Story of the 2003-04 Saint Joseph’s Hawks.. It is reprinted with permission.
Thursday, March 25, 2004: Meadowlands, East Rutherford, New Jersey; NCAA Sweet 16: No. 1 Saint Joseph’s vs. No. 4 Wake Forest
On Selection Sunday, Billy Packer rattled off nine teams from so-called power conferences that he thought were more deserving of a No. 1 seed than Saint Joseph’s. Eleven days later, in a delicious bit of irony, Packer was courtside as CBS’s analyst for the network’s broadcast of the Hawks’ NCAA Sweet 16 contest at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, New Jersey. As if the subplot needed more fuel added to the fire, St. Joe’s opponent was Packer’s alma mater, Wake Forest.
“When we were going up there, I remember laughing and saying, ‘Of course they would assign him to this regional,’” St. Joe’s coach Phil Martelli said. “He had an opinion, I had an opinion, and I voiced my opinion.”
Martelli’s opinion drew national headlines when he said, “Billy Packer can kiss my ass.” However, the coach was all smiles when he met up with Packer during St. Joe’s practice at the Meadowlands on Wednesday, March 24, 2004, the day before the top-seeded Hawks faced off against No. 4-seeded Wake Forest. Packer was endorsing a frozen pizza company, and Martelli joked that he had helped increase the broadcaster’s celebrity and advertising power.
“Yo, I really helped your career. Everybody in the country knows you. You now owe me,” Martelli recalls of the conversation. “That was it.”
Jim Nantz, CBS’s lead broadcaster and Packer’s longtime partner, also remembers the meeting as rather anticlimactic.
“I recall Billy and Coach Martelli shaking hands at practice,” Nantz said. “It was all civilized and friendly.”
The Packer versus Martelli story was an intriguing, amusing angle. But the Hawks had more important, more serious matters on which to focus.
Wake Forest was led by a freshman point guard who was as close in talent to Jameer Nelson as Martelli had seen in any player. He knew the Hawks would have their hands full trying to guard Chris Paul.
Paul was 42 days shy of his 19th birthday on March 25, 2004, when St. Joe’s and Wake Forest met for a 9:57 p.m. tipoff. There was no doubt that he had already made his mark on the college game, as Paul would be named the Atlantic Coast Conference Rookie of the Year and tabbed by several national publications as the national freshman of the year after the season.
“Phil said, ‘Wait until you see this guard from Wake Forest; he’s like Jameer,’” St. Joe’s athletic director Don DiJulia said. “I said, ‘Get out.’”
Paul, of course, would go on to become one of the greatest point guards in basketball history.
A certain Hall of Famer, Paul entered the 2024-25 NBA season, his 20th in the league, ranked second in both career assists and steals with 11,894 and 2,614, respectively. Only John Stockton and Jason Kidd were ahead of him in both categories.
Paul has won two Olympic gold medals (2008 and 2012), made 12 NBA All-Star teams, and is a former MVP, Rookie of the Year, and nine-team selection to the NBA All-Defensive Team.
In 2003–04, Paul was a superbly talented freshman with lots of potential.
“If you would’ve said, ‘Chris Paul is going to be this unbelievable NBA player, I would’ve said, ‘Yeah, maybe,’” Mike Skrocki, a senior guard at Richmond in 2003–04, said.
One thing was certain: The Hawks would be facing a player similar to the one they saw in practice every day.
Skrocki has the unique perspective of having matched up against both Paul and Nelson during the 2003–04 season. Paul had 17 points, eight assists, and five steals to help the Demon Deacons defeat Richmond 81-66 on December 6, 2003. Skrocki was impressed. Like Nelson, who had 32 points, six steals, and five rebounds in the Hawks’ 71-60 win at Richmond on January 6, 2004, Paul did whatever his team needed him to do.
“They were both great point guards,” Skrocki said. “Both had the uncanny ability to know when to score and when to defer to others. That’s kind of an art a point guard has to have. I’m sure Chris Paul could have, and I know Jameer could because he did it to us, but they both can go off and score 30 every night if they want to. But it’s not going to reflect in wins because they’re going to lose some of their teammates, and teams are going to focus on them. They just had that ability to know, ‘Here’s where I have to go and score. Here’s where I have to get so-and-so involved. Here’s where I have to drive and kick.’ They had a good way to manage the game, but also know when it’s their turn to take over.”
It’s no surprise that Skrocki, as Martelli and many others would, noticed the on-court similarities between the players because Paul had patterned parts of his own game by watching Nelson while still in high school.
“I was a fan of Jameer,” Paul said in an interview inside the Golden State Warriors’ locker room before a game against the 76ers during the 2023-24 NBA season. “He was so strong and so smooth and change of direction and all that. I had just been watching him the year before.”
Just like the Hawks’ win over Texas Tech wasn’t St. Joe’s versus Bob Knight, this wouldn’t be Jameer Nelson versus Chris Paul. It would be St. Joe’s versus Wake Forest. But, still, everyone was looking forward to the highly anticipated showdown between the Hawks’ stellar senior point guard and the Demon Deacons’ freshman phenom point guard. In spite of its 29-1 record, there also were many who still doubted that St. Joe’s could hang with an Atlantic Coast Conference team.
“Going into Wake Forest, understanding they were an ACC team, there were a lot of doubters,” John Bryant said. “We were an unproven Atlantic 10 school going against the ACC and Chris Paul, who we knew was good. There were a lot of doubters that didn’t think we were going to be able to beat them.”
Everyone on the Hawks knew it would be a challenge.
“They had Chris Paul,” Dwayne Jones said. “They also had a big guy that I had to match up against named Eric Williams. That was a tough battle for me. It was a tough matchup.”
The Hawks weren’t the only ones with great respect for their opponent entering the contest. Paul also knew it wouldn’t be easy.
“Really good team,” Paul said. “You could tell how connected they were. We knew that everybody had been talking about Jameer and Delonte.”
While both teams were good, Martelli was supremely confident before tipoff.
Thanks to Neil Hartman, Martelli’s exact words have been preserved for history.
Hartman, then a sportscaster for Comcast SportsNet, chronicled St. Joe’s every move with inside access granted to him by Martelli for the popular series, “Hangin’ with the Hawks.” Hartman showed Comcast SportsNet’s viewers a behind-the-scenes look at St. Joe’s, beginning with the Atlantic 10 tournament. Martelli allowed Hartman, cameraman Jerry Hines, and producer Matt Howley to go wherever the Hawks went.
“It was just such a magical time,” Hartman said. “And it was not something a lot of people were doing. It was so unique.”
For the NCAA tournament, due to the organization’s restrictions, neither Hartman nor his crew could go into the locker room when it was off-limits to the media.
So, a St. Joe’s student team manager shot footage from inside the locker room and shared it with Comcast SportsNet. As shown on Hangin’ with the Hawks, Martelli made sure to send St. Joe’s out to the court with a final message that they were the best team taking the floor on this night.
And the coach marveled at what he saw when the opening whistle blew—from both sides.
“My God, that game was really high-level,” he said.
Both teams were playing well and making shots. Pat Carroll knew it was going to be a good night for him in the opening minutes.
“One of my first shots, it might have been a corner three, I remember Jameer flipped one back to me early on and I hit a deep three on the wing,” Carroll said.
“When that went in, it was like, ‘Alright, you know what, I feel good. It’s going to be a good night here. Alright, this is going to be a good one.’”
And it sure was for Carroll, as he would finish with 17 points while making five of seven shots from three-point range.
But the Demon Deacons had plenty of firepower of their own, including Justin Gray (23 points) and Williams (19 points). And, of course, Paul was running their show.
Everyone knew just who would be guarding Paul. And it didn’t matter to Tyrone Barley how many accolades Wake Forest’s sensational freshman had received.
“I remember this highly touted freshman that we were playing against,” Barley said. “I didn’t know him or anything, just the scouting report, that this guy is the real deal. But, to me, it didn’t matter who the other person was. I felt like I’m going to play as hard as I can and try to make it as tough as possible.”
Barley hounded Paul for every one of the 2,040 seconds the St. Joe’s shutdown defender was on the court.
“I remember Tyrone just D’ing up, dogging Chris Paul the entire game,” Carroll said. “And there was a moment where he turned his back to him, and he was guarding him backwards as Chris Paul was bringing the ball up the court. I’m like, ‘What the hell is he doing?’ But you knew Tyrone was in the zone. I’m sure [Paul] didn’t see too many defenders like Tyrone. That memory definitely sticks out.”
Barley always had prided himself on defense, even enjoying stopping opponents in All-Star games. He knew he wasn’t going to score a ton of points, so he made it his mission to keep whomever he was guarding to fewer points than his own. When the final whistle blew and the points were tallied, the box score looked like this:
Barley, Tyrone, 13 points
Paul, Chris, 12 points
Paul had managed just six field goal attempts, making two. He did contribute eight assists. Meantime, Barley made four of six three-pointers.
Even with Barley’s lockdown defense and Carroll’s three-point shooting, St. Joe’s would need everything it had to defeat the Demon Deacons, especially with Jones and Bryant battling foul trouble in the second half. Wake Forest cut into the Hawks’ 10-point second-half advantage and made it a nail-biter in the final minute, in part because St. Joe’s struggled at the free throw line all game (14 of 23, 60.9 percent).
It wasn’t until Chet Stachitas followed a Nelson miss on a running layup attempt with a putback layup with 33 seconds left that the realization that the Hawks would be advancing to the Elite Eight became apparent.
The final score was St. Joe’s 84, Wake Forest 80.
“To score that many points and to need to score that many points was sensational,” Martelli said.
The Hawks had proven to Packer and to everyone else that they belonged with the big boys. Nantz remembers Packer calling a fair game and praising St. Joe’s afterward.
“Of course, Billy helped take Wake Forest to the Final Four 40 years earlier. Not that you could ever detect the slightest hint of favoritism in any of his calls,” Nantz said. “The fans always thought he had favorites. But he truly never did. North Carolina fans didn’t like him because they thought he was pro-Duke. Duke fans thought he was pro-Carolina. Wake Forest thought he should be kinder on the air to his own university. And then nationally everyone believed he was on the take for the ACC. None of these were true. But when St. Joe’s beat the Demon Deacons, I thought Billy’s respect for the Hawks went way up.”
St. Joe’s showed they also could contend with a future superstar.
“They beat Chris Paul, and it was not an upset,” said Mike Jensen of the Philadelphia Inquirer. “It wasn’t the Chris Paul that came to be an NBA All-Star, but he was really good.”
So were West and Nelson. Each scored 24 points and had strong all-around games. Nelson added seven assists, three rebounds, and three steals, becoming the school’s all-time steals leader by passing Jeffrey Clark’s career mark of 250. West contributed four rebounds and three assists. Both played all 40 minutes.
“That was a great matchup,” St. Joe’s assistant Mark Bass said. “Chris Paul had all of the hype. He was a great guard. It came down to the end, and we were fortunate to pull it out.”
Though disappointed with the defeat, Paul had fond memories of the game and playing in the Sweet 16 when he looked back more than 20 years later.
“I used to talk about it to Jameer every now and then when we became competitors in the league,” Paul said. “That’s something I’ll never forget. Nothing like it. The energy behind it, the way the school got behind us. It was an amazing time, and I’m forever grateful for those memories.”
While Paul and the Demon Deacons were headed home, St. Joe’s was eager to make more memories. Up next would be Oklahoma State, which had defeated Pitt 63-51 in the earlier game on Thursday night.
Playing in the late game meant that Martelli, with Hartman trying to stay awake nearby, would be up all night preparing for the tough, physical Cowboys. Now was no time to sleep. A trip to the Final Four was on the line.
