Every two or three plays Phil Martelli Jr. had to duck away and take a phone call while reviewing game tape as the “low man on the totem pole” on Central Connecticut’s staff after its Dec 30 matchup with Niagara was postponed to Dec 31 as a result of the power going out in the final minutes of the first half.
Martelli Jr.--a then volunteer assistant that had responsibilities spanning from those of an “assistant coach, director basketball operations, graduate assistant and video coordinator”—was responsible for making sure that Central Connecticut was ready to adjust to what it had seen through the first 18 minutes of that night’s game and was also the point person on making sure his players had a place to sleep.
It was unrealistic for Martelli Jr.’s players to sleep in their dorm rooms with no heat on a December night, so an administrator called him to suggest that they join the rest of the student body in sleeping on cots in the school cafeteria. “We gotta play tomorrow, they’re not sleeping on cots with whatever number of kids are on campus,” Martelli Jr. thought.
At that point he had no choice but to call a hotel to inquire about getting a group of rooms for his players–which was difficult in itself, but was more challenging as a result of his players not having cars. Once the drop off, housing, breakfast and pick up arrangements were made, Martelli Jr. went to a relatively empty Detrick Gymnasium and ultimately watched his team lose off of one of his players getting backdoored with a few seconds to go.
It was the epitome of the college basketball grind.
Before Martelli Jr. was named VCU’s head coach in the spring, he had done plenty of that as an assistant at Central Connecticut, Manhattan, Delaware and Bryant as well as the director of program administration at Saint Joseph’s. The VCU head coach is the type of tough, scrappy northeaster that is built for the Atlantic 10.
The VCU head coach isn’t the typical cliche-using motivational speaker that so often heads programs these days, “program kid, whatever the hell that means,” he says. Martelli Jr. has seen too many coaches “chase the respect of the national media guys,” search firms or “whoever can talk them up,” including coaches in their league that they can manipulate by “kissing his a** and I’m gonna try when he gets a bigger job to go with him.”
Martelli Jr. considers that approach to be futile. He’s opted instead to do his job in a way that he believes will give the people within his program no choice but to respect the work he does. At Central Connecticut that included doing laundry, at Bryant it was connecting with a woman in residence life enough to find out they share a childhood hometown in Pennsylvania and “piecing together a couple grand” so that his players could get paid.
He’s never had the luxury of having anything handed to him in this profession. Perhaps that’s what’s gotten him here.
“My journey taught me that everything matters,” Martelli Jr. told Basket Under Review. “It matters that the pregame meal is right, it matters that the bus is on time, it matters that the guys’ housing through residence life on campus is situated properly. It matters how you treat people.”
The VCU head coach has known that for most of his life as he’s watched his father Phil Martelli Sr. go through the mountaintops of the profession as the head coach at Saint Joseph’s and experience utter “despondence” as he missed out on the Loyola Maryland job early in his career.
Even in those moments, Martelli Jr. has always wanted to do this. He’s always been proud to share a name with his father regardless of the assumptions that come with it, too.
“It’s not something I run from,” Martelli Jr. said. “Anytime somebody says ‘oh your Phil’s son,’ there's always that smile on their face, glimmer in their eye. They always have some story, some of them are truly inspirational, heartfelt stories.”
Martelli Jr. knows that a sect of people that hear his name along with the profession that he’s in will make assumptions about whether he deserves to be there or not. He knows that some won’t make an effort to get to know him as anything other than Phil Martelli’s son.
That perspective doesn’t take into account Martelli Jr.’s days driving around the country to Rick Pitino’s camps to make $120 dollars, “basically sleeping on the couch on a porch” at Central Connecticut or moving around the MAAC hunting down respect and a name for himself. It ignores the grind.
“People think ‘well, you know what, it was a silver spoon and that’s the way he’s approached this endeavor,’” Martelli Sr. told Basket Under Review. “He did a really good job of making sure that others knew that he was his own person.”
Martelli Sr. told his son that it was important for him to get out on the road and recruit at certain events to see players, but also to alert those within the business that he was serious about being in it. He’s given his fair share of advice to the VCU head coach via phone call–including how to manage a transition between head coaching jobs, the need to acknowledge a Bryant player that “cheered his a** off on the sideline despite being removed from the rotation” and the need to be himself in a business that can often change people–but this isn’t Martelli Sr. 's initiative.
He says he’ll never critique a coaching decision. He’s not at practice each day, so he doesn’t believe he has the context to do so. He’s leaving that to his son.
This is what Martelli Jr. has wanted to do since he was a kid and his father is letting him do it his way. Martelli Sr. appears to believe that he and his son aren’t all that dissimilar as professionals. As he recalls similarities and differences, he recalls that his son teaches players “how to play” rather than plays, uses a similar pace of practice and has proper relationships with his assistant coaches–including his brother Jimmy Martelli and close friend Ryan Daly.
It’s a family affair of sorts for Martelli Jr. and his program, but he’s got to lead this thing if it’s going to be successful. Martelli Sr. says his son has been a “loyal soldier” on other staffs while he’s looked to work his way up the ladder.
Nothing has been handed to Martelli Jr. over the years. Nothing has rattled him, either.
“He has a unique ability to never let you see him sweat,” Martelli Sr. said. “It wasn’t easy when you literally don’t have two nickels to rub together and you have a family, it’s not easy. But, it was his choice and because he had the support of his family, he can now have one of the 50 best jobs in America.”
The idea that Martelli Jr. would change now that he’s taken a step up on the ladder is almost laughable. The essence of what those who knew the VCU coach prior to him taking the job in the spring hasn’t changed.
VCU wing Tyrell Ward still indicates that Martelli Jr.’s practices are nearly indescribably arduous as a result of the pace he wants to play at, Martelli Jr’s players have still had a tangible amount of toughness instilled in them. He’s still Phil Martelli Jr. and this is still VCU–the program that has sent Ryan Odom and Mike Rhodes to power-five programs after they led it to three NCAA Tournament berths in the last five seasons.
It’s walking and talking like that.
“The expectation for the team is definitely an A10 championship,” Ward told Basket Under Review. “That’s our first goal and it gets us to our second goal of the NCAA Tournament.”
Martelli Jr.’s VCU program is projected to win the Atlantic 10 by the league’s preseason poll, in which it picked up 11 first-place votes. On a national level, it’s ranked No. 60–above 27 power-five programs in KenPom’s preseason projections.
If this VCU team steps in and lives up to the expectations that have been placed on it, then it will change what we know about year one around college basketball. It’s been done before–and it’s certainly easier in the NIL and transfer portal era–but this VCU team is looking to be the outlier to the rule. It appears to have the personnel to do so.
Martelli Jr. returns what he considers to be foundational players in sophomore guard Brandon Jennings and Terrance Hill Jr. and complements them with a transfer class that includes former UConn guard Ahmad Nowell, Ward–a former rotation piece at LSU–as well as Charleston transfer Lazar Djokovic and standout four-star freshman guard Nyk Lewis.
“We’re probably the deepest mid-major in the country,” Ward said. “That’s not an overstatement or me hyping my guys up, I feel like we’ve really got 10 guys who can play at the high-major level. That’s not an overstatement, I feel like we’re really that talented.”
Perhaps Martelli Jr. never told Ward to make a declaration like he did on an October phone call, but the former LSU wing’s comment indicates that the first-year head coach has a roster that fits the fast-paced style that Martelli Jr. quickly made his bread and butter at Bryant.
This VCU team believes it has the flexibility to rotate fresh bodies on and off the floor like Martelli did last season before his team’s season ended in a round of 64 matchup with Michigan State. True to the character of that team and most of VCU’s recent ones, this one is likely to dive on the floor and do the nasty work as if it’s fighting for its proverbial life.
“This new staff has kept that,” Jennings said. “The havoc and the nitty gritty, we’re just carrying that along. We just keep working at it every day.”
Who knows how it all ends for this VCU team, but it’s a near certainty that it will take on the identity of its head coach. Tough, gritty, no nonsense.
Like Martelli Jr., this team doesn’t want anything handed to it. It’s all in on going out and taking what they can rightly earn. If all is as Martelli Jr. thinks, he’s got a group of dogged workers that share the mentality that he’s taken hold of over the years.
“I think when people put on the game, what I want them to see is a very competitive group,” Martelli Jr. said. “Competition is a big deal for us. We talk about it every day. We are doing something competitive every day obviously right now we're doing a lot of competitive stuff every day.”
