A caller to WIP sports radio in Philadelphia a few days ago, a college basketball fan, chirped the following:
“Jimmy Lynam beat DePaul.
“But Phil Martelli beat ’em all.”
Ah, the passion of St. Joseph’s.
A perfect 27-0, the basketball team from the Philly university coached by Martelli is having a dream season.
But the all-time dream game for St. Joe’s–and the never-ending nightmare for DePaul–is still the one from 1981 when Ray Meyer’s Blue Demons were defeated 49-48 in a jaw-dropping upset.
Lynam coached that St. Joe’s team.
Does he remember the game?
“Not so much the specifics,” Lynam said on the phone from Portland, where he is an assistant for the NBA Trail Blazers. “But I definitely remember the impact.”
At the time, DePaul was to the NCAA tournament exactly what St. Joe’s is at the moment:
Possibly the best team in college basketball. No worse than second best.
Lynam can see the similarities in many ways. Or as he said: “St. Joe’s situation right now is not at all unlike what DePaul’s was that year. You can’t do much better than max out the season, which St. Joe’s did. And that year DePaul was pretty close to perfect up to the tournament.
“The fact is, though, you go to the tournament and none of that means much of anything. You’re the No. 1 team? That won’t do you any good when the ball goes up.”
Lynam is a dyed-in-the-wool St. Joe’s man. He didn’t merely coach there, he scored more than 1,000 points there when Dr. Jack Ramsay was the coach. The school retired Lynam’s uniform number: 4.
Did he have any inkling Martelli’s team might go undefeated this season?
No way, right? Who could have seen something like that coming?
“Funny you should say that,” Lynam said.
“A dear friend of mine, Jim Boyle, who was my assistant at St. Joe’s, he told me at the very beginning of the season, and I can quote him word for word, `This team has a chance to win every single game.’
“I laughed. He’s a little bit of a character, so I didn’t take it too seriously. I said, `Oh, come on.’
“But then I heard two things. One, [Boyle] said the league’s going to be a little down. He pulled his fingers apart an inch or two and said, `I might be wrong, but not by much.'”
And the second thing?
The second thing had to do with Jameer Nelson, a senior guard who might well be the best college player in the land. He is a player who scored 32 points–including all of his team’s in overtime–trying to ward off a St. Joe’s loss to Auburn in last season’s NCAA tournament. Lynam is a great admirer of Nelson’s game. He loves the player’s strength, his decision-making (“as good as it gets”) and his shooting touch. NBA-bound for sure.
A friend of Lynam’s, very familiar with the team, however, told him something a little mind-boggling before this St. Joe’s season began.
He said St. Joe’s other guard, Delonte West, might be even better than Nelson.
“Well, if he’s better,” Lynam recalls replying, “then they have the best backcourt in the country and maybe they do have the best team.”
DePaul had that kind of depth in 1981. It went into the regional at the University of Dayton Arena a clear-cut No. 1 and drew St. Joseph’s, which was seeded ninth.
Lynam might not recall every “specific,” but like most who witnessed that game, he never will forget its ending.
He still can describe Bryan Warrick of the Hawks breaking the DePaul press, putting the ball “either between his legs or behind his back,” leaving at least one Blue Demons player sprawling. A player named John Smith laid in the game-winning basket, practically unguarded.
Lynam ran into Smith a few months ago on the New Jersey coast, where Smith was riding a wave runner . . . a jet ski.
“John remembered that day that the hardest decision he had to make at the end of that DePaul game was whether to make the basket himself or pass it to another teammate who was wide open,” Lynam said.
DePaul star Mark Aguirre stood stunned under the hoop.
“Oh, I can still picture that,” Lynam said.
Aguirre also peeled off his jersey, took the game ball out a door and kicked it into the parking lot. He walked down the Ohio road by himself, leaving his teammates behind.
“Never knew that,” Lynam said.
Lynam went on to NBA head-coaching jobs with Washington, Philadelphia and the L.A. Clippers. Aguirre is currently a coach with the New York Knicks.
And DePaul is back trying to make the NCAA tournament, in which St. Joseph’s will be one of the favored teams. What if DePaul and St. Joe’s should happen to end up in the same regional, the same bracket?
“I think,” Lynam said, “that would be a game worth seeing.”
