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Todd O'Brien grew up dreaming of playing college basketball in Philadelphia's Big Five.
His uncle, Bruce Frank, played for Pennsylvania in the 1960s. His parents grew up in the Philadelphia area, and occasionally took Todd to Penn's fabled Palestra to watch the Quakers battle Villanova, La Salle, St. Joseph's or Temple during his childhood.
O'Brien, a Garden Spot High School graduate, is there now. He's the starting center at St. Joe's.
It's not perfect — the Hawks had lost nine of their last 10 heading into the weekend — but it is a good thing.
"I'm really glad I chose St. Joe's," O'Brien said Wednesday, after a 73-46 loss at Temple. "I really like the coaches and my teammates."
"The important thing is, I know he's happy to be here," said Phil Martelli, the Hawks' coach.
It took O'Brien a while to get there. Despite his size (6-11) and athleticism, he wasn't a high-profile recruit at Garden Spot.
It didn't help that he was injured much of his senior year. The Spartans were 2-9 at one point without him.
O'Brien chose Bucknell. His freshman year there was promising enough, 4.4 points and 4.3 rebounds in 16 minutes per game, nearly all off the bench.
At the time, O'Brien was seen more as a skilled, face-the-basket big guy than a conventional center.
"You don't come up against guys his size with his skill level very often," Bucknell assistant Nathan Davis said then. "At our level, it's almost unheard of."
That was during the 2007-08 season, a crazy one for Bucknell in which fiery coach Pat Flannery, who had led the Bison on their NCAA tournament runs the previous two years, had health problems related to the stress of coaching. Flannery once collapsed during a game and had to be hospitalized, and has since retired from coaching.
O'Brien said it wasn't anything bad about Bucknell that led him to leave, more the opportunity that awaited him elsewhere.
"I was thinking of St. Joe's out of high school," O'Brien said.
"I liked Bucknell, but it wasn't quite the place for me. I wanted to get to Philly."
He wanted it badly enough to be willing to sit out a redshirt season last year. The good part of that was a chance, in practice every day, to battle Ahmad Givins, a 6-9 power forward who was chosen by the Dallas Mavericks in the second round of the NBA draft.
"That was an education," O'Brien said.
By this fall he had fully committed to the weight room and was up to about 250 pounds, from 225 at Bucknell.
Then he got sick, the flu, and lost some weight. He's playing at about 240 now.
He's not going to score much, at least not this year. The Hawks are smallish and have some depth on a perimeter.
They badly need a guy to do the dirty work, set ball-screens and block a shot once in a while and rebound, rebound, rebound.
"He built his body up so much, became such a physical presence, and in the preseason, he was a dominant rebounder," Martelli said.
"But in the back of my mind, [the skilled, face-the-basket big forward], is not far off how I would like him to play."
Through Jan. 3, the Hawks were 324th, of 334 NCAA Division I teams, in rebounding margin.
O'Brien is St. Joe's' leading rebounder, but with only about six a game.
Temple blasted St. Joe's on the boards, 49-25 Wednesday. The Owls had 46 points in the paint.
O'Brien and all the Hawks' big guys had trouble keeping Temple's bigs away from the hoop. Lavoy Allen, a 6-10 junior center, had what must have been the easiest 20 points and 11 rebounds of his career.
O'Brien shot only twice, an open 14-footer and a follow-up inside, and made them both. He finished with four points and a team-high seven boards in 23 minutes.
Temple's good (12-3 entering the weekend, ranked No. 21 in the AP poll) and very well-coached, but St. Joe's (4-9 before Saturday) has in-the-paint issues against everybody.
With the Atlantic 10 Conference looking deeper than usual (Charlotte, Dayton, George Washington, Rhode Island, Richmond and Temple all entered the conference season with double-figure wins), a long winter seems possible.
"Every game, it seems like different little things go wrong," O'Brien said. "We have a lot of scorers, but they're young scorers. It's still early enough that I still think we can do some damage."
"The league looks like a bear," Martelli said. "I don't know where there's a breather unless we're the breather, and that's not gonna happen on my watch."
O'Brien, a political-science major, has a 3.2 grade-point average in the fall semester
"He's kind of a happy-go-lucky kid, except that he likes to be challenged," Martelli said.
"He's very upbeat, but I think he knows more is expected of him. He expects it himself."
Mike Gross is assistant sports editor of the Sunday News. E-mail him at mgross@lnpnews.com.
