Men's Basketball | January 4, 2024

PHILADELPHIA - La Salle University Special Assistant to the Head Men's Basketball Coach Joe Mihalich is this year's Philadelphia Sports Writers Association "Most Courageous Sportsperson" Award winner, it was announced by the organization recently. He will receive the honor at the 119th PSWA Banquet on Jan. 17, 2024 in Cherry Hill, N.J.

Here is an excerpt from the PSWA story announcing his honor. Tickets can be purchased by utilizing this link.

Will to win is what makes basketball lifer Joe Mihalich PSWA's Most Courageous Sportsperson
By Dick Jerardi, Philadelphia Daily News (1985-2017)

What's next? Where do I have to be? What do I have to do?

That was Joe Mihalich's attitude in the summer of 2020. It is his attitude today.

His Hofstra players were going to start moving in for the fall semester on Aug. 15, 2020. It was five months and five days from Hofstra's epic CAA Tournament win when Mihalich orchestrated a near-perfect endgame, his players scoring on 12 of their last 13 possessions, 26 points over the final 7½ minutes.

The game against Northeastern had no rhythm until it had perfect rhythm as the Hofstra team played just like Mihalich had always coached — free, joyous and smart. It was win No. 406 in a head coaching career that had started in 1998 at Niagara and continued in 2013 at Hofstra.

That August Saturday — with Joe's wife Mary on her way to Ocean City, NJ, to help with a new grandchild and Joe getting ready to greet his players — was just an ordinary summer day… until everything changed in an instant.
Joe Mihalich suffered a life-altering stroke at his Long Island home, right across from the Hofstra campus. Mary rushed back home. Mihalich underwent a terrifying surgery in the middle of the night with no guaranteed outcome

"It was so overwhelming," Mary Mihalich says now, speaking from her Chestnut Hill, PA, home, just a few miles from La Salle University where Joe was a student, basketball player, longtime assistant coach and now special assistant to La Salle head coach, Fran Dunphy.

"It's a miracle. I don't know what the percentage is, but it's not real good of surviving. And they said that to me."