City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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READING, Pa. -- After watching his Explorers give up 80-plus points in back-to-back outings, La Salle head coach John Giannini needed his team to get back to focusing on the defensive end.

Against No. 11 Miami (Fl.), the Explorers did just that -- but the offense wasn’t there to keep up.

La Salle put together a staunch defensive effort in a chilly Santander Arena, holding Miami more than 30 points below their season average, but the Explorers were just as cold as as the minor-league hockey arena in a 57-46 loss on Wednesday night.

The game was played in Reading as a sold-out crowd was on hand to honor Miami freshman Lonnie Walker IV, the five-star wing recruit who led Reading High to its first boys' basketball state championship in March.

(Editor's note: We will have a Walker-centric story up later this evening)

B.J. Johnson had 16 points and 16 rebounds to pace La Salle, but the fifth-year senior wing was just 6-of-20 from the floor.

That was representative of an Explorers squad that shot 15-of-52 (28.8 percent) from the floor and 0-for-15 from 3-point range.

“We couldn’t make a shot,” Giannini lamented. “If we make two or three 3s, we have a chance to win the game, I don’t really think it’s more complicated than that.

"Reading is a great city and the Reading High games are wonderfully attended, and they really came out and supported Lonnie who’s a great kid and a great player," he added. "So besides La Salle missing 15 3s, everything was great.”

Johnson and Pookie Powell (5-for-15, 17 points) took the bulk of the shots in the loss, but not a single La Salle player made more than one third of their shot attempts.

The 46 points scored was La Salle’s lowest output since Jan. 30, 2016, when the Explorers scored just 44 in a road loss to Dayton.

It’s the third loss in a row for the Explorers (3-3), all against high-major competition. Following a three-game win streak to start the year, La Salle suffered defeats on consecutive days this past weekend against No. 20 Northwestern (82-74) and Boston College (82-61) at the Hall of Fame Tip-Off in Uncasville, Conn.

Outside shooting has been a bugaboo for the Explorers thus far.

Through their first six games, La Salle is shooting just 24 percent from deep (30-of-123). Johnson, who missed all five of his 3-point attempts against Miami, had been the only one to make more than one-third of his triples entering the game.

Miami (4-0) wasn’t much better early on Wednesday night, shooting 23.5 percent (8-of-34) at halftime. But the Hurricanes finished strong, making 15 of their final 27 shots to go 22-of-60 (36.7 percent) overall.

Miami coach Jim Larranaga said his team was "lulled to sleep" by a La Salle side intent on slowing the tempo down, often running the shot clock into the final 10 seconds before getting a shot off.

“The tempo of the game is not what we anticipated and expected, maybe we should have prepared a little differently than we did," he said. "We need the game to be played at a certain tempo to get up-and-down the floor...and we weren't that way."

After the teams spent the first 25 minutes within three points of one another, the Hurricanes opened up an eight-point advantage that seemed more like 20 with 13 minutes left to play.

La Salle had one more spurt in its legs, going on an 8-0 run of its own to tie it back up at 33 with under 10 minutes left.

That’s when Miami finally got the separation it needed, getting back-to-back 3-pointers -- including a banked straightaway triple from Bruce Brown -- to open up its first double-digit advantage with four minutes left.

La Salle, which missed eight of its final 10 shots, couldn’t find an answer.

“We played well, we played hard, we just went 0-for-15 on 3s,” Giannini said. “They banked a three in. That’s a six-point swing, if one of ours banks in and theirs doesn’t, all of a sudden that’s a close game in the last minute. I would have loved to have the bank.”

The Explorers get back in action with a Big 5 home game at Tom Gola Arena )against Temple (3-0) on Sunday at 5 PM.