City of Basketball Love

Owen McCue (@Owen_McCue)
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La Salle head coach John Giannini doesn’t think the Explorers have earned the label “good team” quite yet.

Even after an 87-72  win against Massachusetts on Wednesday night at Tom Gola Arena, La Salle is just 9-12 overall and 3-5 in the Atlantic 10.

The Explorers have let plenty of wins slip through their fingers this season, though. For a team that’s blown it’s fare share of second half advantages, holding on to a 20-point halftime lead against the Minutemen was a good sign of progression.

“Of course what’s running through my mind is Duquesne, UMass over there, Richmond, Villanova, MIami, all games where we’ve had leads in the second half,” Giannini said after Wednesday’s win. “You can’t say someone has a good team until they win consistently, but we’re so close.”

Two weeks ago, La Salle led by 16 points at halftime and built up a 21-point advantage against UMass less than two minutes into the second half. The Explorers squandered the large lead and lost to the Minutemen in overtime, 86-79.

The first half of Wednesday’s game played out similarly to the first meeting. The Explorers built up a double-digit lead before the midway point of the first half, and behind 15 points from B.J. Johnson and 13 points from Amar Stukes, La Salle led 47-27 at the break.

On La Salle’s first offensive possession after halftime, Stukes lobbed a pass high in the air to Johnson, who threw it down with two hands. The play set the tone for the early part of the the second half as La Salle built its advantage up to 30 points by the 13:09 mark.

From that point on it was a matter of holding on for the Explorers, and they did a pretty good job. La Salle shot 50 percent from the floor and turned the ball over just six times in the second half. Johnson, who is still getting his condition back after missing three games with an ankle injury, finished with 26 points and Stukes tied a career high with 22 points.

“Last game, I wasn’t aggressive and the outcome wasn’t good for our team,” said Stukes, who went scoreless in a loss to Richmond last time out. “I knew I needed to be more aggressive from our team and the coaches have been on me about being more aggressive, so tonight. I tried to make up for it a little bit.”

La Salle’s loss to UMass earlier this season was part of a four-game losing streak that also included a triple overtime loss to Duquesne and a blown opportunity against VCU. Had the Explorers’ even pulled out two of those games, which all probably should have been wins, they’d be right in the thick of things in the Atlantic 10.

Stukes said the Explorers had a team meeting after the four-game skid. They have gone 2-1 in the three games since, winning Wednesday  without redshirt-junior guard Pookie Powell, who missed the game with a hamstring injury.

“We talked about what we needed to right, what we were lacking in and we just tried to bring it all together,” Stukes said of the meeting. “Once we get a full team, we can really get the ship rolling.”

At the moment, Rhode Island sits atop the league standings at 7-0, but after that the teams are bunched up. Davidson is in second place with two losses, VCU, Duquesne and Richmond all have three and four teams have four losses after Wednesday night.

Coming into Wednesday night in 13th place out of 14 teams, the win helped the Explorers join the crowd pushing them a few notches up in the standings to a tie for 10th. With 10 conference games remaining they are 2.5 games out of second and two games out of fourth place in the A-10 standings.

“We’ve done it without B.J. and we’ve done it without Pookie today,” Giannini said. “I really think we have a chance to be good. I know we do. We’ve had big leads, we’ve had leads against good teams, we’ve had leads on the road.and today we held on a little bit better.”

“I think we should take it game-by-game and not determine what our final record should be,” he added.