City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
––

Fran Dunphy showed no extra emotion as he got off his seat at the final buzzer on Saturday, the La Salle head coach and Big 5 legend pausing to shake hands with his Wagner counterpart, Donald Copeland, then walking off the court briskly, the almost-full-house at Tom Gola Arena still very much celebrating the 77-69 victory.

It was the first time Dunphy ever walked off the court a winner at Tom Gola Arena and had the La Salle fans feeling good alongside him, his first victory as his alma mater’s head coach. But the 74-year-old, as is typical, downplayed the moment, focusing instead on the details of what he’d just witnessed over the previous couple hours on a warm Saturday afternoon.

“To win is always great, always terrific,” he said. “It’s good to coach here again. But it’s a phenomenal experience to be coaching these guys, hopefully to a successful season. Good win for us, playing a team that plays really hard. 

“They beat us up pretty hard on the offensive glass [...] we turned it too many times, we had 15 turnovers, obviously have to clean that up. Overall, good win for us, so I’m very happy for that.”

There was no Tom Gola Arena when Dunphy, a 1970 La Salle alumnus, was an assistant coach for his alma mater, before embarking on a 31-year career as the head coach at Penn (1989-2006) and Temple (2006-19), the on-campus gym not built until the late 1990s. He played all his collegiate home games at the Palestra, on Penn’s campus, a building he’s become synonymous with over the years. 

Dunphy had quite a few wins at Gola over those couple decades since the La Salle arena was built, but always as the visitor, the one making his fellow La Salle alumni upset when he walked out of there with a win, like an 81-76 OT win to capture the Big 5 title for Penn in 2002. Instead, this final made both Dunphy the coach and Dunphy the La Salle alumnus happy, not to mention quite a few of his friends in the stands amongst the 3,000-or-so in attendance.

“I’ve said it countless times,” Dunphy said. “For what (La Salle) gave to me oh-so-many years ago and then they came back, gave me more opportunities as a coach and another opportunity as a coach, and now at this point in my life, I’m happy to be here, happy to be helping these 15 guys on this team be better humans, better basketball players, and hopefully great La Sallians.”

The Explorers’ first win of the 2022-23 season was neither easy nor pretty. La Salle looked good early, its transition game working to perfection, opening up a 16-point in the game’s first 11 minutes as Khalil Brantley and Co. took advantage of every missed shot and turnover to create odd-man opportunities. 

But this was a Wagner team that just erased a 12-point deficit in the last four minutes to beat Temple in OT on Monday, and Copeland’s Seahawks had plenty in the tank. The 13-point lead La Salle took into halftime was down to five before the first media timeout, and it was game on. 

It was a four-point game with under four minutes to play when a Josh Nickelberry 3-pointer and Brantley floater, sandwiched around a Wagner turnover, put the Explorers up 68-59 with 2:48 remaining.

“We were like, we’re like we can’t let them go, they’re not going to stop fighting or give up,” said Brantley, who finished with a career-high 22 points, going 12-of-15 from the line and 5-of-9 from the floor, “and that’s what they did, they kept coming, kept coming. A couple times we had big shots [...] any time they had a little run, we had a basket to keep us up or put us up by more.”

Nickelberry added 20 points despite sitting the majority of the first half with two fouls, shooting 4-of-9 from the floor (2-6 3PT) and 10-of-12 from the line.

The Explorers (1-1) benefited from a poor day at the foul line by the Seawolves (1-1), who were 13-of-23 at the charity stripe compared to La Salle’s 30-of-40. Wagner won the rebound battle 42-35, including a 17-6 mark on the offensive glass, leading to a 17-5 advantage in second-chance points. 

The offseason additions of Fousseyni Drame and Hassan Drame from Saint Peter’s continued to be a positive one for La Salle. The twin forwards scored in double figures together for the first time in their college careers, Fousseyni coming off the bench for 12 points and four rebounds in 27 minutes, Hassan getting the start (they swapped roles from the first game) and getting 11 points and seven rebounds in 39 minutes. 

“They’re going to be out on the court for us a lot,” Dunphy said. “Fou started for us the first game, Has started for us this game; we’ll see what happens for us against Queens on Tuesday, we’ll see who starts. More important than starting is finishing. We need both of those guys to do good things: to rebound the ball, to make plays, to make shots, get to the foul line.”

There’s certainly still a lot to work on for Dunphy’s first La Salle squad. The Explorers turned it over 15 times, struggled to create in the half-court offense, took a few ill-advised shots. It was a foul-heavy, turnover-heavy contest, a slog-to-the-end that La Salle was able to close out without ever giving up the lead, though there were a few moments where it looked like they might.

But the Explorer crowd was engaged and revved up the whole way through, letting out a roar when a Wagner player — and later the bench — got T’d up, at every made shot down the stretch, every loose ball. Whether that lasts beyond homecoming is to be determined, but there was some juice in Gola for the first time in a while on Saturday.

“That’s definitely the Dunphy effect,” Brantley said. “We all knew we had to get this game for him. He had all his buddies, all the alumni , everybody was going to be here and this is a big game for him, especially being our first game at the crib, we can’t lose at home.”

“That’s another motto we’ve got going into this year, we’ve got to protect home base. Fran had a lot to do, I’m pretty sure had a lot to do with selling out the crowd.”