City of Basketball Love

By Owen McCue (@Owen_McCue)
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HAWK HILL — There aren’t many current players who appreciate the Big 5 tradition like Lynn Greer III.

The Roman Catholic product grew up with a father who’s in the Big 5 Hall of Fame. Now in his second season at St. Joe’s, the junior guard has embraced — and thrived in — the rivalry.

Greer steered a Hawks team that was off-balance offensively at times in Friday’s 69-61 win over Penn at Hagan Arena.

He matched junior Erik Reynolds II with a team-high 13 points and also added a career-high 11 assists. 

“Regardless of the whole tournament and everything, we just take those games very personal because we want to be the best team in Philly,” Greer said. “We go into all those games and we just want to dog everybody, really.”

Redshirt-freshman Christ Essandoko made his Hawks’ debut after missing the season-opening win over Lafayette with a toe injury. He finished with nine points, 10 rebounds and an early block. Senior guard Clark Slajchert led Penn (2-1) with 27 points on 11-of-17 shooting, matching a career-high with five 3-point makes.

Powered by their stifling defense, the Hawks (2-0) appeared ready to coast when freshman Xzayvier Brown (eight points) canned his second triple in a minute-and-a-half to give his team a comfortable 52-33 lead with 12:00 to play. 

The Quakers’ offense finally exploded after that with a 19-3 run that included a pair of 3s by Slajchert, cutting the gap to 54-52 on the last one with 6:29 to play. Greer answered on the other end.

Penn cut the deficit to two again — 61-59 with 3:42 to play — on a layup by Tyler Perkins, but a putback layup by St. Joe's sophomore Rasheer Fleming and block by junior Kacper Klaczek were big plays for the Hawks. Greer called his own number again after the rejection, pushing the lead to six with less than three minutes to play. The Quakers never closed to within a possession again.

“He’s a Roman Catholic guard, and that’s why you gotta have Philly guys in these games, you have to,” St. Joe’s coach Billy Lange said. “You’re out there with Anthony Finkley, who gave great energy. Shawn Simmons ,who made defensive plays that won’t show up in the statsheet but were great. I thought X was terrific and Lynn was great. … Lynn plays like this in these games.”

Penn couldn’t quite recover from its 8-for-32 shooting slump in the second half, when Slajchert had 11 of the team’s 20 points. The Quakers had a few others hit shots in the second half but leaned on the senior again as he dropped 16 in the frame. 

After a monster 24-point, 14-rebound outing in Wednesday’s win over Bucknell, the freshman Perkins (3-for-11, eight points) had the first tough game of his career. Sophomore Cam Thrower (1-for-8, three points) struggled as well. But those are two of the guys Penn will continue to give the ball to as it tries to fill the gap left by Jordan Dingle and the 23.4 ppg he took with him to St. John's.

“That happens. I think that they’re learning that,” Slajchert said. “It’s going to be fine, but that’s how it goes. I'll try to lead them as much as I can. I’ve been through [that], all the older guys have been through that, the ups and downs in terms of shooting, but control what you can control, do what we do, play hard.

"I think we’re going to get through those. We can all not focus on the ups and downs individually, just focus on how we’re getting better as a team.”

Greer had 16 points, three assists, nine rebounds and four steals in last season’s overtime win against Penn. A big difference in Friday night’s game compared to last season’s outing against the Quakers was his one turnover. He turned the ball over five times in last season’s win.

Through two games in 2023-24 he has 15 assists compared to two turnovers. 

“(The 11 assists) had nothing to do with what I was doing,” Greer said. “I was just passing to my teammates, and they were just knocking down shots.”

“I think we do a really good job of sharing the ball as a team,” he added. “Everybody wants to play with each other. Everybody wants to see each other score. I think this is an unselfish team, and it’s going to be like this most nights when everybody has around the same amount of points.”

The crowd of 2,738 was the third largest home crowd —  largest non-Villanova game crowd —  for St. Joe’s at Hagan during Lange’s tenure, which began in 2019-20. The Hawks’ student section was packed, and Penn coach Steve Donahue noted the crowd, along with St. Joe’s defensive pressure, took his inexperienced team out of the game early.

“Honestly, the crowd tonight was crazy,” Greer said. “It was really fun. I think that might be our craziest crowd since the Nova game when we played Nova here. Honestly, it’s just a blessing to be able to play in the Big 5 and be from Philly.”

Friday’s game marked the Hawks’ only Big 5 home games this season, but St. Joe’s will go on the road to Villanova on Nov. 29 with a chance to book a spot in the inaugural Big 5 championship Dec. 2 at the Wells Fargo Center with a win.