City of Basketball Love

By Josh Verlin (@jmverlin) +
Kassidy Ingram (@ingram_kassidy)
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Demetrius Lilley was in the right spot at the right time. 

The La Salle junior big man was positioned on the right block as teammate Corey McKeithan collected his own miss, spun around and drove baseline, delivering a pass perfectly into Lilley’s hands. Lilley hesitated, allowing a couple Drexel defenders to leap in anticipation, then calmly banked it up and off the backboard and in.

“In practice we work on finding the ball,” Lilley said, “so for Corey to find me right then and there, [those are] things we’ve worked on already — it just happened to be that way on the last play.”

McKeithan’s game-winning offensive rebound and assist to Lilley lifted La Salle past Drexel, 71-68 on Saturday afternoon at the Daskalakis Athletic Center. The game-winner, which came with about 20 seconds remaining, capped off a career game for Lilley, the Lower Merion product finishing with an 18-point, 11-rebound double-double — both his new career best in scoring as well as his first collegiate double-double.

“Thankful to my teammates for passing me the ball, for giving me those looks, giving me those opportunities,” he said. “Just thankful for Coach [Fran Dunphy] for allowing me and trusting me to be out there. It feels great, feels great.”

Lilley was one of three Explorers in double figures. Jahlil White led the way for La Salle (4-0, 1-0 Big 5) with 19 points, adding six rebounds and three blocks, one of which was one of the game’s biggest defensive plays; he also added a layup at the buzzer following a Drexel turnover with three seconds left for the final margin. McKeithan added 17 of his own along with six assists as the grad transfer from Rider continued his strong start to the year (18.0 ppg)

“That goes off to my team, they gave me the confidence to be able to shoot the ball how I’m shooting it,” he said. “Even though I’m surrounded by these guys that are just as talented or even more talented than I am, they still believe in me, they’re confident in me shooting the ball.”

Despite replacing four starters from a year ago and with the team’s top three scorers — White (Temple), McKeithan (Rider) and Lilley (Penn State) all arriving this offseason — the Explorers have looked strong over the first couple weeks of the season.

“Since Day one, [we’ve had] great chemistry, since day one, since the first day I came on campus,” Lilley said. “There was nothing but love, nothing but joy, nothing but great vibes. I’m very excited, I think our destiny and our future is very bright.”

La Salle’s win sets up a Big 5 showdown with Temple on Sat., Nov. 30, though the Explorers first have three games in Daytona Beach (Fla.) for the inaugural Boardwalk Battle (Nov. 21-23). Both teams already beat Drexel this season to go to 1-0 in pod play, a second win for either guarantees them a spot in the Big 5 Classic championship game on Dec. 7 at Wells Fargo, where St. Joe’s awaits. 

“We had such a great game against Temple last year, losing in triple overtime, and we’ll think about that in our preparation,” said Dunphy, who was Temple’s head coach from 2006 to 2019. “But I like their team, I like how they’re playing, I like their depth, I think they’re a really good team, this is going to be a helluva game for us.”

Though the DAC, Drexel’s 2,500-seat arena at 34th and Market, has only hosted Big 5 games for one season, it’s starting to develop a reputation for some good ones. A year and two days after Drexel and Temple played to a 66-64 win, the DAC once again saw its seats packed for another dramatic, back-and-forth contest.

La Salle controlled the action early, the Explorers threatening to run away from the Dragons as they opened up a 23-8 lead within the game’s first eight minutes. Drexel cut that down to six a pair of times before the break, but La Salle scored the final six points of the opening half to take a 43-31 lead at intermission. 

The Dragons wasted no time making it a game out of the locker rooms. A 3-pointer by Jason Drake opened a 13-2 spurt capped by a Victor Panov triple, making it a two-point game before the first media timeout of the second half. La Salle didn’t give up its lead so easily, but the margin stayed below five all the way until Drake tied it at 65 with a 3-pointer from the left corner with 3:25 remaining. 

Drexel had a chance to take its first lead of the game when junior big man Cole Hargrove — who compiled a 10-point, 15-rebound double-double — came up with an offensive rebound right under the bucket with two minutes to play, but White came flying in to block the shot. Lilley scooped up the loose ball and fed it ahead to Daeshon Shepherd, who put La Salle back up by two with an easy two-handed dunk.

(That wasn’t Shepherd’s best dunk of the afternoon — that belonged to a flying one-handed poster dunk in the first half, the highlight of his nine-point afternoon and certainly the Big 5 season thus far.)

Daeshon Shepherd threw down this dunk in the first half. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

Kobe MaGee finally put the Dragons up 68-67 with 1:25 remaining on a second-chance 3-pointer from just about straightaway, giving the DAC crowd reason for its loudest roar yet. But Drexel didn’t score again, turning it over on its final two possessions.

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Still promise for the Dragons

While the Dragons may have fallen to both of their Big 5 pod opponents this week, losing to Temple 69-61 on Tuesday, there’s still been good signs that point towards a promising opportunity in Coastal Athletic Association play, especially considering it’s an almost entirely new group from a year ago.

All five starters finished in double figures against La Salle. Leading the scorers was Drake, who ended with 18 points and shot 3-of-4 from beyond the arc. Hargrove recorded his second career double-double with 10 points and 15 rebounds. Panov recorded 15 while MaGee and Butler both ended the night with 10. 

Drexel was overall dominant in the paint, scoring 46 points around the rim; all of the Dragons’ points came at the bucket, from the 3-point arc (6-of-19) or at the foul line, where they went just 4-of-11. As a group, they only turned it over nine times and shot 45.3% overall despite a below-average night from 3-point range (6-of-19, 31.6%). 

The free throws were one area Spiker brought up afterwards as why his team came oh-so-close once again after trailing Temple by just four points with two minutes remaining earlier in the week.

“I think it would be unfair to point to the final minute and talk about how a turnover made a play or a missed shot — certainly there were things that could have impacted the outcome, but meaningless two foul shots in the first half out of a timeout are worth just as many points,” Spiker said. “Two foul shots with 15 minutes to play in the second half are worth just as many points. It’s a lesson sometimes as teams, as players, and sometimes even coaches you’ve got to relearn.”

The Dragons have nine games before CAA play begins and eight before an opportunity against Penn State at the Wells Fargo Center on Dec. 21, starting with a game at Fordham next Tuesday and then a trip to Forhdam on Nov. 22. Spiker hopes his team has a short memory, something he’s been training them on all offseason.

“We talk to our guys about trying to be the national champions of getting to the next play,” he said.

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La Salle’s analytics point up

It’s the second year in a row that La Salle’s opened the season 4-0, but the numbers point to this year being an improvement nonetheless.

Last season — after beating Drexel, Northeastern, Bucknell and Southern Indiana — La Salle was ranked No. 193 according to basketball statistician Ken Pomeroy’s models. The Explorers finished the non-conference portion of the schedule 9-4, but only beat one team ranked in the top 150 on KenPom, then lost 10 of their first 12 Atlantic 10 games to stumble to a 16-17 (6-12) finish. 

This year’s group, after beating Drexel, is No. 124 nationally. A large part of that improvement is on the strength of the defense, which last year held opponents to 1.088 points per possession (230rd), and this year so far is at 1.013 ppp (103rd). They’re in the top 30 in defensive rebounding rate, 57th in 3-point defense and 35th in free-throw rate, doing a good job of keeping teams off the line. 

Dunphy’s assembled a squad that seems to have the right pieces in the right places. He’s got quality guard play in McKeithan and Andres Marrero, effective size in Lilley, a couple versatile wings in White and Shepherd, and quality depth in the form of sophomore Tunde Vahlberg Fasasi and freshman Deuce Jones. 

The 33rd-year Big 5 coach didn’t want to engage too much with the premise — but he wasn’t denying it, either. He’s also awaiting on the eligibility of sophomore guard Eric Acker, who will be available at the end of the fall semester. 

“I think you’re asking me to think about something I haven't given any consideration to at all,” he said. “But I hope we’re a little bit ahead, and we have another addition coming in Eric Acker [...] you’ve got to find a way to get him his minutes and who do you take away from? Those are the interesting things coaches have to face in keeping everybody a little bit engaged and happy. But I like where we are right now. And again, this was a really good win for us today.”