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La Salle hoping European trip leads to bigger things

05/19/2015, 3:15pm EDT
By Josh Verlin

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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John Giannini is taking La Salle further than ever.

The last two times the Explorers’ basketball coach led his team on international trips, they went just across the border to Canada, visiting the Great White North in both 2006 and 2011.

The Czech Republic only has half a continent and the Atlantic Ocean in the way.

Giannini and his 2015-16 Explorers boarded planes on Monday, heading off to the small Eastern European nation that’s sandwiched between Germany, Austria and Poland. While there, they’ll play four games in four days as part of a week-long trip that focuses on both basketball and Czech culture.

Besides the experience of seeing the capital and largest city, Prague, and the surrounding countryside, Giannini sees four primary on-court benefits for his team as they work on some big changes this offseason.

“I think the first thing we wanted to get out of it was 10 days of great practice which we’re able to get,” he said. “The second thing is a lot of game experience for Yevgen [Sakhniuk], Tony [Washington] and Johnnie Shuler. They were all recruited for this year, they all knew that last year would be a year where they would develop, but we would really need them this year, and we do, so we want to get them as much game experience as possible.

“Thirdly, we’re obviously transitioning from a post-oriented team to a team that’s going to have to get up and down the court much quicker and have a lot more movement offensively, so we want to get used to playing that way. The last thing would be to just build confidence, confidence is always a good thing, so hopefully we play well and do that.”

All four of those key points are interconnected.

The 10 full practices that the team was allowed to prepare for the trip are the maximum allowed by the NCAA, which permits teams to take such international journeys at most once every four years. And any extra preparation that Giannini can get his group this offseason is crucial, considering he’s going to have to rely on a few players in much bigger roles than they filled in 2015-16--in particular the rising sophomore trio of Sakhniuk, Washington and Shuler.

Shuler, a 5-foot-11 guard from Washington, D.C., averaged 2.3 ppg, 2.9 rpg and 1.6 mpg playing 6.2 mpg in 23 games off the bench. He’s likely to see the smallest uptick in minutes of the group, but he’s also the most likely to fill up a majority of D.J. Peterson’s 23.6 mpg that he left open by his graduation.

Washington, a 6-10 post, only averaged 0.5 ppg and 0.5 rpg in 13 games (2.8 mpg), but he’s going to have to be a much more important piece for Giannini and company this year. La Salle lost both starting forwards, Jerrell Wright (12.1 ppg, 6.5 rpg) and Steve Zack (8.6 ppg, 9.2 rpg), leaving a gaping hole in the frontcourt--and beyond Washington, La Salle is very thin in the “size” department.

Giannini hinted as much in his third point, which is really a no-brainer considering who the Explorers have on the roster.

The perimeter is much deeper, featuring a pair of rising juniors in Jordan Price (17.2 ppg) and Cleon Roberts (8.8 ppg), plus senior guard Khalid Lewis (6.0 ppg) and another rising (albeit redshirt) sophomore, point guard Amar Stukes (5.3 ppg, 1.3 apg). They also bring in a 6-4 freshman, Karl Harris, though he’ll have to play at a high level to send Price or Roberts to the bench for long stretches of time.

Up front, they’ll only have Washington and undersized 6-5 senior reserve forward Rohan Brown (1.0 ppg, 1.6 rpg) returning from last year, and they’ll be joined by 6-11 freshman Rokay Ulvydas, out of Mt. Zion Prep (Md.), as well as Sakhniuk, a 6-7 forward who will be a sophomore even though he has not played a minute of college ball--more on that in a second.

So expect quite a few more four-guard sets and a more much open offense, which plays into the fourth point. Those guards are going to need time to work on their chemistry and their new style, and the four games they play in Europe will be 160 on-court minutes against actual competition that they wouldn’t normally have.

There’s one player above all, however, that might benefit the most from the whole trip.

Sakhniuk, a Ukraine native who sat out last year after it was ruled by the NCAA that his final year in Europe cost him one year of eligibility, will play his first games in a La Salle uniform on this trip in the same city he went to school.

Before he came to 20th and Olney, Sakhniuk lived and played at Prague’s Get Better Academy, under the tutelage of former Butler guard Julian Betko. It was playing with GBA at a tournament in Rhode Island that he was noticed by the La Salle staff, and now he has three years remaining to make an impact on the Atlantic 10 program.

“Yevgen is a pretty understated guy so he doesn’t show a ton of emotion, but I know he’s really happy and I know it means a lot to him to have this opportunity, plus his family’s going to be able to come to the game,” Giannini said. “It’s his first games in a La Salle uniform and it’ll help him a lot in preparation for next year and he gets to see his family. So I think he’s really happy about it.”

Four years ago, La Salle was in a similar position, with a collection of players who were still new to the program when they went north of the border and played four games in Toronto and  Ottawa. Two years after that Canada trip, Ramon Galloway, Jerrell Wright and company led the Explorers to the Sweet 16.

Another appearance in the NCAA Tournament over the next year or two would certainly make this Euro experience worth the trip.


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