City of Basketball Love

Thomas Primosch (@ThomasPrimosch)
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Five minutes into Saturday’s game against North Penn, La Salle coach Joe Dempsey was worried that his team was falling into a bad trend. The Explorers had fallen behind by 10 points and looked lost on both sides of the ball.

Dempsey's squad was eventually able to turn things around, winning rather easily, 70-54. They clamped down on defense in the third quarter, holding North Penn to 11 points while going on a 9-0 run to close out the quarter. However, Dempsey wishes his team would come ready to play as soon as the game starts.

“We have not been getting off to a good start," Dempsey said. "We’ve missed layups, we’ve lost assignments, we come out of a huddle and say, 'Do this,' so we have mental lapses right now that we have to get cleaned up in a hurry cause the league starts on Tuesday.”

Dempsey was displeased with the lack of effort on defense in the first quarter and he struggled to get his team into any sort of rhythm offensively.

The Explorers improved in the second quarter, generating enough offense in the open court to take a 30-29 lead going into halftime. Despite their lead, Dempsey still wasn’t satisfied with his team’s play.

“I didn’t draw a single thing up on the board during halftime,” Dempsey said. “This is not about X’s and O’s. This is about just playing with more passion and more fire and outworking them and that’s how I think how we wrestled the lead.” 

After the team's disappointing first quarter, Jarrod Stukes sparked the Explorers' defense. The junior guard hounded North Penn’s backcourt, forcing several turnovers that turned into easy layups.

Junior Matt Paulus was another key contributor, drawing a couple charges and nailing two threes on offense en route to 12 points.

“They play so hard and they’re really the soul of our team and that was truthfully something I talked to them about," Dempsey said of Stukes and Paulus. "They just went out and just really took the game over, both of them, be it the charges Matt had and the ball pressure Jared put on them.

“[Stukes] he’s incredibly tough," North Penn coach John Conrad added. "He made it tough for us to get into any sort of rhythm offensively because he was able to turn us over and really put a lot of pressure,”

Senior Ryan McTamney was the offensive motor for the Explorers, finishing with 30 points to lead his team. McTamney scored from all over the court and kept the Explorers in the game in the first half by scoring 15 of their 30 points at the break.

“He killed us; he’s a tough matchup,” said Conrad of McTamney, who shot 13 of 18 from the field.

Dempsey is pleased with the way McTamney, a 6-foot-5 wing who’s getting recruited by various area small-college programs, has improved his play this year.

Last year, McTamney didn’t get much playing time as he only averaged three points; a far cry from the 21 points per game he’s averaged over LaSalle’s first seven games.

“In addition to him being able to go to the rim more this year, he’s finding the open spots, he makes his foul shots, he’s a very efficient shooter,” Dempsey said. “The good news is he had 30 points; the bad news is we’ve got to find some more points because that’s gonna be hard to do in the Catholic League night in and night out.”

Dempsey was pleased with his team’s ability to respond to a bad start, but he knows it’s something that needs to be addressed.

“We’re not good enough to get down 10 or 12 points on anybody," Dempsey said. "A 7-0 record is a nice start, but our record is 0-0 and we’ve gotta get ready for our league."

The Explorers begin Catholic League play on Tuesday against Archbishop Ryan.