City of Basketball Love

Will Slover (@WillSlover31)
--

In a game where La Salle held the lead for the entire first half and 24:40 overall, when the final buzzer sounded they weren’t the team with the lead.

Fordham topped La Salle 56-53 in a game that featured just three lead changes on Wednesday night in Philadelphia.

La Salle (6-20, 2-13 Atlantic 10) watched their five point lead slip away on a Joseph Chartouny three-pointer that put Fordham up 32-29 and eventually the Rams saw their lead grow to 46-36.

Fordham’s 10-point lead looked comfortable until La Salle’s best shooters got hot at the right time.

On back-to-back-to-back possessions, La Salle’s three leading 3-point shooters, Cleon Roberts, Jordan Price and Johnnie Shuler all cashed in from deep as a part of a 14-1 La Salle run that put them up 50-47 with just over four minutes remaining.

“I felt great. I thought we were good,” said La Salle coach John Giannini. “Then 33 made a big shot.”

The shot referred to was a dagger t3-pointer hit by freshman forward David Pekarek that capped off a 7-0 Fordham run and gave the Rams a four-point lead with 38 seconds remaining.

Pekarek finished with 12 points and eight rebounds, and he was also aided by Chris Sengfelder who finished with a game-high 16, and Joseph Chartouny who had 11.

La Salle didn’t go away quietly after battling back from down 10 and then going down 5 in the final seconds of the game, Jordan Price came down the court and hit a deep three pointer to cut the Fordham lead to two.

“They’re great. They’re just great,” said Giannini. “They didn’t quit and they kept fighting and they made some big shots.”

Following the Price three, La Salle had no choice but to foul and hope for the best.

The Blue and Gold got what they hoped for as Chartouny missed the back end of his free-throws and La Salle found Johnnie Shuler in the corner for three on the following possession but Shuler’s attempt rattled off the rim and Fordham escaped victorious.

“I thought we played really hard, I thought we played our hearts out. I have great kids,” said Giannini, who now has lost 20 games in a season just twice in his 11 seasons as head coach of La Salle. “We just weren’t good enough. We missed free throws and we had costly turnovers and we don’t quite have the size to rebound the way we want but we fought our guts out.”

Turnovers, of which the Explorers had 13, and free-throws, where they only shot 53.8% from the line, certainly dictated the outcome of this hard fought ball game.

While turnovers and free throws were downfalls of La Salle in this game, Jordan Price and Cleon Roberts both reached double digits, scoring 13 points each.

La Salle looks to rebound from this loss on Saturday at Tom Gola Arena against Atlantic 10 foe George Mason at 2 PM.