City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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In one offseason, La Salle coach John Giannini will go from working with a rotation that was one of the shortest in all of Division I hoops to having a bench with an abundance of talented ballplayers.

Now what remains to be seen is how he and the rest of his coaching staff will fit all the pieces together.

The Explorers were already set to receive an influx of talent to a roster that went just seven-deep for most of the 2015-16 season, with three high-major transfers biding their time on the bench and waiting on eligibility: RaShawn “Pookie” Powell (Memphis), Demetrius Henry (South Carolina) and B.J. Johnson (Syracuse).

Those three alone would be plenty of reason for optimism around a La Salle program that won just nine games this past season but returns its top six players, including redshirt seniors-to-be Jordan Price (19.2 ppg) and Cleon Roberts (12.9 ppg).

Then on Saturday, Philadelphia native and former Constitution forward Savon Goodman joined the mix. The grad transfer, who’s played at UNLV (2012-13) and Arizona State (2014-16) already in his college career, committed to the Explorers for his final year of college basketball, and is immediately eligible under the graduate transfer rule.

Suddenly, La Salle is deep in the frontcourt and out on the perimeter, with a versatile, upperclassmen-loaded squad that brings a ton of Division I experience out onto the court. The Explorers are going to be mentioned as one of the potential biggest turnarounds in all of college basketball heading into the 2016-17 season, and certainly have NCAA postseason potential.

But a ton of talent doesn’t automatically equate to success, and this is a roster that’s been assembled with pieces pulled in from all over the country.

Along with Price (Auburn) and Roberts (Georgia Southern), Goodman will be the seventh member of the 2016-17 La Salle roster who’s gotten to the North Philadelphia school via transfer.

That’s been a common theme for Giannini’s roster composition over the last few years, and it’s largely worked for the 12th-year head coach. His NCAA Sweet 16 squad in 2013 featured Ramon Galloway (South Carolina) and Tyrone Garland (Virginia Tech), and others like Earl Pettis (Rutgers) have had successful second acts in an Explorer uniform.

But this is the first time he’s going to have a roster that consists of more transfers than high school recruits, and there isn’t a lot of time to get everybody on the same page. Price, Roberts and Goodman all have only one year left, and there’s six juniors behind them who will all want to factor into the rotation immediately: Henry and Johnson, guards Johnnie Shuler and Amar Stukes, and forwards Tony Washington and Yevgen Sakhniuk.

Powell (a redshirt sophomore), plus incoming freshmen Saul Phiri and Cian Sullivan, will be the team’s only underclassmen on the roster.

And with 87 percent of the team’s minutes returning, there’s going to have to be some re-shuffling of the deck to make the new cards all fit cleanly into Giannini’s hand.

Taking a step back, there are several position battles that will have to settle themselves out during the summer and preseason practices, though this is a rotation that could continually change throughout the season.

Up front, Giannini has four forwards who look like they’ll occupy two spots in the lineup the majority of the time. Last year, La Salle had only one true big man, the 6-foot-9 Washington (7.7 ppg, 7.4 rpg). But now he’ll have another 6-9 post in Henry, who averaged 6.0 points and 3.6 rebounds in just under 20 minutes per game as a sophomore at USC.

Considering the roster has two other productive forwards in Goodman--who’s 6-6, is a muscular and athletic forward who could play alongside either--and Sakhniuk, who’s 6-7 and averaged 6.1 ppg in 19 games while dealing with health issues, it would seem as if Giannini will be playing a two-forward lineup a majority of the time.

That leaves three spots on the perimeter, and as many as seven players who will be competing for minutes and shots.

Price has been the team’s leading scorer for the last two seasons, and while he certainly won’t be needed for the 37.7 mpg he played last year, his minutes shouldn’t plummet too much; same with Roberts, who saw 36.7 mpg a year ago.

Shuler (9.6 ppg), Stukes (5.8 ppg) and Powell (4.3 ppg, 2.7 apg in 2014-15) are all point guards, though Giannini could play two of them alongside each other for stretches.

The final piece of the puzzle is Johnson, a 6-7 wing from Lower Merion. Expected to be a sharpshooting perimeter threat, Johnson only made 23.4 percent of his long-range attempts (18-of-77) in two years at Syracuse but should get more open shots and better looks against a schedule that won’t feature top-25 ACC teams every week.

Of course, it’s possible we’ll still see the four-out lineup, with Johnson at the ‘4’ spot, but the more of that lineup sees the floor, the more some of the forwards will feel the minutes squeeze.

It’ll be a delicate balance for sure, but there certainly exists a winning combination in there. And Giannini has made things work before--that Sweet 16 run stands as proof positive of that.

If he can make it all work with this group, La Salle could be one of the most improved teams in the country. And another NCAA tournament appearance is certainly not out of the question.