By CHUCKIE MAGGIO
Your guess at which La Salle Explorers team shows up to St. Bonaventure tomorrow evening is as good as anyone else’s.
Saint Louis was so desperate for a victory at Chaifetz Arena over the weekend, for example, because losing to La Salle temporarily blurred the Billikens’ postseason picture. Dayton and Richmond also lost to the Explorers, who have picked off the top three teams in the Atlantic 10 preseason poll and would love to go four-for-four.
Ashley Howard’s team is 5-7 in the A-10, a victory away from matching last year’s conference win total. Philadelphia’s better half stands just 3.5 games behind the league-leading Bonnies before the sides meet at 6 in the Reilly Center.
“They’re talented,” Bonnies coach Mark Schmidt remarked. “They’ve got really good guards. They can shoot the ball from the perimeter, they can take you off the bounce. They’ve got two guys inside that create double teams. They run good stuff; they really push the ball hard in transition. They’ve got like seven or eight guys that are averaging between 10 and six points, so there’s not one guy or two guys that are the knowns. And when they shoot the ball from the perimeter, they’re a tough team to beat.
“They’ve got a lot of good pieces, and they have guards that can really break you down off the bounce. That’s why they’re good.”
The Explorers followed up their Saint Louis win, however, with a confounding defeat at Fordham’s Rose Hill Gym three days later. The Rams won their second game in 11 tries after featuring five double-figure scorers, hitting 11 3-pointers and making 19 of their 21 free throw opportunities.
La Salle was on the wrong end of a 21-7 run at the end of the first half and, despite cutting the deficit to five multiple times, never led in the second, falling 76-68.
La Salle is the sixth-lowest-rated program with an NCAA Quadrant 1 win to its name, according to the NET rankings. The Explorers, who also have a better record in Quadrant 2 games (2-3) than Quadrant 3 (1-4), are a prime example of a team that is liable to play up or down to the competition.
When the Explorers are at their best, they are converting from the 3-point line. Without a preeminent big (redshirt junior center Clifton Moore averages 6.2 points per game), they average 22 3-point attempts a game in conference play.
Scott Spencer, who has made 51 percent of his shots behind the arc in A-10 contests (20 of 39), is the league’s most accurate marksman. Three other Explorers also contribute at least one 3-pointer a game, including leading scorers Jack Clark and Sherif Kenney as well as senior David Beatty.
La Salle topped SBU at Gola Arena last year in the same balanced fashion that’s led to its success this season. Kenney and Beatty combined for 30 points off the bench and leading scorer Isiah Deas posted just 16 in the 73-65 surprise.
No one is currently averaging double-digit points during this campaign, yet the Explorers have three 80-plus scoring outputs in their last six games.
“We’ve just gotta keep the ball in front of us,” Schmidt commented. “Do a better job in the post, don’t turn the ball over so they can get out on the break, and just try to keep the ball in front of us. It’s much easier to hit 3s when you’re stepping into the shot, and we had some problems with our rotations against Saint Louis.
“But La Salle does it a little bit differently. It’s not always inside, it’s more off the bounce. They space you out, four-out, one-in, and they drive it. They create rotations and they create help situations and they can drive and kick. Then those guys are stepping into their shots. Trying to keep the ball in front of us is going to be a big key for (Tuesday’s) game.”
The Explorers’ defense, on the other hand, is penetrable. Opposing A-10 teams shoot nearly 47 percent and score just under 75 points a night, sidling them next to Saint Joe’s in the bottom four of those metrics.
St. Bonaventure hasn’t made a dent from 3-point range this year, making just 31.4 percent of those attempts. But the Bonnies got an unexpected lift in the form of two Jalen Adaway 3s against Saint Louis, his first two in a Bona uniform.
Schmidt acknowledged that he doesn’t want Adaway taking “five or six or seven a game,” but sees the benefits of the junior hitting a jump shooting breakthrough.
“He turned some down on Saturday, special situations at the end of games, but he can shoot that,” Schmidt commented. “It’s gotta be confidence. He shoots it in practice; he’s always in the gym working on his game. That’s part of his game I think he can use and make us that much more effective offensively.
“Hopefully him making those two will give him some confidence… When you have a four-man that can screen and pop and create space by shooting the ball, that’s gonna open up a bit more for ‘Shoon inside.”
Schmidt’s squad saw its A-10 lead shrink to a half-game after losing in St. Louis, with the Explorers a winning streak away from putting themselves in contention for a double-bye in March’s conference tournament. There are conference and national implications attached to both of Bona’s games this week, with a trip to VCU looming on Friday.
Schmidt, as expected, isn’t thinking about potentially being “caught” in the standings. He is focused only on securing what would be the Bonnies’ 10th win of the season.
“I don’t even know who’s behind us. We don’t think about that,” Schmidt said. “Maybe the last game of the year, the second-to-last game of the year, but it’s way too early to be looking at that. To me, those standings don’t really mean anything. Not everybody’s played the same amount of games and there’s a lot of factors…
“It doesn’t matter what other people do behind us, in front of us. We’ve gotta make sure we’re concentrating on just us, and I think one of the reasons we’ve had success not just this year but overall, is we don’t look ahead. You can’t really care, you don’t really care, what other people are doing.”
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