La Salle’s Daeshon Shepherd is jamming highlight packages with dunks, but he’s more than just a dunker

La Salle forward Ryan Zan knows what it feels like to try to defend when Daeshon Shepherd is hunting for an alley-oop. He’s been on the opposite end of it a few times in practice.

“Once you lose track of him and you see him go backdoor, you know it’s over,” Zan said.

The Explorers will sometimes draw up plays for Shepherd, a junior guard from Norristown who played his high school basketball at Archbishop Wood. Other times, it’s a simple nod, a point in the air, a raising of the eyebrows, or a bump on the arm out of a timeout to guards Khalil Brantley or Jhamir Brickus.

“I can’t tell you all the tips and tricks,” Brantley joked. “Most of the time it’s eye contact or he’ll bump into me before the play and say, ‘I think I got this.’ And I’ll look at it and if it’s there ...”

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Quite a few times during La Salle’s 9-3 start, it has been there. Shepherd, at 6-foot-5, has racked up 15 dunks through 12 games, according to Torvik tracking data. That put him tied for 42nd in Division I men’s basketball coming out of the Christmas holiday break, and tied for third in the Atlantic 10. It’s not necessarily the amount of dunks that has been noteworthy for Shepherd, it’s the highlights he has created, and the height of his jumps.

Brantley, who entered La Salle in the same recruiting class as Shepherd, grew up playing basketball all over New York City. The things he sees from Shepherd, Brantley said, are new to him.

“Athletically he’s probably top of the top,” Brantley said. “In the layup lines, he went under both of his legs … he does it consistently, but every time it wows you. I’ve never had somebody like that.”

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That dunk, sliding the ball under both of his legs, is Shepherd’s current favorite jam, he said. It’s like he’s “sitting down in the air,” he said. He’s ready to move on to different dunks.

How does Shepherd decide which dunk he’s going to do when he’s streaking in solo in transition? Or in the layup line?

“I just come up with it in my head before I go up for a dunk,” he said.

If it sounds so easy, it’s because Shepherd says it is. He started dunking in seventh grade when he was at Eisenhower Middle School in Norristown. He would practice dunking in various parks around the town and in gyms. It wasn’t until his freshman year at Archbishop Wood that Shepherd realized how high he could really jump.

“He’s just an amazing athlete,” said La Salle coach Fran Dunphy, who thinks Shepherd is one of the best in that category that the 75-year-old coach has ever had under his tutelage.

But Dunphy thinks Shepherd is more than just a dunker, and so do his teammates. Dunphy complimented the guard’s ability to defend one through four, and he has even guarded a few centers. At one point during La Salle’s Dec. 9 win over Lafayette, it was a Shepherd jump shot and not a dunk that made Dunphy turn to his staff and note the importance of it in what was a tight game at the time.

Shepherd is taking advantage of a lot more playing time in his junior season. He played eight minutes per game in 19 appearances as a freshman and then 18 minutes per game in 25 appearances last season. Through 12 games, Shepherd is up to 32.9 minutes per game as a starter while tallying 10.8 points and 5.8 rebounds per contest.

Shepherd scored a career-high 22 points in a Nov. 14 win over Bucknell, and he exits the holiday break having scored in double figures in three straight games.

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“We appreciate everything he does and brings to this team,” Brantley said. “He’s one of the X factors to our team. Sometimes we go as Daeshon goes. We’re a hard team to beat when he’s going.”

Especially when the alley-oops are flowing. Those, Brantley said, are a testament to this La Salle group just being together. That almost wasn’t the case, as Shepherd flirted with the transfer portal this past offseason.

“This is the longest time I’ve been playing with a group of guys in my life,” Brantley said. “We’ve built a trust in one another.”

“I feel like we’re in a good space,” Shepherd said. “This team we have this year is better than last year’s team. Now that we’re all upperclassmen and all leaders, now it feels more connected and Fran trusts us.”

Shepherd has earned the trust. He’s piling up the highlight-reel dunks during La Salle’s hot start. One of the top dunkers in college hoops? Probably. But Shepherd is much more than just that.

“I just want to be known as a good basketball player, a good teammate, someone who has a good attitude,” Shepherd said. “I want to be known for all those things. People call me just a dunker, it doesn’t really get to me. That’s one of my strongest attributes, so I take it as a compliment.”