Can La Salle’s new men’s basketball coach turn his team Philly tough?

The news conference that introduced Darris Nichols as La Salle’s men’s basketball coach Monday coincided with the official opening of the transfer portal window.

“Me and my staff, we’ve got a lot of work to do,” Nichols said after remarks from university president Daniel Allen and athletic director Ashwin Puri.

Nichols, who went 68-63 in four seasons as head coach at Radford, steps into the role left vacant by Fran Dunphy’s retirement. Dunphy was in attendance at the news conference, now in his role as special assistant to the president.

The Explorers have not posted a winning season since the 2014-15 campaign. In recent years, the difficulty to field a winning team is a reflection of the program’s relatively low resources in comparison to much of the Atlantic 10. As Puri said Monday, Dunphy came out of retirement three years ago to “stabilize the program [and] get [Glaser Arena] done.”

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But Nichols, 38, believes that winning at La Salle will be a similar challenge to the one he faced at Radford. At the small rural public school in Virginia, Nichols led the Highlanders to two 20-win seasons with similarly limited resources.

“I like taking jobs where people say, ‘It’s a head job, it’s this, it’s that,’” Nichols said. “I enjoy that. The same thing happened at Radford. People said, ‘OK, you only have this much NIL,’ but we won. I think you just have to be more creative, you’ve got to figure out ways to create more revenue. We have more ideas, we have different things that we plan on doing to do that.”

The first person to mention the style of basketball Nichols intends to bring to Glaser Arena was not Nichols himself, or even Puri. It was Allen, a former Division III player.

“I was drawn to, among other things, the way Darris communicated to me his style of play,” said Allen, who played at Loras College in Iowa. “It represents, for me, what I think about as it relates to La Salle University in Philadelphia, and it’s what I call a ‘finish at the rim’ culture. Looking for dudes who are going to put the ball on the deck and get to the rim, and actually go look for contact, not shy away from it.”

Nichols played for West Virginia in the Big East. In 2007-08, he was a senior on eventual Hall of Fame coach Bob Huggins’ first team in Morgantown. The kind of toughness that his playing experience instilled in him, Nichols said, is a cornerstone on which he wants to build his team’s culture.

“Our philosophy is, we want our 12 to be better than their seven.” Nichols said. “We want to wear those seven players that you’re going to play down. For us, we just find those guys who are tough and gritty, and want to defend and pick up 94 feet, and bother people for the whole game.”

Puri thinks that Nichols has the traits and experience to replace Dunphy, including success as a head coach, high academic standards, an understanding of the complexities of the current picture of college athletics, and fundraising ability.

“I’m excited about his creativity, and about the ability to partner on finding new opportunities for us to excel,” Puri said.

Allen made clear that La Salle has ambitions to be successful, both in the A-10 and in the Big 5. The Explorers have never won an A-10 men’s basketball regular-season or tournament championship. La Salle has not claimed a Big 5 title since it shared one with Temple in the 2012-13 season.

“I’m going to make no mistake about it,” Allen said. “We want to win basketball games at La Salle. We intend to, and plan to, win the Atlantic 10 championship. We intend to, and plan to, win the Big 5 championship. We want to be one of those teams playing right now, in March.”

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According to On3.com, seven Explorers were in the transfer portal as of noon Monday, including 2024-25 A-10 rookie of the year guard Deuce Jones and experienced forward Demetrius Lilley.

Nichols confirmed there are Explorers who are coming back, although he declined to give specifics. Still, Nichols said his plan for the roster is to find “the 13 toughest guys we can find.”

He’s starting with a few of his own. On Monday afternoon, La Salle got commitments from two Radford transfers — Josiah Harris and Truth Harris — and incoming class of 2025 freshman Ashton Walker, a three-star point guard who had signed with Radford.

“It’s hard to make guys tougher if you have them for one … you don’t even have them for one year, you have them for eight months,” Nichols said. “When you have them for eight months, how much tougher are you going to make somebody in eight months? It’s something you have to recruit to.”