With a returning corps and one of the A-10′s premier players, St. Joe’s gains attention of pundits

NEW YORK — This could be the season all the potential turns into results for St. Joseph’s.

Standout guard Erik Reynolds II is back for his junior year, and the Hawks are littered with depth and continuity. As Billy Lange enters his fifth season as head coach, the hype surrounding St. Joe’s is at a high coming off a 16-17 campaign (8-10 Atlantic 10) a season ago.

On La Salle’s side, the building stage is still in progress. After going 15-19 (7-11) last year, Fran Dunphy enters his second season as the Explorers’ coach, and there is still a lot of unknown about his roster.

The differing stages of the two showed in the A-10 preseason coaches poll unveiled on Tuesday during the conference’s annual media day event at the Barclays Center. St. Joe’s was picked to finish fifth, and La Salle last out of 15 teams.

Last season, Reynolds showed he could be the guy. In his second year, he averaged 19.6 points and led the Hawks to their best finish under Lange.

Now he’s back for an encore — and people know he’s coming.

“He represents everything we want in a St. Joseph’s basketball player,” Lange said. “We’ve got a great league. It’s got great players. This is one of the best ones right here.”

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On Tuesday, Reynolds was named to the A-10 preseason all-conference first team, and his backcourt mate Cameron Brown was selected to the third team. They’re two of five players returning who started at least 18 games last season, joining Lynn Greer III, Kacper Klaczek, and Rasheer Fleming.

While Reynolds is the focal point, the strength of this St. Joe’s team is the familiarity. Players who scored 88.1% of the team’s points last season are returning, along with 10 scholarship players.

“This year, we’re still fairly young,” Lange said. “I mean, half of our roster are freshmen or sophomores. But we’re familiar because we’re not as new. … As much continuity as we have, though, we have freshmen that are going to have an impact on our season.”

Toward the end of last season, the Hawks started to get going. At one point, they won seven of nine and then won two games in the Atlantic 10 tournament before losing in the quarterfinals.

“Really, it just shows like how much potential and grit that we have,” Reynolds said. “And Coach [Lange] says this all the time, we want to be the most united we can be by the end of the season. And I think by that last stretch that you were just talking about, we really started coming together more and more. And just really going through these battles like, ‘Yo, we’re making [it] out of this together.’”

Now it’s time to see if that stretch was just a hot spell or the start of something new on Hawk Hill.

When it comes to La Salle’s backcourt, Dunphy put it best.

“One is fire, [Khalil] Brantley,” he said. “The other is ice, [Jhamir] Brickus.”

The guards have entirely different styles, but they make it work on the court. Brantley, who was selected as an A-10 preseason all-conference second-team selection, plays extremely fast, always keeping pressure on the defense, and Brickus plays calm, never in a rush.

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“It’s a joy to play with them, honestly, because they just have a certain swag and pace with each other,” senior guard Anwar Gill said.

Last season, Brantley led the team in scoring, averaging 14.3 points, and Brickus finished third at 9.8. The two will be focal points again this season, along with Gill. But for Dunphy, the focus for his guards isn’t on the offensive end.

“The one thing I’m expecting for them is to really do a great job on defense and try to keep our big guys clean, where they’re not getting into foul trouble all the time because there’s not much penetration,” he said. “Dribble penetration hurts so many defenses, and I think these guys are good enough to keep people in front of them.”

As the Explorers enter Year 2 under Dunphy, the familiarity is starting to set in. A lot of these players weren’t recruited to the Explorers by their 75-year-old head coach, so their relationship with him only recently began.

But Dunphy’s expectations have been clear from the start.

“Adjusting to Coach Dunphy has been pretty much easy,” Gill said. “All he wants from us is just to be men first and take care of our responsibilities and stuff like that. On-the-court stuff is pretty much second. I mean, it’s very important for us, but the main thing with him is, on the court, he just wants us to play as hard as we can. Defend, rebound, limit turnovers, that’s his biggest thing.

“We definitely play with an edge. We’re going to be one of the hardest-playing teams in the conference. That’s just who we are. That’s our identity. I mean, we’re from Philly.”

This season, things in the Big 5 will look a bit different. Drexel is now in the fold, and the six teams will compete in the inaugural Big 5 Classic. The new setup has the Big 5 split into two pods, with the winners of each competing for the title at a tripleheader at Wells Fargo Center.

Last season was the first since 1977 that no teams on the men’s side made the NCAA Tournament. Attendance was disappointing in last season’s Big 5 doubleheader at the Palestra, but the hope is that the Big 5 Classic will help reinvigorate the City Series.

“The Big 5 is amazing,” Reynolds said. “You can never really downplay the Big 5. Me, coming from Maryland into the Philly area knowing how much pride people take in the Philly sports world, it’s just amazing to be a part of. I liked the way they did it this year, with the two different sides, and we meet at Wells Fargo. Just the energy that the Big 5 just gives, I live for it. Being a part of St. Joe’s has made me take pride in that a lot more.”

Added Lange: “The Big 5 to us, on Hawk Hill, is akin to an NCAA Tournament. I’m not saying it’s better. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying it’s equal to it for us on Hawk Hill.”