Against stiff conference competition, La Salle is eager to right its ship

Almost halfway through La Salle’s first season under head coach Fran Dunphy, the Explorers are 6-7.

Conference play begins Saturday against Virginia Commonwealth (2 p.m., FuboTV) and it starts a run against some stiff competition for an Explorers team looking to right the ship. La Salle hasn’t had a winning record since 2015, and expectations for this team were tempered entering the season.

The Explorers were tabbed to finish 14th in the Atlantic 10 preseason poll.

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“No question about it, the Atlantic 10 is a really good basketball league, and we need to be on our stuff each and every game that we play,” Dunphy said. “It’s an exciting league, it’s a challenging league. We have our hands full here.”

Sophomore guard Khalil Brantley and senior guard Josh Nickelberry have highlighted La Salle’s returnees. Brantley leads the team in scoring (13.9 points per game) and assists (41). Nickelberry is second in shooting, averaging 11.5 points per game and shooting 34.5% from behind the arc.

Hassan Drame, one of two transfers from St. Peter’s, is averaging 5.1 rebounds per game and has 16 steals.

The Explorers enter conference play coming off a gritty 80-76 road win against Howard on Dec. 29. That victory snapped a three-game losing streak, which included a loss to Drexel and a 25-point rout by Lafayette, coached by Dunphy’s former Penn player Mike Jordan.

The other loss came courtesy of Cincinnati, helped along by La Salle’s season-high 25 turnovers.

“When you go on the road and you play a quality opponent, you absolutely have to take care of the basketball, and we did not,” Dunphy said after the Cincinnati game. “Our offense stalls in certain respects, and when we don’t take care of the ball, we struggle.”

It was the same story on the road against Howard. Though La Salle ultimately came away with the win, the Explorers committed 14 turnovers in the first half alone. The Explorers’ lapses on offense kept the game close, even as the Bison shot a dismal 16.7% from three-point range.

“I thought we were a turnover machine in the first half,” Dunphy said after the win. “We found a way to win the game and I’m grateful for that, but we have to do much, much better. We have to defend better, and we have to take care of the ball better.”

La Salle showed improvement in the second half against Howard, committing only five more turnovers in the rest of the game. Protecting the ball will have to be a focus if the Explorers want to compete in the Atlantic 10.

It’ll be a tough contest for La Salle as VCU enters with a 9-4 record. The Rams still have most of the players from the team that made it to the second round of the 2022 NIT. They were picked to finish third in the conference in this year’s preseason poll.

“I’ve always been impressed with how VCU plays,” Dunphy said. “We need to step up and make our shots when we get the open ones, and they’re not freely giving you too many.”

Headlined by junior guard Adrian Baldwin Jr., the Rams are known for their stout defense. VCU has held its opponents to an average of 63.2 points per game, paces the Atlantic 10 in steals per game (9.46), and ranks second in blocked shots per game (5.15). VCU’s average of 17.69 turnovers forced per game is also good for 19th best in the nation.

“I love games like this. They’re going to come out and they’re going to make us play our best game,” Brantley said of the matchup. “We’ve just got to play our game, stay within ourselves.”