La Salle basketball on the rise again

Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA

La Salle has this little thing it does in the locker room after a win. A huddle of jumping players is the best way to describe it, a pogo-sticked, smiling pack of blue, if you will.

There’s a chorus, as well, to the postgame bounce that goes like this: “Turn it up! Turn it up! All we do is turn it up!”

Well, the Explorers have being doing just that — and singing their hearts out — all month.

With three NCAA tournament wins already in their pocket, the Explorers — who have led a basketball renaissance that has captured this proud basketball city which houses their campus — are the talk of the town.

Turn on the radio, it’s La Salle basketball. Thumb through a newspaper, it’s Explorers Extra in news and sports sections. Walk down the streets, you’ll see people wearing blue and gold.

Coach John Giannini is at the head of this train. It’s his sense of realism and his way of getting the most out of his players that has helped to orchestrate the run. After one of those recent celebrations, he briefly settled his team before he got the exuberant bunch to holler some more as he credited several Explorers.

“We’re rolling, baby,” Giannini told them. “This is what you work for. We’re bringing it back. Right now, we’re one of the best teams in the country.”

Giannini then addressed the man in the grey La Salle T-shirt, blue hat and glasses sitting alone in a locker a few feet away from the frivolity.

“With that man right there,” Giannini said, pointing to his right, “they were 30-2, best record in the country. It’s all coming back.”

He was talking to Lionel Simmons.

Before this streak, and two decades of darkness, Simmons made the small-school Explorers a big-time program. With La Salle enjoying its deepest tournament run since the 1950s, the L-Train is back along for the ride. Simmons, the 1990 AP Player of the Year, has become a regular at La Salle’s games and traveled with the team from Dayton to Kansas City, Mo., and now Los Angeles as its biggest fan on this win streak.

Simmons’ presence is a reminder that La Salle wasn’t always one of the bottom programs in Philadelphia and invisible nationally. Led by Hall of Fame standout Tom Gola, the Explorers were NIT and NCAA champions in the 1950s. Paul Westhead coached them to tournaments in the 1970s. Simmons rocketed them to the national rankings in The AP poll for the final time and their last tournament win.

Indeed, La Salle’s had a heyday or two.

It’s the lean stretch, though, that defined the program once the L-Train followed tracks into the NBA. The Explorers had 13 straight losing seasons from 1993-2008. There was an ill-fated move to a Midwestern-based conference, and the Explorers tried to make do without an on-campus arena — an enormous handicap — the caused the program to spiral downward. La Salle bottomed out in 2004 when three players were charged with rape and both men’s coach Billy Hahn and women’s coach John Miller resigned, throwing the athletic program into disarray.

Enter Giannini, who led Rowan (N.J.), in the Philadelphia suburbs, to the 1996 NCAA Division III national title. Thanks to a patient administration, Giannini molded the team into a winner. He led it to the NIT last season and now the first tournament since 1992.

Giannini has to sell La Salle recruits on his vision because there’s not much else to see on campus. The Explorers don’t play in a historic gym or a modern palace funded by corporate dollars. In fact, calling Tom Gola Arena an arena is a bit of a stretch. It’s a gym. More like a high school gym plopped on a city campus.