Charlotte D the Difference in Win over LaSalle

In a conference as competitive as the Atlantic 10, every game is critical, especially when it comes to two teams whose early season records have set them up for a potential NCAA Tournament at large bid.  Such was the case Wednesday night at Halton Arena as Charlotte hosted LaSalle in the conference opener for both teams.

The 49ers and Explorers came into the game with a total of five combined losses.  LaSalle entered the game at 10-3, while Charlotte was 12-2.  However. neither team has an elite non conference win on their resume and both have a loss to Miami Florida.   In a stacked A-10, where four teams made the NCAA Tournament last season (Temple, Xavier, St Bonaventure and St Louis), another made the NIT championship game (UMass) and VCU and Butler have now joined in the fray, a 1-0 conference start seems even more important.

It was a clash of styles on Wednesday night.  LaSalle is one of the higher scoring teams in the country, averaging about seventy four points per game.  Meanwhile, Charlotte is one of the better defensive teams in the country, ranked tenth in the country in effective field goal percentage defense and in the top thirty five in three point field goal percentage defense.

I made the two hour drive from Columbia in rush hour traffic to Charlotte and got to the Halton Arena right before game time.   Desperately needing food, I went up to the concessions stand and ordered a Bojangles chicken sandwich and fries.  The attendant warned me the sandwich was hot.  She didn't tell me that it was actually nuclear temperature wise.   Combine that with the saltiest fries ever and I am glad I had a got a drink with the meal.

The teams came out and scored in each of the first three possessions of the game, with Charlotte taking a quick 4-3 lead not even a minute into the game.  Then over the next four and a half minutes, the teams combined to score another seven points as LaSalle had an 8-6 lead.

The 49ers would awake from their scoring funk with a 12-0 run over the next four and a half minutes.  A DeMario Mayfield three pointer would put Charlotte up 18-8 and LaSalle called a timeout with exactly ten minutes left in the half, desperate to find some offense against a suffocating 49ers defense.

At one point in the first half, the Explorers were shooting eight percent from beyond the arc.  No, that wasn't a misprint. Eight percent.  The main culprit was their leading scorer on the season, Ramon Galloway.  Galloway had a rough first half with much of the credit going to the Charlotte perimeter defense.  After hitting two of his first three field goal attempts, he proceeded to miss ten straight shots, most of them from beyond the arc.

That played directly into Charlotte's strength as one of the best two point FG percentage defensive teams in the country, ranked thirteenth in the category.  With the Explorers misfiring from three as badly as the 49ers T-shirt Gatling gun's misfiring during one of the media timeouts and the 49ers clamping down on any shots inside, the Charlotte extended their lead to 33-17 at the half.  Had the 49ers made a few of their free throws, the lead would have been twenty at the half.

LaSalle needed to score points quickly to get back in the game.  And give Galloway credit.  A graduate of the John Starks school of shooting ("When in doubt, keep firing), Galloway immediately buried a three pointer to follow a Jerrell Wright layup.  A Tyreek Duren layup made it a 7-0 run for the Explorers and just like that, the Charlotte lead was single digits, 33-24.

For basically the entire first half, arguably the 49ers best player, Chris Braswell, was out of it.  He wasn't aggressive on defense, wasn't hustling and took a couple of ill advised shots.  Having seen him twice now, Braswell can be brilliant with his passing and his inside post moves.  He can also be infuriating, taking long fallaway jumpers that never hit.  And the fans near me were not happy with Braswell and made their displeasure known.

But like the bad girl with the curl, when Braswell is on, he's one of the best forwards in the A-10.  And when they needed him, he came through.  After Duren's layup, Charlotte called timeout.  Off the timeout, the 49ers setup a play for their big man.  Braswell's strong post move resulted in a layup and one.  He made the free throw for the three point play.  The 49ers would add four more straight points to go back up sixteen 40-24 with sixteen minutes left in the game.

Charlotte couldn't put the game away however as LaSalle would hang around, mostly due to Galloway's second half heroics as he scored seventeen points in the final twenty minutes of the game.  With about three minutes left, Duren stole the ball and found a streaking Galloway who nailed a sweet reverse dunk that resulted in a large buzz from the crowd.  The Explorers were now down only six, 65-59 with 2:53 left in the game.

But Henry responded with an empthatic dunk of his own to put Charlotte up 67-59.  Despite Galloway, LaSalle would not get any closer.  The 49ers would get their first A-10 win of the season downing the Explorers 74-65.

Henry was the leading scorer for Charlotte with twenty points.  E Victor Nickerson added thirteen points, seven rebounds and four assists.  Darion Clark had twelve points and Mayfield added ten points. Braswell only had seven points on the night.  The 49ers shot 48 percent from the field and were 22 of 31 from the line.

Galloway led all scorers with twenty three points, but he had to earn them.  He shot 7 of 29 from the field, including a brutal 3 of 14 from beyond the arc.    He did also add nine rebounds.  The Explorers had twenty one offensive rebounds but couldn't take advantage of the second chance opportunities. Duren added twelve points, five assists and three steals, while Wright had eleven points and nine rebounds.  LaSalle entered the game shooting over 38 percent from beyond the arc.  On Wednesday night, the Explorers were 4 of 29 on three point attempts, thirteen percent on the night.  LaSalle shot thirty two percent from the field in general.

Charlotte had their conference opener win.   Every win is precious in the rough and tumble A-10 conference.  LaSalle left Halton Arena licking their wounds and still looking for that precious first conference win.

Gaston Runs Amok on the Explorers (Recap of LaSalle vs. Fordham)

 As Day Three of our Four Day Weekend of Hoops started, my older son Matthew and I took the familiar trip over the Whitestone Bridge to the Hutch to Pelham Parkway to head to the campus of Fordham.  Unlike the night before, there were no crazy drivers on the Whitestone looking to start a NASCAR wreck.  So, it was a much calmer ride this time.

As I have written before on this site, going to the Rose Hill Gym is like Saturday Mass to me.  Though I am Protestant and not Catholic (I have my Irish grandfather on my mom's side to thank for that.  Long story),  basketball at Rose Hill on a Jesuit campus is a religious experience to me.

As for my six year old son, it was a chance for another fun basketball game complete with another free T-shirt to add to his collection, since it was "Whiteout Day" at Fordham.  Of course, he had his standard culinary fare of a soft pretzel and a water.  Some things never change.

The game against the Explorers was an important game for the home team Rams.  They needed a win to keep their remote hopes of playing in the Atlantic 10 Tournament alive.  Only the top twelve teams make it to the conference tournament.  It wouldn't be easy for Fordham because LaSalle was entering the game with eighteen wins and was tied for sixth in the conference.

This was the only game that Matthew and I saw this past weekend that was not a Senior Day game.  That's because the A-10 regular season doesn't end until next weekend.  I have always thought that does the A-10 a disservice, because then its tournament is up against all the Power Six conference tournaments. If they would finish their season a week sooner, they might get more national exposure playing their conference tournament the week before all the Power Six conference tournaments.

It was pretty evident from within the first eight and a half minutes of how the two teams would be on offense.  LaSalle showed how balanced they were as five Explorers; Jerrell Wright, Ramon Galloway, Earl Pettis, Sam Mills and Tyreek Duren each scored at least one basket.  Each of those five players averages between 9.5 and 15.2 points on the season.

Meanwhile, Fordham's Chris Gaston, their leading scorer and only one of three Rams' players who averages 9.9 points or more per game, was a one man wrecking crew.  He scored fifteen of Fordham's first twenty points as he literally willed his way to the basket, often going over several LaSalle players.  With eleven and a half minutes to go in the first half it was LaSalle 21 Gaston 15 Rest of  Fordham 5.

The Rams actually took the lead 25-23 on a Bryan Smith three pointer.  But the Explorers responded with a 12-0 run, as again five different LaSalle players scored over the nearly four minute span.  The Explorers were up 35-25 with 6:45 left.

The Explorers could have been up a lot more, but both teams went scoreless for the next several minutes.  Once Gaston cooled off, Fordham struggled to score.  But LaSalle had four turnovers the last few minutes of the half.  The Rams were fortunate to be down only eleven, 42-31 at halftime.  Gaston had nineteen of their thirty one first half points.

During a first half timeout, a member of the New York Giants brought out the Lombardi Trophy onto center court.  Apparently fans could go out into the lobby to pose for photos with the Super Bowl Trophy.  My son was not impressed.  He was there to see basketball and he wanted to see Gaston keep scoring points.

The Explorers maintained their eleven point lead over the first five minutes of the second half.   Pettis and Galloway combined to score LaSalle's first ten points.  Fordham was hanging in there as other players such as Kerwin Bristol and Smith finally scored besides Gaston.    The Explorers led the Rams 52-41 with about fifteen minutes left in the game.

Then came the turning point of the game.  LaSalle got careless with the ball and turned it over four times in the span of about three minutes.  This resulted in Fordham going on a 12-0 run.  Branden Frazier came alive with two three pointers and no surprise, Gaston had two layups as well.  Frazier's second three pointer put Fordham up 53-52.

LaSalle would actually regain the lead, 58-57 on a three pointer by Mills.  The teams would trade the lead a couple of times.  The Explorers would take a 62-61 lead on a layup by Galloway with five plus minutes left. But it would be the last points LaSalle would score the rest of the way.  Once again, the Explorers got careless with the ball and committed four turnovers over the last three and a half minutes of the game.

Meanwhile, Gaston would score four of the last six points his team would score.  And sure enough, after Pettis missed a three pointer at the end of the game, it was Gaston who rebounded the ball, his sixteenth in the game. Fordham had a 67-62 win.

As much as the Explorers gave them the game, a lot of the credit for the Rams' win belongs to Gaston.  He was a man among boys with thirty five points to go along with his sixteen rebounds.  How dominant was Gaston?  Fifteen of his sixteen rebounds came on the offensive glass, a truly sick statistic. He was downright relentless in the paint.  Frazier was the only other Fordham player in double figures scoring with eleven.

The stat sheet again showed LaSalle's showed their balance as all five starters scored in double figures.  But what killed the Explorers was the seventeen turnovers, many of which came in bunches in the first and second half.    You could also say Gaston equally killed them as well, as Fordham outscored LaSalle in the paint 42-26.

As Matthew and I made our way out of a back exit of Rose Hill Gym, where the video cable feed for the Yes Network was setup, Chris Gaston made a new fan.   My six year old son pointed out "Daddy, Number thirty three had a real good game."

"Yes, Matthew. Yes he did."