Nowhere to go but up for St. Joseph’s and La Salle after finishing lower than expected in A-10 preseason polls

Steve Donahue feels he has always had the inside track with the players on his new team.

Donahue was named head coach of men’s basketball at St. Joseph’s on Sept. 10. On Tuesday during Atlantic 10 media day in Pittsburgh, he noted that being an assistant at the school since May gave him a head start in knowing the players’ mentality.

“When you’re an assistant, you sit with the guys after practice, and … they let their guard down,” Donahue said on the Field of 68 podcast. “These guys will tell you what’s really going on. I was able to really get to know the guys, not knowing I’d be the head coach. It’s an advantage for me because I do feel that if I [had] just arrived in September, brought a new staff in, this would be very hard.

“Now there’s a sense of everything is the same, the process is the same, and … I’m here to help them reach their potential and our team’s potential.”

Donahue will rely on that to coach a team that many had high expectations for before former coach Billy Lange departed to join the Knicks coaching staff. That’s not the case in terms of coaches and others around the Atlantic 10, who picked the Hawks to finish seventh in preseason polls.

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St. Joe’s finished tied for fifth in the A-10 with an 11-7 conference record in the regular season (22-13 overall). The Hawks made it to the semifinals of last season’s conference tournament, losing to George Mason, 74-64.

The former coach at Penn, Donahue sees only upside in his new role, being able to stay in Philadelphia and coaching a Big 5 team. He also has returning players who know the program. Anthony Finkley, Dasear Haskins, and Derek Simpson are among the returnees who’ll take the floor when the Hawks open the season on Nov. 3 against Lafayette (7 p.m., ESPN+).

“Billy and his staff did an amazing job of retaining four of our seven players, which in this era is just hard to do,” Donahue said. “And then you have a guy like Khaafiq Myers who’s out redshirting, he’s back … these [returning guys] know what to expect and can really help us build our program."

La Salle’s new coach, Darris Nichols, has a mantra for his team this season.

Nichols, who took over for Big 5 coaching legend Fran Dunphy earlier this year, is coming in after an impressive four-year run at Radford. He has high hopes of reviving the Explorers, or at least getting the program to a place where it’s a mid-major destination for players who can make an immediate impact.

Nichols is leading that charge with a saying he noted his team has bought into: “Rebound that jawn.”

“Obviously, I’m not from Philly, but recruiting guys from the area, you always hear them saying that,” said Nichols, a former standout at West Virginia who led the Mountaineers to the Sweet 16 during his senior season in 2008.

“I saw this lady in the store who had on this T-shirt that said ‘Nurse Jawn,’ so I said to myself, my teams [that I’ve coached] have always been some of the top rebounding teams in the country … so if you want your guys to really embrace something, you have to brand it … and so that’s where that came from.”

La Salle, was picked to finish 13th in A-10 preseason polls, but Nichols doesn’t mind being the underdog. Proof of that comes from his time in Virginia at Radford, where he led the team to a pair of 20-win seasons and became the only coach in the program’s history to win multiple games in a postseason tournament.

La Salle opens its season at home against Coppin State on Nov. 5 (time TBA, ESPN+).

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Eric Acker, a junior guard, is one of the few returning players from last season. Nichols had two players from Radford follow him to Olney: Truth Harris, a graduate guard from Mount Vernon, N.Y., and Josiah Harris, a graduate forward from Wilmington.

But a player Nichols was high on who accompanied him to media day was Camden native Jerome Brewer. Brewer, a redshirt junior who transferred from McNeese State, said the opportunity to play closer to home was one he couldn’t pass up.

“Coming here with Coach [Nichols], he had a great plan for me,” said Brewer, who noted that La Salle was one of the programs that recruited him at Camden High. “It was a no-brainer to come back home and have my family able to come to the games. … I’m looking forward to it, and to a great season ahead.”

For Nichols, players like Brewer align with his belief of “you are who you put on the floor.”

“My thought process is that the people of Philadelphia, especially the people of North Philly, we have to match that same identity,” Nichols said. “I’m excited to put a team on the floor that I think replicates that. I think our leadership also has a vision for where they want athletics to be, and I’m excited to be a big piece in all of that.”

La Salle will take part in the fourth annual Cathedral Classic weekend at the Palestra in games against Hofstra on Nov. 28 (2 p.m.), Penn on Nov. 29 (4:30 p.m.), and Merrimack on Nov. 30 (noon). All games will be televised on ESPN+ … The Explorers also will play a pair of Big Ten teams in nonconference action, hosting Penn State at Xfinity Mobile Arena on Nov. 15 and visiting Michigan on Dec. 21. … St. Joe’s Deuce Jones was named to the preseason all-conference first team. Hawks teammate Justice Ajogbor was named to the all-defensive team. … Phil Martelli Jr. will begin his first season as head coach at Virginia Commonwealth on Nov. 3 against Wagner, becoming the second Martelli to coach in the A-10.

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