La Salle remains in Catholic League playoff hunt with win over West Catholic

The odds are not in La Salle College High School’s favor, but the Explorers still have a chance.

First-year boys’ basketball coach Ryan Ansel’s group sat at the bottom of the Catholic League standings a couple weeks ago, taking losses in their first seven league games.

But the schedule eased up — and the lessons learned in those earlier losses seemed to have paid off. After a 60-50 victory against West Catholic Monday night, the Explorers are fighting for one of the final two Catholic League playoff spots with two games remaining in the regular season.

“We’ve stuck to what we’ve been preaching, and it just took time,” said Ansel, a former Swarthmore assistant. “We have a new group just learning to win. It takes time to figure out.”

The Explorers (8-12, 3-8) figured it out in real-time against the Burrs (5-15, 3-8).

Liam Hawley, a senior point guard, and Joey O’Brien, a sophomore wing, combined for 21 second-half points. The Explorers’ leading scorer Nick Parisi, who finished with a team-high 17 points, only needed to take three shots in the second half as his teammates stepped up.

“We found our rhythm, started to hit our shots, started to get stops on defense,” Hawley said. “After that, we just flowed and kept rolling.”

Hawley, who also plays baseball, has been known for weaving his way through a defense and providing a steady hand if his teammates get trapped. He finished with 12 points, six rebounds, three assists, and two steals on Monday.

“He’s been huge and I think he now has probably over 100 assists with like 30 turnovers on the year,” Ansel said. “There’s some athletes that are guarding him, pressing up on him, doubling him, but he’s really become a great leader and found ways to break pressure, even if it’s 1-on-2 sometimes, because of his toughness and his strength.”

O’Brien, a football standout, came in as the Explorers’ fourth-man off the bench but ended up contributing 14 points, five steals, four rebounds, three assists, and a block against the Burrs.

“Every time he gets on the floor, it’s electric,” Hawley said of O’Brien. “He can jump out of the gym, he gives us great minutes off the bench.”

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The road ahead is still difficult for both teams. La Salle and West Catholic are tied with Cardinal O’Hara for 10th place in the 14-team league, a half-game behind Devon Prep (7-11, 3-7). La Salle and West Catholic have tough closing stretches. La Salle hosts Neumann Goretti (8-2) and Father Judge (8-3) while West Catholic goes to Archbishop Carroll (6-5) and Archbishop Wood (9-2).

Cardinal O’Hara heads to winless Lansdale Catholic on Friday. Devon Prep plays at Neumann Goretti on Wednesday, if the Tide don’t pull off an upset, they’ve got to take care of Conwell-Egan (2-9) to get its fourth win. La Salle and West Catholic would also need to pull a big-time upset to keep pace.

Devon Prep and Cardinal O’Hara end the regular season at Devon Prep, so only one of those teams will get to five wins. But if La Salle can pull an upset in one of its last two games, and ends up in a tie with either Devon Prep or O’Hara, they’d lose the head-to-head tiebreaker. West, which beat O’Hara, has an advantage.

Long story short, the Explorers need to win, and they need some serious help.

“We’ve tried to stay focused on what we can control in the present moment,” Ansel said. “Once they start thinking ahead, they lose sight of what we have to do in the moment. ...We can only control what we do today.”

This story was produced as part of a partnership between The Inquirer and City of Basketball Love, a nonprofit news organization that covers high school and college basketball in the Philadelphia area while also helping mentor the next generation of sportswriters. This collaboration will help boost coverage of the city’s vibrant amateur basketball scene, from the high school ranks up through the Big 5 and beyond.