La Salle ambushes Xavier
The Explorers beat the perennial A-10 power in their league opener.
La Salle proved it is for real.
The Explorers, picked to finish 13th in the 14-team Atlantic Ten, recorded a convincing 80-70 conference-opening win over preseason favorite Xavier on Wednesday night at Tom Gola Arena in one of the program's best wins in recent memory.
The Explorers (11-4, 1-0 A-10) won their fourth straight and ninth in 10 games while showing they are legitimate after putting together an impressive out-of-conference record that came against a soft schedule.
"It is a statement that we have a chance to be one of the best teams in the A-10," La Salle coach John Giannini said. "I think it's a statement that we can play with the best teams in the country."
Earl Pettis had 23 points to pace La Salle, and Ramon Galloway added 16 for the Explorers, who extended their Gola record to 10 straight wins.
"This win proves to everybody in the Atlantic Ten that we can play and that La Salle is a different team this year," Galloway said. "Our goal is to do big things this year."
Galloway, a junior transfer from South Carolina, continued to be a driving force behind the Explorers' transformation. His defensive pressure forced Xavier's Tu Holloway, the reigning A-10 player of the year, into a 2-for-12 shooting night.
Holloway, who entered leading the Musketeers in scoring (18.4 ppg), had 11 of his 15 points from the free-throw line. It is the 11th time in 12 games that La Salle has held the opponent's top scorer below his average.
Dezmine Wells also had 15 points for Xavier (9-5, 0-1), which has lost five of six games since the much-publicized Dec. 10 fight in a 76-53 win over Cincinnati that led to suspensions of four Musketeers.
"If that's going to be our excuse, then we're going to have a tough way to go in this conference," Xavier coach Chris Mack said.
The Explorers triumphed against a Xavier team that has owned the Atlantic Ten, winning six straight regular-season titles and going 29-3 in the league the last two seasons. The Musketeers, who have reached as high as No. 8 in the national rankings this season, have made six straight NCAA tournament appearances, while La Salle hasn't reached any postseason tournament since 1992 and finished below .500 in 16 of the last 18 seasons.
La Salle matched its biggest lead of the game when Pettis scored on a layup to go up, 60-42, with 11 minutes, 45 seconds left. But Xavier kept battling and got within five on Mark Lyons' three with 1:42 left that made it 74-69.
La Salle, however, managed to do enough down the stretch to hold on, putting the game away on Devon White's fastbreak dunk with 50 seconds left.