La Salle defeats Penn, 68-57
Coming off an impressive opening to its Atlantic 10 basketball season, La Salle suffered no letdown Tuesday night in a Big Five game against Penn, continuing its early-season march with a 68-57 victory at the Palestra.
Coming off an impressive opening to its Atlantic 10 basketball season, La Salle suffered no letdown Tuesday night in a Big Five game against Penn, continuing its early-season march with a 68-57 victory at the Palestra.
La Salle (13-4, 1-1 Big Five) has won six games in a row. The Explorers caught everybody's attention with A-10 wins last week over Xavier and Massachusetts to begin their conference schedule.
Penn, which has lost five in a row to the Explorers, is 7-9 overall and 0-3 in the Big 5. The Quakers begin Ivy League play Friday at Columbia.
Sophomore guard Tyreek Duren scored 21 points for La Salle, while fellow guard Earl Pettis added 18.
Frank Dougherty paced Penn with 14 points, and Tyler Bernardini scored 12.
La Salle scored the game's first nine points, and the Explorers were determined to keep Penn point guard Zack Rosen from beating them. Rosen entered the game averaging 19.4 points.
Using a four-guard starting lineup, the Explorers frequently pressured Rosen up the court with Ramon Galloway before dropping back on defense.
La Salle gained its biggest lead of the half, 25-13, on sophomore guard Sam Mills' driving layup with 7 minutes, 7 seconds remaining. But Penn came to life and eventually cut its deficit to 31-27 on two free throws by Rob Belcore with 2:01 remaining.
The Explorers closed the half on an 8-2 run to take a 39-29 lead at intermission.
La Salle's scorers in the first half were led by Duren, the Neumann-Goretti product who had 11 points and hit both of his attempts from beyond the arc. Mills contributed eight points, hitting all three shots from the field, including two from three-point range.
Rosen led Penn at the half with eight points and three assists. He shot 3 for 7 from the field. In the second half, he was scoreless.
On several occasions in the second half, the Explorers led by as many as 13 points. Penn cut the margin to 60-55 on Bernardini's 12-foot jumper with 2:45 left.
La Salle then scored eight consecutive points to put the game away.