La Salle's dream season comes to Shocking end

LOS ANGELES - La Salle had played so well from Dayton to Kansas City, scoring whenever necessary and defending when it mattered most that there almost became a belief that they could make it happen on command.

Basketball reality came for the Explorers Thursday night at Staples Center in the Sweet 16. They caught a really good Wichita State team that played brilliantly from the start, got a huge lead in the first few minutes and never looked back.

What this La Salle team did won't soon be forgotten, even if the final act was nothing like what they wanted or expected. Whatever magic they had in Rounds 1, 2 and 3 of this NCAA Tournament was missing from the start and found for just brief periods.

This game was over long before it was over. It was Wichita State 72, La Salle 58. It was a bad ending to what had been a season even the most ardent La Salle fan could not have imagined, a season that made believers out of nonbelievers.

The Shockers revealed their cards in the first 10 seconds. They lifted their entire weakside away from the basket while Jerrell Wright fronted Carl Hall. The pass came over the top to Hall, who was all alone for a layup. The theme was repeated in one way or another much of the night. The Shockers knew La Salle's weak spot and they were going to attack it.

The Shockers (29-8) got four layups in the game's first 150 seconds, forcing La Salle coach John Giannini to call a timeout way before he wanted to. Not much changed after the endless break. It was 14-2 after 4 minutes and only one of the baskets was longer than a foot. The Explorers were just getting overwhelmed in the lane.

"They're big time," Giannini said of the Shockers. "They're as good as anybody we played against all year."

The Explorers could have used Lionel Simmons, circa 1990. The L-Train was in the house, but he was seated across from the La Salle bench, wearing a Sweet 16 hat.

Wichita cut off the penetration with great team defense, forcing midrange jump shots, the worst percentage shot in basketball. And when La Salle (24-10) did get to the rim, the Shockers altered what they did not block. La Salle's only chance was to start raining threes, because the Shockers were scoring far too easily.

Wright had two fouls midway through the first half. If Steve Zack, who dressed for the first time in 26 days, was going to play, that would have been the time. But Zack (sprained ligament in his left foot) was not ready, so the coach did not call on him.

"He had a lot of soreness today," Giannini said.

And Rohan Brown was in deep against the Shockers' deep and talented front line.

Galloway could not make a shot 2 weeks ago when he played in his first NBA arena, the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. It started no better in Staples. He missed his first six shots and was not close of any of them. Finally, he got one of his rainbow threes to go and the basket got a bit bigger.

But it did not get nearly big enough. Technically, La Salle was not out of it at halftime when it trailed, 38-22. In reality, the Explorers would need a miracle.

"They beat us up in the first half," Tyrone Garland said. "It doesn't matter how much talent you have, if you believe you can go a long way. Tonight wasn't our night. They have a great coach an they play great team defense."

After 20 minutes, each team had taken 30 shots. Wichita made 16 and La Salle only eight. Wichita outscored La Salle in the lane, 24-10, and, as a result of the shooting disparity, owned the glass, 26-12. The numbers were not pretty, but they revealed the reality that the game was being played as the Shockers wanted, not as the Explorers hoped.

When the Shockers hit two threes to start the second half to double up La Salle, 44-22, that seemed like the right time to call it a season. Instead, La Salle began to contest everything around the rim, run the ball the other way and scored 10 points in 2 minutes. It was a reminder of what they had been in the best of times. But there simply was not enough time and this was too tough an opponent.

Wright and Garland had 16 points each, and Galloway finished with 11.

"Wichita State won the game in the first," Giannini said. "They just overwhelmed us. We have a great group here . . . The season is over, but the way we help each other is not over."

La Salle had played its first two NCAA games from ahead and way ahead. The great shooting masked the defensive issues with such a small lineup. Now, they were playing from behind, way behind. And, given that the Shockers were the much deeper team (no player averages 30 minutes), it was going to require energy La Salle's top six really did not have.

They did play those three games over 5 days in two time zones and then skipped a time zone when they came west on Monday.

Historically, they were trying to become the first No. 13 seed to win a Sweet 16 game. More important, they were trying to continue to rewrite recent La Salle history. They had already done a lot of that, with one more NCAA win than all those teams that had played since the legendary Tom Gola's career ended in 1955.

Anybody who was in Gola Arena on Dec. 29, 2010, would not have believed any of this possible. That was the night La Salle did the impossible. They lost to Towson, a team its coach Pat Kennedy had insisted before the game could not win. He was wrong on that game, but he wasn't wrong. Towson never won another game that season and Kennedy got fired. La Salle's season was a mess of players who did not care or were interested in the wrong things.

But two freshmen guards, Tyreek Duren and Sam Mills, played through the madness and came out the other side. They were joined last season by Galloway, Wright. Zack and D.J. Peterson, this season by Garland.

Everything changed - 21 wins last season, 24 more this season, a record 11 Atlantic 10 wins and the precious NCAA wins that will be the lasting memory from this season of rebirth.

"It's a great group of guys," Galloway said. "Everybody knows what it feels like. They were by far one of the most physical teams we played . . . They won every 50-50 ball."

The three-point math that had carried them so far was not enough on the final night. It had more than enough to get them be one of the Final 14, outscoring teams by 354 points from the arc on the season and 36 in the first three NCAA games.

The lane math got them on the final night. That was always going to be the way it ended. But the ending is never more than a part of the story.