KANSAS CITY, Mo. —
Don't stand around weeping for the Atlantic-10, kids. You just might end
up getting punched in the mouth.
"When I
transferred from South Carolina, I didn't know how good the Atlantic-10
was," La Salle guard Ramon Galloway said after his 13th-seeded Explorers
stunned No. 4 seed Kansas State, 63-61, in the second round of the NCAA
Tournament. "Playing in there for two years, it's a game every day.
You've got to fight every day, every second, every
moment."
How good is the A-10? Six games so
far in Bracketville. And, so far, six
victories.
The list of postseason victims
includes more ballyhooed representatives from the ACC (North Carolina
State) and the Big 12 (K-State). The league's two best teams, Saint
Louis and Virginia Commonwealth, were widely tapped as sleeper Final
Four picks — and the Billikens and Rams looked every bit the part in
their NCAA openers, winning by an average margin of 33
points.
Hey, no wonder Temple, Butler and
Xavier want to get the hell out.
"The other
thing I told them (on Selection Sunday)," Explorers coach John Giannini
recalled, "because they felt bad about losing to Butler, Saint Louis, I
told them, ‘You're far better prepared for this tournament than you
realize. You just lost to two potential Final Four teams. You're not
going to play against anyone in this tournament that's tougher than
Saint Louis or Butler."
La Salle looked
every bit battle-tested Friday, stunning a partisan-purple Wildcat crowd
at Sprint Center by racing to a 24-9 lead, taking an 18-point lead into
halftime, and then surviving a furious K-State comeback in the second
half.
The Explorers did it the way the
Wildcats usually do it — with defense. K-State was 0 for 8 from the
floor over the final four minutes of the contest, including a contested,
desperate behind-the-backboard jumper from point guard Angel Rodriguez
along the baseline with two seconds left that effectively sealed the
upset.
K-State had just one field goal over
the final 5:16, thanks in part to defensive adjustments on the
ball-screens that had been chewing La Salle up in the second
half.
"I was matched up with their ‘4' man
(Shane Southwell), and he faces the basketball a lot," Explorers guard
D.J. Peterson explained. "He's 6-foot-6, I'm 6-5. We knew if we switched
screens, that (it) was going to mess them up. So that's what we
did."
With that, La Salle officially joined
the "Bracket Busters" club, alongside Florida Gulf Coast, Oregon, Cal,
Harvard and Ole Miss, the Explorers' surprising dance partner for
Sunday's third-round matchup in Kansas
City.
For a few hours on Friday, La Salle —
in its first NCAA tourney since 1992 and a multi-game winner in the
Dance for the first time since 1955 — sat at the center of the hoops
universe. Guard Tyreek Duren's smart phone sat beeping in his locker
stall as congratulatory message after congratulatory message rolled
in.
"Right now, I'm at 86," Duren said,
looking down at the phone. "Sometimes, I don't even get to read most of
the messages. It's been like that the last week. After the two wins,
after the one we got the other night, and after this game, it's been
crazy."
Following a victory over Boise
State in a First Four matchup at Dayton on Wednesday, the Explorers got
on a charter flight in southern Ohio at roughly 1 o' clock Thursday
morning. The entourage landed in Kansas City at roughly 3 a.m. local
time, and started breaking down K-State game film during lunch Thursday
afternoon.
"People (watching on) television
might not really realize it, but people who actually played, we realize
it, because it starts taking a toll on your body," Duren said. "And you
start feeling it in the second
half."
Still, the Explorers managed to
soldier through the fatigue, especially on the defensive end. With their
small lineup and chip-on-the-shoulder mentality, La Salle harkens back a
bit to the Cinderella 2010-11 VCU team that rolled from the first round
all the way to the Final Four.
"We don't
want to be the next anybody, we want to make a name for ourselves,"
Duren allowed. "We want to be La Salle ... we want to be that team that
everybody doubted and nobody had hopes for. And we want to show
everybody that we shouldn't have been playing in the play-in
game."
And, sure enough, one of the last
teams in is one of the last teams still standing. The Explorers' 23 wins
are the most for the program in a single campaign since the 1989-90
team went 30-2 — a squad that included Wooden Award winner Lionel "The
L-Train" Simmons at forward. Simmons, now 44, sat in a far corner of the
La Salle locker room in a blue Phillies cap Friday, grinning from ear
to ear like a proud uncle.
"I'm sweating, I
tell you," chuckled Simmons, who would later play seven seasons with
the NBA's Sacramento Kings. "I'm just so happy for these guys, man.
These guys worked hard ... these guys have a lot of confidence, a lot of
Philly cockiness in them, which is
good."
"We think we could make a run,"
Peterson continued. "Because the conference we play in all year prepared
us for this moment, right now."
Which, if
you're an A-10 fan, is the most bittersweet part of an otherwise stellar
first tourney weekend. Butler and Xavier are departing in late June for
the new, basketball-first Big East. Temple, meanwhile, is jumping for
the football-first offshoot of what used to be the Big
East.
"It shows the A-10 is a great
conference this year," Explorers guard Tyorne Garland said, "and I'm
kind of mad they're breaking it up a little
bit."
And he's not alone, either. If this
really is the final bow for the A-10 as we know it, it's not leaving
college basketball's biggest stage without a few encores
first.
You can follow Sean Keeler on Twitter @seankeeler or email him at
seanmkeeler@gmail.com
