Men's Basketball | November 17, 2022

MONTEGO BAY, JAMAICA — The La Salle men's basketball team has its eyes on extending its winning streak to three straight when it plays Wake Forest in the first round of the Jersey Mike's Jamaica Classic on Friday at the Montego Bay Convention Centre. Tip-off is set for 2 p.m.
 
The game will be televised on CBS Sports Network, with Steve Wolf and Dave Ryan on the call. Explorers fans can follow the team on Twitter @LaSalle_MBB and Instagram @lasallembb.
 
NEWS & NOTES

• The Jamaica Classic features eight teams from eight conferences and they will go head-to-head in a round robin tournament. Following this game, the Explorers take on either Georgetown or Loyola Marymount on Sunday.
• The Explorers will go up against Wake Forest for only the third time in program history. The Explorers split the pair of meetings they had against the Demon Deacons, as they won the first game, 76-59, in 1953 but fell to the ACC foe, 95-90, in 1974.
• The Explorers are coming off a 72-60 win over Queens University of Charlotte in the on-campus round of the Jersey Mike's Jamaica Classic. Senior forward Fousseyni Drame led the way for La Salle, scoring a career-high 22 points off the bench.
• The Explorers are led by head coach Fran Dunphy, the all-time winningest coach in Philadelphia Big 5 history. A 1970 La Salle graduate, Dunphy sports a 582-326 career record. With La Salle's win over Wagner last Saturday, Dunphy became the first Big 5 coach to win a game with three Big 5 teams (won 310 games with Penn and 270 with Temple).
• La Salle will look to start the season with wins in three of its first four games for the first time since 2017, when it went 3-1 to start that year.
• The Explorers will be looking to produce a winning season for the first time since 2015-16, when they went 15-15 and 9-9 in Atlantic 10 play.

EXPLORING THE WORLD

• The Explorers' trip to Jamaica is their first one outside of the U.S. and its territories since December 2017, when they played in the Basketball Hall of Fame Belfast Classic against Towson and Holy Cross in Belfast, Ireland. The Explorers fell to Towson, 67-60, but bounced back to defeat Holy Cross, 58-54, in the second game.
• The Explorers have played internationally two other times in their storied history. The first time was in the 1990-91 season when they played Baylor and Idaho in the Daiwa Ball in Tokyo, Japan. The second time was 20 years later in 2010-11 when they went to Cancun, Mexico to play in the Cancun Classic against Providence and Missouri.
• The Explorers have a great record in their four games played internationally, going 3-1. In Japan, they swept Baylor (87-82) and Idaho (83-61), respectively. In Mexico, they topped Providence, 84-73, but fell to Missouri by an 83-71 count.
• The Explorers have also traveled to the U.S. Virgin Islands (four times) and Puerto Rico (once). In the U.S. Virgin Islands, they played in the Paradise Jam Tournament, going 4-7 in their 11 total games in that event. In Puerto Rico, they lost all three games played there to open 1995-96 season.

BIG GAME BRANTLEY

• Brantley posted his best performance in a La Salle uniform last Saturday against Wagner, scoring a career-high 22 points while handing out six assists. The sophomore guard eclipsed his previous career-high mark, scoring 18 points in 34 minutes in an A-10 matchup against VCU last season.
• In the final 12 minutes against Wagner, the Bronx, N.Y. native scored 12 points. He also shot a career-best 12-for-15 from the free-throw line.
• In La Salle's win over Queens on Tuesday night, Brantley had 18 points, giving him the best two-game scoring stretch of his career after netting 40 total points. He also had six assists to give him back-to-back games in which he had six assists or more for the first time in his career.
• Brantley currently ranks seventh in the Atlantic-10 in assists per game with 4.7 and eighth in the conference in points per game with a team-high 17.0 per game.
• In his first career start a year ago, Brantley nearly went the distance in the overtime defeat to St. Bonaventure. He played in 42 minutes, scoring 10 points while grabbing a career-high eight assists, five of them in the first half.

SCOUTING WAKE FOREST

• The Demon Deacons are 3-0 on the season after beating Fairfield, Georgia, and Utah Valley, respectively. All three wins came at Wake Forest.
• In their win over Utah Valley, the Demon Deacons saw Tyree Appleby hit a game-winning three-pointer at the buzzer to lift them to a 68-65 victory in overtime.
• Wake Forest has four players scoring in double figures. Appleby leads the way, averaging 17.7 points per game. Daivien Williamson has scored 16.0 points per game, Andrew Carr has added 12.7 ppg, and Cameron Hildreth has chipped in 10.3 per contest.
• The Demon Deacons have outscored their opponents in the first half by a 103-76 margin. However, their opponents have outscored them by a 113-108 margin.