Men's Basketball | November 25, 2022
PHILADELPHIA — After playing in Jamaica last week, the La Salle men's basketball team looks to get back to .500 on the season when it hosts Binghamton in non-conference action Saturday at Tom Gola Arena at TruMark Financial Center. Tip-off is set for 2 p.m.
The game will be televised on ESPN+, with Kale Beers, Rich Prendergast, and Bron Holland delivering the play-by-play and color. Explorers fans can listen to the broadcast through GoExplorers.com/watch.
NEWS & NOTES
- The Explorers will go up against the Bearcats for the third time in program history. The two teams played a home-and-home series back in 2009-10 and 2010-11, with both game taking place on Jan. 2 of each season. Binghamton won the first game, 66-61, but La Salle secured an 87-64 victory in the second meeting.
- The Explorers are coming off a 69-62 loss to Georgetown in the consolation game of the Jersey Mike's Jamaica Classic in Montego Bay, Jamaica. The Explorers came back from a 20-point halftime deficit to tie the game at 62 with 2:14 left, but the Hoyas pulled away in the final minutes for the win.
- 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 582-328 career record. With La Salle's win over Wagner on Nov. 12, 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).
- The Explorers will be looking to produce a winning season for the first time since 2016-17, when they went 15-15 and 9-9 in Atlantic 10 play.
THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME
- The Explorers have performed well at Tom Gola Arena, producing winning records at home in five of the last six seasons. The Explorers have gone 47-35 in Gola Arena during that span.
- The Explorers have won their last four games at Gola Arena dating back to last season, when they topped Dayton (62-60 on Feb. 26) and Saint Joseph's (49-48 on March 2), respectively.
- The Explorers will look to win their first three home games of the season for the first time since 2017-18, when they topped Saint Peter's (61-40 on Nov. 11, 2017), South Alabama (81-73 on Nov. 16, 2017), and Temple (87-83 on Nov. 26, 2017)
- Dunphy will be looking to become the eighth head coach in La Salle history to win his first three home games as a head coach.
BIG GAME BRANTLEY
- Brantley is coming off a week in which he was named to the Jamaica Classic All-Tournament team for his performances against Wake Forest and Georgetown. The sophomore guard had 20 points, 13 of which came against Georgetown, 15 rebounds and seven assists in the Explorers' two games.
- Brantley posted his best performance in a La Salle uniform against Wagner on Nov. 12, 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 Nov. 15, 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 dished out six assists for the third straight game against Wake Forest.
- Brantley currently ranks fifth in the Atlantic-10 in assists per game with 4.2, 10th in the conference in assists/turnover ratio at 1.2, and 15th in the conference in points per game at 14.2 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 BINGHAMTON
- The Bearcats are 3-2 on the season after beating Cazenovia College (87-56), Marist (78-75), and Columbia (81-79), respectively. The Bearcats' win against Columbia came on Wednesday night, when they scored six points in the final 5.6 seconds of the game to earn the victory.
- The Bearcats' two losses were to Maryland (76-52) and Sacred Heart (75-60). In those games, Binghamton allowed 75.5 points per game.
- The Bearcats have four players averaging double figures in scoring. Jacob Falko leads the way at 13.2 points per game. Miles Gibson follows Falko at 12.4, Armon Harried is next at 11.5, and John McGriff is right behind him with 10.8.
- Binghamton is led by Levell Sanders, who is in his second season as head coach. Sanders led the Bearcats to the America East Conference semifinals last year after they were picked to finish last in the conference. Sanders has a 15-19 record as the Bearcats' head coach.
