PHILADELPHIA - In a tightly contested game wire-to-wire, La Salle men's basketball was able to squeak out a victory against Southern Indiana, 79-77, on Saturday afternoon inside Tom Gola Arena. With the win, the Explorers move to 4-0 to start the year for the first time since the 2014-15 season and, with the victory, head coach Fran Dunphy is now one win away from his 600th career win.
 
COACH DUNPHY ON THE WIN

• "Obviously a real good win for us. I don't think it was an artistic success but a real good win. Our defense has to improve, we have to get better, that being said I thought Southern Indiana played well and they did what they needed to do, they made shots at difficult times, but our defense has to improve."

HOW IT HAPPENED

• Khalil Brantley went off for a career-high 30 points on 10-for-16 shooting as well as going 7-for-8 from the charity stripe to go along with five rebounds.
• Daeshon Shepherd continued his strong start to the season, dropping 17 points on 7-for-11 shooting from the field and 3-for-5 from deep as well as grabbing eight rebounds.
• Andres Marrero didn't make a basket the entire game but nailed two pairs of clutch free throws at the end of the game to give him seven points on 7-for-7 foul shooting.
• Anwar Gill and Rokas Jocius both finished with nine points on the day. Gill had a game-high six assists as well.

INSIDE THE NUMBERS

• The Explorers went 18-for-21 from the free throw line, posing an 86-percent clip.
• Another game, another positive assist-to-turnover ratio for La Salle, going 13:7.
• The Explorers went 5-for-9 from three in the second half, good for 56 percent.

UP NEXT

•  The Explorers will continue the Blue Devil Challenge on Tuesday night facing off against No. 9 Duke inside Cameron Indoor Stadium.
• The game will be broadcast on the ACC Network with tip-off scheduled for 7:00.

COACH DUNPHY ON THE NEXT GAME AT DUKE

• "We'll go to shootaround that morning and walk around and get a sense of how important Duke is to the whole fabric of College Basketball and how important Coach K is. Any coach would say to you that you're in charge of memories and experiences, and so this is a memory that will be a great experience, with that being said we got to be very very tough mentally and focused on every possession, it's obviously a phenomenal basketball program."