PHILADELPHIA – Although the losing result is what hurts Darris Nichols the most, he\u2019s seeing improvement from his Explorers as La Salle turns the page on 2025, and gets into conference play.<\/p>\n
After three straight losses, including a 52-point thrashing at the hands of second-ranked Michigan last week, the Explorers led for a large majority of Wednesday\u2019s matinee against 12-1 George Mason. However, their offense cooled off in the second half, and Tony Skinn\u2019s group clawed their way back to win, handing La Salle an 80-75 loss in Nichols\u2019 inaugural Atlantic-10 game.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to make better decisions down the stretch,\u201d Nichols said. \u201cFrom the four-minute media timeout on, some of the decisions we made weren\u2019t great. Offensively and defensively for the most part, I told the guys in the locker room that we\u2019re getting better.\u201d<\/p>\n
The La Salle program is and will continue to be a work in progress as Nichols navigates his first season at the helm at 20th and Olney. At a program that many deem to be a difficult one to win at, Nichols is still laying the foundation for his vision of what the Explorers can be. However, the injury bug has ravaged La Salle in the early portion of the season, and as a result, a laundry list of players have been relegated to the training table rather than the court.<\/p>\n
Couple this with a roster that features just one returning player in Eric Acker from a season ago, and it\u2019s only made things more difficult for the Explorers program as a whole.<\/p>\n
However, despite all of the off the court stuff, as well as taking their lumps on the hardwood, Nichols sees that his team is in a better spot than when they started their season nearly two months ago.<\/p>\n
Turnovers were a thorn in the side of La Salle in the non-conference portion of their season. The Explorers were 342nd in offensive turnover percentage, according to KenPom, entering Wednesday\u2019s game. That can be attributed to the missed time by both graduate student Truth Harris, who missed eight games after an injury in their season opener, and Old Dominion transfer Jaden Johnson, who had missed La Salle\u2019s first 13 games before suiting up for the first time Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Johnson dished out five assists and recorded zero turnovers, playing 26 minutes and getting the starting nod in his first game back from injury. For the game, La Salle gave the ball away just four times, not only a season low, but just the second time all year that the Explorers had single digit turnovers. Although George Mason registered zero <\/strong>turnovers of their own, Nichols is more focused on the improvement in the turnover department that his team has made.<\/p>\n \u201cMason had zero turnovers, and that\u2019s hard to do, but I told our team that I see it as a bigger accomplishment that we only had four turnovers from us,\u201d Nichols said. \u201dWe\u2019ve cleaned up a lot of issues, we\u2019ve just got to make better decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n With Johnson not playing, more responsibilities have been delegated to freshman Ashton Walker, who\u2019s logged 11 starts this year, and been thrown into the fire early. Walker\u2019s done an admirable job for a young player, but Johnson\u2019s impact just being out there on the floor is huge. Nichols recruited Johnson hard while he was at Fork Union Military Academy in Virginia, hoping Johnson would play for him at Radford. After Johnson chose Old Dominion out of high school and started 34 of 35 games for the Monarchs a season ago, Nichols is glad that he\u2019s on his team now, valuing the skills that he possesses at the point guard spot.<\/p>\n \u201cHe plays off two feet, gets the ball in the paint, and gets the other team in rotations,\u201d said Nichols. \u201cHe\u2019s extremely vocal. The intangible part of being a point guard, he does that. He understands what we want. Especially when we have new guys, and even with him being a new guy, he understands what we want to accomplish.\u201d<\/p>\n Also returning from an injury absence was redshirt junior Jerome Brewer Jr., making his return to action after missing the previous five games.<\/p>\n Brewer Jr. scored a season high 21 points, and made three of his six threes, all coming in the second half. Not only is Brewer an offensive engine that the Explorers missed, but for a team that\u2019s sub 300th in the country in 3-point percentage as a team, his floor spacing is much needed too.<\/p>\n Brewer really carried the Explorers\u2019 offense in the second half. The Camden, N.J., native\u2019s three made threes were the only ones that La Salle had in the second half as a team. Additionally, Brewer scored 17 of his 21 points in the second frame, which was over half of La Salle\u2019s points. He made seven of his team\u2019s 10 field goals in the final 20 minutes. Nichols is happy to have his scoring forward back.<\/p>\n \u201cHe can space the floor,\u201d Nichols said. \u201cWe can run more three out, two in and get more guys space to get downhill. We\u2019ve had limitations with injuries, but with Brewer back we can play more guards than we\u2019ve had in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n Nichols\u2019 desired play style hasn\u2019t been a secret since he took the La Salle job in March. He wants to relentlessly crash the glass, get to the free-throw line and wear the opponent down playing more guys than the team on the other sideline.<\/p>\n La Salle out rebounded George Mason for the game and won 14-8 on the offensive glass.<\/p>\n Nichols\u2019 target number for free throws attempted in a game is 25. The Explorers got there 27 times and converted on 19 of them.<\/p>\n Lastly, La Salle went 10 deep in their rotation, matching the same number of players that George Mason played. If La Salle didn\u2019t have injuries pile up, Nichols would\u2019ve in all likelihood played more. La Salle had a 31-27 advantage in bench points.<\/p>\n Although it\u2019s not showing up in the win column, the play style that Nichols wants on display was evident on Wednesday, making the Explorers\u2019 first-year head coach feel a little bit better despite not getting the result that he wanted.<\/p>\n You can look at La Salle and see that it\u2019s 4-10. Nichols will be the very first to tell you he hates losing, but there were more encouraging signs in the loss to a George Mason team that nearly won the Atlantic 10 tournament a season ago, and now at 13-1, is off to their best start in school history. La Salle will be underdogs way more times than not this season, but it showed the fight necessary to challenge the teams that figure to be at the top of the Atlantic 10.<\/p>\n \u201cI hate losing, but I feel better about how we played and our spirit,\u201d said Nichols. \u201cI\u2019m more positive right now, but we\u2019ve got a quick turnaround here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA – Although the losing result is what hurts Darris Nichols the most, he\u2019s seeing improvement from his…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":485069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[145397,1582,276,2961,224,5337],"class_list":{"0":"post-485068","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-atlantic-10","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-la","12":"tag-los-angeles","13":"tag-losangeles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115820719527351223","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}