It certainly did not feel like baseball weather. Fans were bundled up in coats and blankets and hand warmers were the most coveted item of the day as mounds of snow sat behind the dugouts.
Despite the 35 degree weather, there was an undeniable excitement in the air at Hank DeVincent Field — and for good reason.
La Salle baseball was back for the first time in 1,728 days.
The Explorer program shut down following the 2020-21 season but returned Friday for the first time since May 9, 2021, to face Maryland Eastern Shore. In front of a dedicated crowd braving the cold, La Salle beat the Hawks 27-10 to welcome the program back to the diamond.
“This is almost six years in the making for me and two years in the making in this most recent run,” said head coach David Miller. “It’s just a lot of hard work with these kids.”
La Salle’s on-field performance certainly left a strong first impression for fans, many of whom were getting their first look at Explorer baseball. They recorded 19 hits, led by second baseman Daniel Perez, who went 4-4 with a home run and three RBIs. Right handed pitcher Shawn Karpaitis threw five innings and gave up one run in relief after UMES tied the game at eight in the second inning.
While the outcome is a bright spot for the program, the atmosphere brought even more excitement.
A major tenet of La Salle’s three-step plan to bring back baseball was getting the field up to Division I standards. The program made sure there was new padding in the outfield and got the scoreboard up to date. The season-opener was not initially supposed to be in North Philadelphia, but issues with UMES’ field moved the first series of the year to La Salle.
And the Explorer faithful were ready to support their program.
La Salle outfielder Kosei Suzuki reacts after scoring during the first inning against the Maryland Eastern Shore Hawks at Hank DeVincent Field.
Fans filled bleachers behind the home dugout and parents occupied the grass along the first base line.
“There’s a lot of excitement around the program,” said Ed Litsky, father of freshman pitcher Josh Litsky. “I know from a parent perspective there’s a lot of excitement. The coaches and players seem really into it. It’s just amazing.”
The baseball team also got immense support from fellow student athletes. They helped fill the bleachers and the standing area to provide a boost to the players and even offered some heckling of the Hawks.
“Other student athletes on campus were all very supportive today, coming to my office in the morning and wishing us luck,” Miller said. “I know I saw rugby out here, girls lacrosse, soccer and a couple of fraternities heckling a bit.”
The players enjoyed a chance to usher in a new era of La Salle baseball. Some, like center fielder Chase Swain, had been waiting since 2019 to play for the Explorers, while others, like Perez, followed Miller after he raved about his time at La Salle.
“Coach Miller always talked about [La Salle] at Manhattan,” Perez said. “I knew the program had shut down and he has a lot of good words to say about this program. I knew he wanted to come back here and it sucked that when I hit the portal last year, I probably would have come here if there was a team. It’s just super special to be able to play for him.”
La Salle’s Jayden Novak (left) celebrates with teammate Chase Swain during the fifth inning against Maryland Eastern Shore on Friday.
Friday wasn’t about the past. La Salle is excited about its future and a chance to kick-starting a new era.
“It’s a great day for La Salle Athletics and it’s a great day for La Salle baseball,” Miller said. “[The fan support] is Philly in a nutshell.”
Every once in a while, Kevin Willard loves when the shot clock expires before a Villanova shot attempt.
There really is a time and place for everything.
“Everyone will say, ‘You’re nuts,’” Willard said Tuesday night after Villanova rallied late to beat Marquette. “It takes 30 seconds; it sets up our defense. The worst thing you can do is come down and jack up a shot with 2 seconds on the shot clock, long rebound, your defense isn’t set. I’d rather have a shot-clock violation, set my defense up, have them work for 25 seconds, and then take 30 seconds and the game’s over.”
Villanova has taken its share of violations in the second half of victories this season. There were two during a 12-point win over Seton Hall on Feb. 4 while the Wildcats held leads of 14 and 12 inside of five minutes. They took one vs. Providence up by 19 points with four minutes left. They took one vs. Butler while ahead by 12 with 2½ minutes to go. And they had three during their Big East opener on Dec. 23, when they built a big lead over Seton Hall on the road and won by eight.
To be clear, there were no such violations during Tuesday’s win. So how did we get to this topic? Willard was asked after the game about tempo and whether he thought the team could play a little faster. The Wildcats are ranked 337th by KenPom’s adjusted tempo metric and 296th in average possessions per game (68.4).
Willard, who has the Wildcats at 19-5 overall and 10-3 in the Big East entering Saturday’s game at Creighton, is a passionate talker of tempo. He went on a mini rant about the subject in April at his introductory news conference at Villanova. He focuses on defensive tempo, he explained then, the amount of time it takes for an opponent to get off a shot. On the offensive side, the difference between shot speed from top to bottom is only a matter of a few seconds, he said.
“You know the difference between the 20th fastest team and us?” Willard asked Tuesday. “1.6 seconds.”
By average number of possessions, the difference between Villanova at 297th and the 100th-ranked team (Miami) is just four possessions.
Freshman point guard Acaden Lewis is charged with setting Villanova’s tempo on offense.
“I have a young team, and when we get up I’m going to control the ball and take the air out of the ball,” Willard said. “That’s one of the reasons why our tempo is so low is if you watch any time we’ve gotten up more than 12, I’ve taken the air out of the ball and we have run the clock down. One of the easiest ways to lose leads is to take quick shots.
“I think we play pretty fast. It’s not like he walks the ball up,” Willard said, pointing to freshman point guard Acaden Lewis. “It’s not like we’re ever walking the ball up. It’s 1.6 seconds. Everyone gets stuck on that tempo s—.”
Less than a month of regular-season basketball remains, so it feels like a good time to round up who could win Big 5 awards.
Let’s start with the coaches. The easy answer here is Villanova sweeping. Willard is on his way to stopping the three-year NCAA drought on the men’s side. Denise Dillon has her fifth 20-win season in six years as Wildcats coach. But those are the obvious answers partially because they coach teams that entered the season with at-large NCAA Tournament chances.
But how about Mountain MacGillivray, the La Salle women’s coach? The Explorers went 4-15 in the Atlantic 10 last season. They’ve nearly doubled that total so far in 2025-26 and still have five games left. And what about Adam Fisher? The Temple men’s coach had to rebuild another roster in the offseason and has the Owls at 7-4 in the American Conference and in the mix. Or Steve Donahue, who stepped into a weird situation at St. Joseph’s, got off to a slow start, and has the Hawks in fourth place in the A-10?
La Salle’s Ashleigh Connor is guarded by St. Joseph’s Rhian Stokes on Jan. 28.
As for player of the year on the men’s side, Villanova’s Tyler Perkins and Lewis have good arguments, as do Penn’s Ethan Roberts, Derek Simpson of St. Joe’s, and Temple’s Derrian Ford. On the women’s side, it might be Villanova sophomore Jasmine Bascoe’s award to lose. But La Salle’s Ashleigh Connor is having a great season, as is Drexel’s Amaris Baker and Gabby Casey of St. Joe’s.
The Villanova women won by 40 Wednesday night at Xavier and Bascoe reached the 1,000-point plateau in less than two full seasons. The Wildcats are rolling. They’re 13-3 in the Big East and firmly in second place, two games clear of Seton Hall in the loss column.
But they’re also firmly on the NCAA Tournament bubble. ESPN’s latest bracketology had the Wildcats as a No. 10 seed and in the “last four byes” group. The projected field capped just six spots behind them.
Villanova coach Denise Dillon with her star guard, Jasmine Bascoe.
Like the men, the women are in Omaha, Neb., this weekend. They play a Creighton team on Sunday that they already beat by 10 at home. It’s not a great time to have a slip-up, because after that it’s the annual home game vs. No. 1 UConn, which is undefeated and already beat Villanova by 49. Just two games are on the schedule after that: a home game vs. fourth-place Marquette and a road showdown at Seton Hall. Then comes the conference tournament.
Since we last took stock of the Big 5 men’s teams, a few more got on the positive side of .500 in league play, which brings a better possibility of running the table come conference tournament time.
What’s Torvik’s math — which is based on thousands of simulations — for the rest of the pack?
Penn: 10.1%
Drexel: 3%
Temple: 2.9%
St. Joe’s: 2.6%
La Salle: 0.1%
The Big 5’s streak of no men’s teams looks like it’s ending. Just don’t count on Villanova having any company at the dance.
Kevin Ibach reached a milestone as Tampa Bay Rays assistant general manager in September 2020. The Rays defeated the Toronto Blue Jays in the wild-card round, marking the first time in Ibach’s 20-year career in baseball that he made it past the opening round. Before the team opened its next series against the New York Yankees, though, Ibach received news that crushed his mood.
La Salle, his alma mater, was shutting down its baseball program after the 2020-21 school year. Ibach played middle infield for the Explorers from 1996-2000, but the program that helped forge his baseball career was suddenly on its way out.
The Rays reached their second World Series that year, but the success was stained for Ibach.
“I have a ring to this day from that journey and at the same time, it was the low point,” Ibach said. “A program that I cared so much about. Four years that were instrumental in my life and my development that probably led me to my job today. Getting that email that they were shutting the doors was pretty disheartening.”
When Ashwin Puri took over as La Salle’s athletic director in July 2023, he ensured that those doors did not stay closed. With a three-phase plan centered on facility upgrades, fundraising and fan experience, Explorers baseball was officially welcomed back in April 2024, targeting a return this year.
“What I soon realized after being here for two or three months was that every other conversation was about baseball,” Puri said. “I don’t know if it was fate or chance, but I felt an amazing sense of pride and connection to the university. A lot of people love baseball and care about baseball.”
La Salle spent 2025 preparing to throw its first pitch in four years. Now, the program’s return is right around the corner. The Explorers will open their season against Maryland Eastern Shore on Friday (2 p.m.) at Hank DeVincent Field.
La Salle baseball players practicing Wednesday at Hank De Vincent Field.
Coach David Miller constructed a roster that is ready to write a new chapter of La Salle baseball while remembering the history that brought the Explorers to this point.
“It’s going to be a lot of hard work that everybody collectively did to make this happen,” Miller said. “That first pitch, hopefully that first win, it’s going to be a great day for La Salle athletics.”
Bringing a vision to life
The main step in getting the program off the ground was improving the stadium and facilities while raising the necessary funds. An alumni advisory board formed to lead the operation helped focus on alumni outreach, and after a few months the progress in donations became notable.
“When baseball came back, there was a small group of us that were excited to have the program back,” said Bill Watts, who played at La Salle from 1991-94 and serves on the advisory board. “Ashwin reached out and asked, ‘Would you be willing to be part of the rising here?’ I thought about it for a while and talked it over with some of my teammates and decided if we did it, we needed to do it the right way.”
The feedback and excitement from alumni have been encouraging. More than 200 former players and alumni attended a “La Salle first pitch” dinner as an official welcome back for the program. While the program may have taken a few years off, the history and tradition carried on.
The Explorers held alumni games in 2023 and 2024 at Hank DeVincent Field. La Salle made its conference tournament nine times before the program shut down. In its last season, La Salle finished with 32 wins, the most in program history.
It is important, Puri said, that the program’s history is remembered in a new era.
“I think history is a big part of it, but we also want to do things a little different this time,” Puri said. “We are going to take baseball very seriously. We are going to invest and we want to compete.”
Building the team
To put a team back on the field, Puri and the advisory board knew it started with one man: Miller.
Miller was named La Salle’s head coach in 2018 and had the Explorers on an upward trajectory before the program shut down. They went 14-41 in his first season, then improved to 25-31 in 2019. After a shortened 2020 season, Miller led La Salle to one of its best performances in program history in 2021, finishing 32-21. Miller was named Atlantic 10 coach of the year and believed he was on the verge of accomplishing something special.
That momentum was halted when the program shut down.
Miller coached at Manhattan for two years before he got the offer to return to La Salle. Despite having to take a year off from coaching in 2025, the former Penn Charter coach decided it was worth it.
David Miller returned to La Salle as the head coach, after serving at the helm for four seasons before the program was cut.
“There’s just something about this place that draws me,” Miller said. “It’s like home to me. When my time is up here, I want La Salle baseball to be a destination baseball program in the northeast. And I don’t see why we can’t be.”
With Miller back at the helm, the next step was putting the roster together. It was no easy task, considering he was starting from scratch.
La Salle netted the 17th-ranked recruiting class by Perfect Game in 2025, bringing in 36 commitments. Next, its attention turned to the transfer portal.
The Explorers brought in seniors who were looking for one more season to play college baseball or underclassmen seeking a fresh start. For utility man Chase Swain, a transfer from West Virginia, playing at La Salle brings his college career full circle.
“I was committed here for like two years in high school,” said Swain, who played at Woodstown High. “… [The program getting cut] threw everything into a tailspin for me, recruiting-wise. So this place coming back, it was always in the back of my mind. I wonder what it would have been like there. I stayed loyal and the second that they brought it back, it was like a light bulb went off in my head, and I thought I would really enjoy playing there.”
Underdog mentality
With a completely new team, the players understand that expectations from the outside are low. The Explorers know a restarted program won’t be picked as a preseason favorite in the Atlantic 10 Conference, but they are using that as a chip on their shoulders and carrying an underdog mentality into the season.
Because of the weather, La Salle has been forced to travel about an hour away to find an indoor facility for practice. The team has embraced the challenges.
La Salle coach David Miller says his team is “more excited now than ever to play.”
“I think we can take the motivation of being a gritty program because we don’t have all the facilities and everything that a lot of other schools have in Division I baseball,” said shortstop Justin Szestowicki, a transfer from Elon out of Kingsway High. “But I think we take that as an advantage. We have more of a chip on our shoulder, just knowing that, based on our opportunities to create a grittier play style, instead of just being taken care of all the time, we have to take some accountability for ourselves to be successful.”
The players and coaches counted down the days until Friday, when they can say La Salle baseball is back and the two-year rebuilding process has come to fruition.
Miller is ready to show the college baseball world who the Explorers are.
“You’re seeing all these high-profile fans from Tennessee and LSU saying, ‘La — who?’” Miller said. “And we embrace that. That’s now my hashtag for the year. We’re going to show you who it is. These kids are more excited now than ever to play, because all the vision that we talked about, and getting them to see what’s coming, is here.”
Ibach added: “I think that a lot of players who will be playing can take that inspiration to show the world, show the city, that La Salle baseball’s back on the map.”
Steve Donahue sat back in his chair, a smile stretched across his face. St. Joseph’s had just beaten La Salle, 67-58, on Saturday, the Hawks’ sixth win in their last seven, and Dasear Haskins, who made six three-pointers and tied a career high with 20 points, was talking about the “A to B mentality” Donahue has drilled into his team.
“I told my mom I will A to B to practice the other day,” said Haskins, a redshirt sophomore who played at Camden High. “It’s like a lifestyle to me now. I think the guys are treating it like that.”
The motto is simple enough: “Whatever A is, you have to get to B,” Donahue said later. A can be something good. A can be something bad. St. Joe’s has just gotten a lot better at the getting to B, and it’s not surprising that it took a couple of months for that to happen, for the Hawks to look like the sum of all their parts, considering all that has happened since September.
Former coach Billy Lange abruptly left for the NBA. The roster that he worked hard to build would be playing for a new coach, Donahue, whom Lange brought on as his top assistant after the Delaware County native was fired following his ninth season at Penn. New coach, new roster, awkward timing. The Hawks started 2-3, had some ups and downs, then by mid-December their leading scorer, Deuce Jones, was no longer with the program.
They started Atlantic 10 play by losing their first two games. Then came a team meeting. Then came six wins in seven tries, a stretch that could be a perfect 7-for-7 if not for late-game execution on the road against a good VCU team.
Zoom out a little bit, and on a macro level this version of the Hawks is the B to whatever A was after they allowed Davidson to leave Hagan Arena with a 62-56 win on Jan. 3. The season could have gone sideways then, but it hasn’t. St. Joe’s is 14-8 overall and 6-3 in the A-10 and in fourth place in the conference.
St. Joseph’s coach Steve Donahue points to the student section after a 67-58 win against La Salle.
Perhaps, finally, Donahue’s team is taking on a little bit of his own personality, playing the way Donahue wants the Hawks to play.
“I like to think that,” Donahue said Saturday. But he also wanted to credit Lange for laying a foundation. Lange, Donahue said, “built a really good program here with really good people.” He pointed to the consecutive 20-win seasons and the program’s footing in the A-10.
“I’m grateful that I walked into this and have guys like [Haskins],” Donahue said. “That being said, I saw things that bothered me.”
“We lost three games where we were tied or up against good opponents with eight minutes left, and we didn’t get from A to B,” Donahue said. “We allowed the circumstances to change who we are. We’ve been through a lot, and since then I just see their ability to forget about personal expectations and figure out what needs to be done in that game.”
Saturday, Donahue said, was living proof.
La Salle did everything it could to take Derek Simpson out of the game. Simpson has been on a tear during this recent run, but the shooting lanes weren’t there, so the Hawks found Haskins on the weak side and the lefty made La Salle pay with six threes on seven attempts. Simpson still more than made his mark on the game with 13 points, six rebounds, and seven assists.
Hawks guard Dasear Haskins (7) reacts after a made three-pointer against Jerome Brewer and La Salle.
The feisty Explorers used an 11-0 run to make the game interesting late, but St. Joe’s battled through a couple of turnovers and closed the game with its free-throw shooting.
“When a game gets closer, we just want to get closer,” Haskins said. “We just come together, listen to our coaches, trust in our game plan, and just come together as a unit.”
Words that make Donahue smile.
“There’s a mentality now that we’re not going to be affected if something is going right for the other team and wrong for us,” Donahue said. “We’re going to move on and figure out how to win this game.”
Some of this recent success has a simpler explanation. It’s just a natural part of a team growing together. Simpson and Justice Ajogbor, both seniors, have been steady. Simpson, Donahue said, is the “heart and soul” of the team, and is no longer looking over his shoulder. But the other components of the team needed time. Jaiden Glover-Toscano barely played at St. John’s last season. Haskins is playing his second season of college basketball. The Hawks rely a lot on two freshmen, Austin Williford and Khaafiq Myers, and a backup center, sophomore Jaden Smith, who had a limited role at Fordham last year.
“The youth is catching up to the older guys and we’re blending,” Donahue said.
It’s the right time for it, considering the calendar just flipped to February. The Hawks have nine games left before the conference tournament in Pittsburgh. They have shown the ability to play with and beat some of the conference’s best, like Dayton and Virginia Commonwealth. There will, of course, be no trip to the NCAA Tournament without running the table in Pittsburgh, and doing so means getting through those teams and the juggernauts, St. Louis, which beat St. Joe’s by 23, and a George Mason squad the Hawks play on the road on Saturday.
That stuff will sort itself out when it’s supposed to. For now, the Hawks can just enjoy the ride.
“Winning is so fun,” Haskins said. “I love winning so much.”
St. Joseph’s picked up its sixth win in its last seven games following a 67-58 final on the road against La Salle on Saturday.
The Hawks (14-8, 6-3 Atlantic 10) shot 14 of 32 in three-pointers, while La Salle (7-14, 3-6) made 3 of 19 three-point attempts.
The Hawks were led by sophomore guard Dasear Haskins, who finished with 20 points and 11 rebounds. Alongside Haskins, Hawks sophomore guard Jaiden Glover-Toscano added 16 points.
After a disappointing nonconference slate, the Hawks have surged in A-10 play. After Saturday’s matchup, St. Joe’s sits third in the conference. Head coach Steve Donahue praised his team’s ability to ignore the noise early in the season.
“We’ve been through a lot,” Donahue said. “I just see [the team’s] ability to forget about personal expectations and figure out what needs to be done on that game, and that tonight was a perfect example.”
Haskins said it simpler.
“Winning is so fun,” he said. ”I love winning so much.”
The Explorers were competitive early in the game, thanks to Rob Dockery’s 26 points, eight rebounds, and five assists. The redshirt sophomore guard was the only Explorer to finish in double-digit scoring, with freshman guard Ashton Walker adding nine points and six assists.
Hawks’ Haskins hot from deep
St. Joe’s came out hunting the deep-ball early. Thirty of the team’s 36 first-half points came in three-pointers. Six threes were courtesy of Haskins, who made all of his attempts in the first half.
With under four minutes to go before halftime, Haskins showed off his shooting touch with a pocket three that rattled around the rim before dropping.
“I was just confident in my shots,” Haskins said. “My guys were cutting for me early, making it easy for me, and I was just making shots.”
Still, La Salle did not shake.
With the Hawks living beyond the arc, La Salle’s Dockery made St. Joe’s pay in the paint, where he had 16 first-half points.
Even with Haskins’ spotless shooting to start, the Explorers trailed 36-29 entering halftime.
Late push by La Salle
Both teams exchanged punches to start the second half, but St. Joe’s kept its lead.
With 12 minutes remaining, Walker made a flashy hop step pull-up jumper in the paint to bring the score to 48-41. After exchanging misses, Toscano hit a one-handed slam to extend the Hawks’ lead back to nine.
For every positive play the Explorers made, the Hawks had an answer.
“I thought defensively we had some breakdowns that we shouldn’t have had,” said La Salle coach Darris Nichols. “But, you know, they’re a good team. They’re playing well right now, they do the job of sharing the ball.”
As St. Joe’s converted free-throws down the stretch to put the game away, its student section loudly chanted “The Hawk will never die” as the La Salle faithful filed out of Glaser.
Donahue made his way over to the fans to show his appreciation.
“I feel [the fans’ impact] at St Joe’s, more than any place I’ve been,” Donahue said. “They really care about basketball. The students care. It’s fun to be a part of that.”
After a rough start to the season, St. Joseph’s head coach Steve Donahue has the Hawks sitting third in the Atlantic 10 conference.
Up next …
La Salle travels to take on Loyola (Ill.) on Tuesday (8 p.m., ESPN+). On Wednesday, St Joe’s will host George Washington (7 p.m., NBC Sports Philadelphia).
It was easy to imagine the 2025-26 St. Joseph’s season as being a lost one on Jan. 3, after the Hawks went six minutes without a basket in crunch time and blew an 11-point second-half lead to Davidson to fall to 8-7 overall and 0-2 in the Atlantic 10.
In fairness, that’s what it had been to date. This wasn’t glass-half-empty thinking. Consider what had transpired in the four previous months. Former coach Billy Lange abruptly left in September, and St. Joe’s turned to Steve Donahue, whom Lange had hired as associate head coach after Donahue was fired by Penn.
Who would stay? Who would leave? It was a little late for the players to reasonably find somewhere else to go. Lange had built a roster capable of competing in the upper half of the A-10, but then came a 2-3 start. By mid-December, leading scorer Deuce Jones, a La Salle transfer, was off the team.
The Hawks went 3-for-22 from three-point range in that Davidson loss. By that point, only one of their eight victories had come against a team ranked inside the KenPom top 200, and even in that one they needed a frantic comeback and a wild shot from Jones before the buzzer to beat Temple. Two of the eight wins were against Division III teams.
St. Joe’s has won five of six since then. What changed? The shots are falling more consistently, which always helps, and there’s more of a sense of togetherness when you watch the Hawks than in games earlier in the season.
But never question the power of a meeting. The Hawks had one in the aftermath of that Davidson loss in Donahue’s office, where six players entered with change in mind.
“When we looked at ourselves in the mirror, we saw something that we didn’t like,” said senior guard Derek Simpson, who scored a season-low six points in that Davidson loss but has scored 19.2 points per game in the six since.
“We got our feelings out,” Simpson said. “We were able to tell each other how we felt.”
St. Joe’s coach Steve Donahue celebrates with fans after a victory over Dayton on Saturday.
St. Joe’s (13-8, 5-3) has been nearly perfect since. The only blemish came against a Virginia Commonwealth team rated 46th at KenPom (St. Joe’s is 157th), and the Hawks could have won that game. They got 20 points from Jaiden Glover-Toscano to help knock off Dayton one game later, and the St. John’s transfer is starting to show more flashes of why he was a high-major prospect in the first place. He had the highlight of the night Tuesday when he threw down a one-handed slam, one of the Hawks’ 12 dunks in a blowout win over lowly Loyola-Chicago.
Next on the schedule for St. Joe’s is a game Saturday against its crosstown rival, La Salle, that looks a lot more interesting than it did a few weeks ago.
That’s because the best win of the young Darris Nichols era in Olney happened last week when the Explorers started Dayton off on its Philadelphia trip from hell by jumping out to a 33-8 lead and held on for dear life in a 67-64 victory.
That came on the heels of a win over St. Bonaventure.
The Explorers (7-14, 3-5), who are much healthier now than they were earlier in the season, lost Wednesday night at Fordham, but they’ve hung in against some of the A-10’s elite and play a style that won’t be fun to go against in the conference tournament.
Or if you’re a St. Joe’s team looking to keep the train on the tracks Saturday.
Temple announced more than 2,600 attendees at its Wednesday night home game vs. Charlotte, but it didn’t take a census veteran to realize that number was way overinflated. Half of that number might have been generous. Some students showed up, but many of them were gone after the iPad giveaway was doled out.
The Owls probably deserve a little more support. That aforementioned heartbreaker vs. St. Joe’s at the Big 5 Classic was followed by a seven-game winning streak. Then, during the week when assistant coach Bill Courtney died suddenly, Temple nearly beat two of the best teams in the American Athletic Conference.
Temple coach Adam Fisher (right) reacts to an official’s call during the loss to Charlotte.
The Owls should have closed out a win over Charlotte on Wednesday, despite being without key starter Gavin Griffiths. They led by nine with six minutes left before losing in overtime. But they’re 5-3 in conference play (13-8 overall) and just one game back of first place.
They host a South Florida team on Saturday night that is 6-2 and in a four-way tie for first (8 p.m., ESPN2). It’s White Out night at the Liacouras Center.
An ode to Dan McQuade, a man who loved basketball
Philadelphia is a lot worse off without Dan McQuade, who died of cancer at 43 years old this week. McQuade, the son of longtime Daily News assistant sports editor Drew McQuade, was a singular writer who wrote for various publications — Defector, Deadspin, and Philadelphia Magazine among them — with flair and fun and with more curiosity than most.
Dan wrote about a lot of things, but he sure loved Philly basketball, and wrote about it often, like when he went to the Catholic League final in 2023 and implored people in a Defector article to go out and see more basketball games in person. Or when he wrote about attending a La Salle home game and witnessing an economic professor light the silly smoke machine at Gola Arena. Or when he went to a Big 5 doubleheader at the Palestra, where he attended many games as a former Penn student and sports writer, and wrote a compelling case for little kids playing basketball being the best version of the halftime show.
Rollie Massimino “did not mess around” when it came to drawing up defensive schemes against Patrick Ewing … or warding off gambling temptations that might filter through to his Villanova players.
“When we were playing, we had an FBI agent who was a former ’Nova basketball player give talks about gambling,” said Chuck Everson, a member of Massimino’s 1985 Wildcats title team that took down heavily favored Georgetown.
“Rollie did not mess around with that stuff. It wasn’t that far removed from the Boston College [point-shaving] scandal. Rollie brought in the FBI to talk to us. Coach Mass did a great job of teaching us, and it wasn’t all basketball; it was life lessons. And with gambling, it was, ‘Don’t do that.’
“To this day, I have never called DraftKings, or anything like that. I attribute that to being scared straight with Coach Mass.”
Everson, 61, played in an era when sports betting wasn’t legal in most of the country. These days, things are quite different. College athletes are compensated by their schools or through lucrative name, image, and likeness deals, and the legal/illegal gambling culture infiltrates every level of sports.
Last Thursday in Philadelphia, federal authorities announced a sweeping criminal indictment and related filings against 26 people on charges related to manipulating NCAA games and Chinese professional games through bribes, some as high as five figures.
It is the fourth federal criminal indictment that involves gambling and sports unsealed in the last six months, and the latest alleged gambling scheme involves one of the storied Big 5 programs: La Salle.
According to the indictment, at least one of the purported rigged games took place in 2024 in Philadelphia between La Salle and St. Bonaventure.
There are at least 39 players from 17 NCAA Division I schools who are alleged to have been involved in the scheme, but the indictment may underscore other, more troubling concerns.
Players at mid-major or smaller Division I programs might earn a fraction in NIL money compared to what their counterparts at elite programs take in, and therefore might be more susceptible to the temptations of illicit paydays. As one former federal prosecutor put it, this alleged scheme might be one of many dominoes waiting to fall.
“Anything that interferes with the integrity of sporting events, you’re going to get action by prosecutors,” said Edward McDonald, who prosecuted those involved in the Boston College point-shaving case in the late ’70s. McDonald, now senior counsel at the Dechert law firm, thinks that mid-major schools, like La Salle and some others in the Big 5, could be particularly vulnerable to gambling and bribery schemes.
“These smaller schools, the compensation to players is not as great [compared to larger programs], even for the better players on the team,” said McDonald, who learned of the Boston College scam through his investigations of organized crime family members with the Justice Department (and played himself in the Martin Scorsese-directed mob film Goodfellas).
“Players going to big-time schools are making 10 times more. A player [at a smaller program] might not be having a good season or might think they’re not going to play in the NBA or professionally, and they might say, ‘What the hell, I might as well cash in now.’”
Prop bets on a La Salle game
According to the court filings, one of the defendants, Jalen Smith, and former LSU and NBA player Antonio Blakeney (who is “charged elsewhere,” according to the indictment), attempted to recruit players on the La Salle men’s basketball team for the point-shaving scheme.
The fixers offered the La Salle players payments to underperform and influence the first half of a game against St. Bonaventure on Feb. 21, 2024, according to the filings.
Prosecutors allege that before the game at Tom Gola Arena, defendants who acted as fixers placed bets totaling approximately $247,000 on the Bonnies to cover the first-half spread. A $30,000 wager was made in Philadelphia at a FanDuel sportsbook, according to the indictment. But those bets failed after La Salle covered the spread.
“Neither the university, current student-athletes, or staff are subjects of the indictment,” La Salle wrote in a statement. “We will fully cooperate as needed with officials and investigations.”
La Salle coach Fran Dunphy directing the Explorers in November 2023. Dunphy retired after last season.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine told The Inquirer that several years ago he received complaints from a number of college coaches in his state about online abuse directed at players and threatening calls from gamblers who had lost big.
“I called up [NCAA president] Charlie Baker, and asked him, ‘What do you think of prop betting?’” DeWine said. “He said, ‘We don’t like it.’ And I said, ‘Give me a letter that says that.’
“Under Ohio law, if I can get a letter from a league saying, ‘Don’t bet on certain things,’ that gives me the ability to go to my Casino Commission and they can [enact rules] without any legislation. Charlie sent the letter, I took that to the commission, and that stopped collegiate prop betting.”
The Ohio Casino Control Commission granted the NCAA’s request to prohibit proposition bets on collegiate sports in February 2024, but the decision affected only Ohio.
“It doesn’t really eliminate the problem,” DeWine said.
The ban in Ohio is only a drop in the bucket against a sea of pro-gambling momentum, legislation, and, most significantly, lucrative revenue streams.
CJ Hines, a guard who was dismissed from Temple’s basketball team on Jan. 16, allegedly participated in a point-shaving scheme during the 2024-25 season while playing for Alabama State, according to the indictment. Hines transferred to Temple in May but didn’t play this season after the university announced that he was under investigation for eligibility concerns before his enrollment.
Former Alabama State guard CJ Hines (3) averaged 14.1 points in 35 starts last season.
The Atlantic 10 Conference — which includes La Salle and St. Joseph’s — weighed in on the latest gambling indictment.
“Any activity that undermines the integrity of competition has no place in college athletics,” commissioner Bernadette V. McGlade said in a release. “The Atlantic 10 and its member institutions will continue to work closely with the proper authorities to combat illegal activities.”
A St. Joe’s spokesperson added: “St. Joseph’s University has not been approached by federal investigators or any other entity about suspicious sports wagering activity involving St. Joe’s student-athletes or team.”
Villanova, which plays in the powerful Big East Conference, has numerous resources and protocols in place to address the sports wagering issue.
Handbooks, which include NCAA rules on gambling, are distributed annually to athletes, who also must sign a sports wagering document before being declared eligible. The athlete must acknowledge he or she won’t engage in activities that influence the outcome or win-loss margins of any game.
In 2021, 2023, and 2025, Villanova brought in speakers who have a history with sports gambling to talk with athletes about the risks and dangers associated with it. Villanova’s athletic compliance office meets twice annually with every athlete to review NCAA compliance standards, including its rules on sports wagering.
Former Villanova basketball star Maddy Siegrist told The Inquirer last year that her college alma mater ingrained in her mind the potential devastating consequences of gambling, values that she continues to adhere to as a WNBA player.
‘The integrity of sports is at risk’
Even after the 2018 Supreme Court ruling that legalized sports wagering state to state, the honesty and integrity component still comes into question when so much is riding on any sports wager.
DeWine, the Ohio governor, is taking a proactive role in trying to address malfeasance in the gaming culture.
“I’m writing letters to all other major [sports] leagues,” DeWine said. “They need to get on this. If they sit back, they’re making a huge mistake. I think the integrity of sports is at risk. I’m continuing to urge these leagues to take care of business, because they’re the ones that are going to get hurt.”
But McDonald said that with the flurry of recent indictments involving sports and gambling, “you have to wonder how pervasive [the illegal gambling problem] really is.”
“This could very well be the tip of the iceberg,” McDonald said.
Jaeden Marshall’s 25 points off of the bench led La Salle to a 67-64 victory over Dayton on Wednesday.
Marshall shot 7 of 11 from the field, including 4-for-7 in three-pointers, and went 7-for-7 from the line for the Explorers (7-13, 3-4 Atlantic 10). Josiah Harris scored 10 points while shooting 4 of 7 from the field. Jerome Brewer Jr. had seven points, including two free throws with 21 seconds remaining.
Keonte Jones led the Flyers (14-5, 5-1) in scoring, finishing with 14 points, 10 rebounds, and two steals. Dayton also got 11 points and five assists from Javon Bennett. Bryce Heard also had 10 points. The loss ended a five-game winning streak for the Flyers.
Marshall scored 12 points in the first half for La Salle, which led 40-29 at the break. Marshall led La Salle with 13 points in the second.
After starting out with three consecutive Atlantic 10 wins, La Salle skidded to its fourth straight conference defeat in women’s basketball with a 62-58 loss to Davidson on Sunday.
The Explorers (10-8, 3-4 A-10) never led in the game at John E. Glaser Arena. Sophomore guard Joan Quinn scored a game-high 19 points and redshirt freshman center Kiara Williams added 14 for La Salle. Katie Donovan scored 13 points to lead a balanced attack for Davidson (14-6, 6-1).
Containing Macktoon
With snow coating the outside of John E. Glaser Arena, La Salle started out cold. The Explorers mustered 10 points in the first quarter and trailed by 15-10. The Wildcats employed a full-court press early, leading to six La Salle turnovers in the first quarter.
Junior guard Aryss Macktoon came into the matchup averaging 15.5 points, but she went scoreless for the Explorers in the first quarter as the Wildcats routinely forced her into tough looks. She finished with eight points.
“I think they were fouling her a lot,” La Salle coach Mountain MacGillivray said. “We got switches with size advantages, and then they let them be really be physical with her. And you know, it’s tough.”
Macktoon finished with five steals, increasing her total for the season to 68, which ranks third in the country. Davidson made 13 turnovers in the first half but led by 25-18 at the break.
With La Salle trailing by 27-22 in the third quarter, Williams made a diving save as she crashed to the floor. Scrambling to her feet, she took a pass in the paint from Ashleigh Connors and sank a turnaround fadeaway jumper, making the shot despite being fouled. The Explorers bench erupted and Williams made the free throw as well.
“That’s the kind of stuff [Williams] does for us,” MacGillivray said. “She is willing to be physical. She’s willing to throw her body around. … She must have [hit the ground] five times today. She dove out of bounds for that one, but she’s on the floor all the time, scrounging for loose balls.”
La Salle Explorers forward Kiara Williams shoots during the third quarter.
The Explorers scored more points in the third quarter (21) than they did in the entire first half. But with 6 minutes, 14 seconds left in the game, Williams fouled out.
The Wildcats put the game away with free throws down the stretch.
Next up
La Salle visits Loyola Chicago on Wednesday at 7 p.m. (ESPN+).
When Villanova hosted the first women’s Big 5 Classic tripleheader last year, the Wildcats intended to cap it off by winning the title.
Instead, the Temple Owls spoiled the party plans and left the Main Line with the title in their hands.
This year, the Wildcats delivered. Led by Brynn McCurry’s 21 points, they topped St. Joseph’s, 76-70, Sunday in a title game that was close throughout. It marked ’Nova’s 22nd women’s Big 5 crown, the most of any City Series team.
For as much as rosters in college basketball change by season these days, coach Denise Dillon admitted she had kept last year’s loss in mind.
“That’s the responsibility of myself and our staff, to explain to our players, because of so many new players on the roster, and not recognizing what Philly basketball is,” she said. “Yeah, the taste stuck with me, and I think some of the others who were playing in that game. Denae Carter and Jasmine Bascoe last year, they knew they gave something up here on our home court, and wanted to make sure we took care of business here today against St. Joe’s.”
Villanova’s players celebrate with the Big 5 champions’ banner.
The Hawks were more than valiant. Rhian Stokes totaled 23 points and six assists, while Gabby Casey had 19 points and eight rebounds.
At the other end, St. Joe’s held Bascoe to 4-of-16 field-goal shooting, though she still had 13 points. McCurry, who missed all of last season with a knee injury, delivered her third straight 20-point outing.
“Kudos to [McCurry] and to her teammates for stepping up, because I thought we did a hell of a job on Bascoe,” Hawks coach Cindy Griffin said,
December obviously isn’t March, but Villanova is on some national bracketologists’ early NCAA Tournament bubbles. Though the Wildcats lost at Princeton last month, they made up for it with a win at then-No. 25 West Virginia last Monday, and followed it with a win at Georgetown on Thursday to open Big East play.
Villanova’s Jasmine Bascoe defending Rhian Stokes of St. Joe’s, who led all scorers with 23 points.
Their next game, following exams, should be another solid barometer: home vs. Seton Hall on Dec. 19. The Pirates were picked third in the preseason conference poll, with ’Nova fourth.
“We gave up a tough one to Seton Hall last year in this place,” Dillon said of a 56-55 defeat. “We’ll remind them [at practice] on Tuesday.”
The rest of the day
Drexel topped Temple in the third-place game, 59-52. With Dragons star guard Amaris Baker held to just seven points on 2-of-13 shooting, Deja Evans stepped up with 18 points on 8-of-14 shooting, plus seven rebounds and three assists.
“Things weren’t going our way, our scorers weren’t making shots, but they still found a way to lock in and stay focused on what we needed to do to win the game,” Drexel coach Amy Mallon said. “And to me, that’s what Drexel basketball is about, and how we find ways to win.”
New York Liberty star Jonquel Jones, the adopted daughter of Temple women’s coach Diane Richardson, sat courtside to watch the Owls. That was a reminder of how big women’s basketball is nationally these days, though the stardust hasn’t landed on the Big 5.
Jonquel Jones (second from left) sitting courtside during the Temple-Drexel game.
“Well, I’d love to have her on the court, but we have already exhausted that eligibility,” the always-charismatic Richardson said. “It’s great. She loves our kids and she’s got some time off because of her [ankle] injury, so she’s been spending a lot of time with me. We’re glad to have her here, and not only just for us, but for women’s basketball — and here at the Big 5, where we want to shine a light.”
Penn won the fifth-place game over La Salle, 65-52, led by Katie Collins’ 20 points and nine rebounds. The Quakers led by 21 points in the third quarter, but the Explorers rallied to within five at the end of the period before Penn pulled away in the fourth.
As The Inquirer confirmed a few days ago, the women’s tripleheader will change location next season. Sunday marked Villanova’s second straight year, and the second straight year of disappointingly small crowds on the Main Line: 1,242 fans over the three games.
Though it’s not official yet, the Palestra is the favorite right now to host as part of the arena’s 100th birthday celebration. Penn’s coach isn’t alone in hoping that moving the games to the city’s most famous college basketball venue will draw more fans to watch them.
“I know one thing: Penn would put on a first-class event, just like Villanova has done here,” said Mike McLaughlin, who has long championed having the women’s tripleheader at the city’s most famous venue. “This has been a great event for our athletes, and Penn will do the same if it’s at the Palestra.”
