Coach John Giannini, and his players, all agree it is a work still in progress. But the progression has been steady, and expected.

"I just knew that this year we were going to continually get better," Giannini said before his team departed for tonight's game at Fordham. "The start of the season was disappointing. We lost when we shouldn't have and we threw away a couple of games we should have won. Good Atlantic 10 teams don't lose those games. That was extremely disappointing."

When the team lost its fifth straight game, a heartbreaker in triple overtime to visiting Richmond just after the New Year, and fell to 4-9, the faithful had to be wondering: Where is this team, this program, headed?

What followed only compounded the confusion: three straight wins, followed by four losses in the next six games, the last of that streak being a 101-84 loss at home to Duquesne that put the Explorers at 9-13, 4-5 in the conference.

The pessimists drew their attention toward the nonsensical turnovers each game. And their thoughts darted back to the 10 wins in 2007, which kept the team from reaching the Atlantic 10 Tournament.

The optimists could point to this season's 13 losses coming only by an average 7.2 points a game. They would also point out that La Salle has outrebouded it opponents by five a game. That's a hustle stat, Giannini likes to point out.

It also has to be noted just where this program was when Giannini was hired in August 2004. Without time to put his signature on a recruiting class for his first season, the Explorers posted their 12th straight losing campaign at 10-19. With seniors Steve Smith and Jermaine Thomas and a sprinkling of Giannini recruits, that mark improved to 18-10 the next season, the first winning record at 20th and Olney since 1993. Without the two players who combined for more than 3,200 points and relying heavily on those freshmen, last season ended at 10-20.

Now, it is still a work in progress. And one that has the La Salle faithful believing again.

"We're just starting to gel as a team," said Darnell Harris, who along with Sherman Diaz are the team's only seniors. "At the beginning of the season, we lost a lot of close games. But the team is mostly made up of freshmen and sophomores. We didn't know what to expect in the beginning. Now we know what we're capable of. We didn't know how to win close games. We couldn't pull out wins. That's changed now."

And probably for the foreseeable future, beyond the remaining four regular-season games and whatever comes about after that this season.

Sophomores Rodney Green, Yves Mekongo Mbala, Kimmani Barrett and Ruben Guillandeaux, along with freshmen Jerrell and Terrell Williams, Daryl Partin and Kyle Griffin, form the deepest group of underclassmen this city has seen in a long time.

"We've really grown up," said junior Paul Johnson, whose rebounding and defense have been key in the Explorers' turnaround. "Coach told us at the beginning of the season that we had to learn how to win. The jump for the young guys, from high school to college, is hard. Through the season, we've learned how to focus and communicate. We've learned that every possession and every shot is important."

"We have become better at a lot of things," Giannini said. "We've been scoring points and shooting the ball well. We've become a smarter team, which has cut down on our turnovers. We've become a better passing team, which has made us a better shooting team.

"When we went to Puerto Rico early in the season, we were upset about the early losses and decided to become a more aggressive team. We lost two close games down there, but to good teams [Mississippi and DePaul]. That gave us confidence. We knew we could play well against good teams, we just had to play better to win them."

Which is what they are doing now. Though four tough games remain (at Fordham, Rhode Island, at Massachusetts and Temple), La Salle is now in a position to be one of the top four teams in the conference at season's end, which would give it a bye in the first round of the tournament.

A good showing there might attract even more players for Giannini, who is considered one of the best recruiters around. And with 6-9 transfer Vernon Goodridge (Mississippi State) available next season, well, these four-game winning streaks might just become a common occurrence.

"We lost over 3,000 points from our team 2 years ago, and replaced them with mostly freshmen," Giannini said. "Last year, when we had five freshmen in our top seven and really struggled, people were very concerned about that. This year we are mostly freshmen and sophomores. And let me say, our future is going to be much better than what we've seen these past four games." *