THINKS THE EAGLES STOLE ONE
La Salle spent the entire 40 minutes tonight trying to solve Richmond's zone defense but couldn't come up with any solutions.
The Explorers tried all kinds of ways to beat the zone, including some imaginative ones, but shot a pitiful 28.1 percent from the field and suffered a painful 62-53 loss to the Spiders in an Atlantic Ten Conference game at Tom Gola Arena.
La Salle (14-11, 5-6 A-10) was led by Rodney Green, who scored 13 points, but its No. 1 scorer was 4 of 16 from the field. The Explorers' other starting guard, Ruben Guillandeaux, was 3 of 14 on his way to 10 points.
Down the stretch, the Explorers gave the ball to Green and got out of the way, but he couldn't find a way to get free against the Richmond zone.
It was the defense, however, that let La Salle down after the Explorers opened the second half on an 11-0 run to take a 36-30 lead on Green's turnaround jumper with 15 minutes, 16 seconds to play. Green and Guillandeaux scored five points apiece in the spurt.
La Salle led, 38-32, before the Spiders (13-13, 5-6), who had not scored on their first eight possessions of the half, answered with a 15-2 run over the next 41/2 minutes. Kevin Anderson, a 6-foot guard who led all scorers with 28 points, scored six of them during this stretch, including a high-arcing jumper that gave Richmond a 47-40 lead.
After Kimmani Barrett scored for La Salle, Anderson sank two free throws and Jarhon Giddings dunked a follow to extend the Richmond lead to 51-42 with 6:11 remaining. The Explorers got as close as six twice in the final two minutes but did not score in the final 1:15.
The Spiders shot 50 percent from the field.
The Explorers shot only 6 of 32 from the field in the first half. But even though they were far from smooth running their offense, they did enough to get to the free-throw line often and drained 12 of 12.
Thanks to that proficiency from the line, and the fact that they outrebounded the Spiders, 24-13, and held a 12-4 edge on second-chance points, they trailed by only 30-25 at the half.
Green did not have a field goal in the first half, punctuating an 0-for-8 period with an air ball from three-point land as the buzzer sounded, and scored four points.
Richmond got 14 points in the half from Anderson on 7-of-8 shooting. The Spiders shot 53.6 percent from the field but did not get to the line at all in the first half, a certain topic of frequent discussions between coach Chris Mooney and the officials.
The Spiders made seven of their first 10 attempts.
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