Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

Back on the La Salle train

Speedy Morris and his Explorer players from the last glory days are thrilled with this season's ride to the Sweet 16.

This past week, La Salle felt as if it had come full circle. Back when Lionel Simmons and his teammates won 100 games in 4 years. (George Widman/AP file photo)
This past week, La Salle felt as if it had come full circle. Back when Lionel Simmons and his teammates won 100 games in 4 years. (George Widman/AP file photo)Read moreGeorge Widman / AP

IT WAS Feb. 10, 1987, when I saw Lionel Simmons play for the first time. It was the second college game I covered for the Daily News.

The L-Train and his teammates won 100 games in 4 years. The Explorers won 39 more in the 2 years after Simmons left for the NBA. In those 6 years, they played in the NCAA four times and the NIT twice. Then, when the school made what would be a disastrous move to a Midwestern league after the 1991-92 season, the winning stopped, the postseasons stopped, everything stopped.

This past week, it felt as if it had come full circle. There was Train in Dayton with La Salle. And Train in Kansas City with La Salle. Monday, Train flew to Los Angeles to be with La Salle.

One of the best things about this business is the relationships you establish. I was new in 1987, but those players and that coaching staff gave me access and shared their stories. Nobody really told me how to do this, so I just listened and learned and wrote what I saw, heard and felt.

As the months became years and the years became decades, I stayed in touch with many of those players and coaches. Monday, I made a lot of phone calls. I needed to know what they were feeling as they watched their school win three NCAA Tournament games in 5 days and get ready for a Sweet 16 game Thursday at the Staples Center in Los Angeles against Wichita State.

"This brings back a lot of good memories," Simmons said. "This is a good team. Everybody likes each other. It's a joy to be around these guys."

Simmons told La Salle assistant Horace Owens, a longtime friend, that if La Salle got into the tournament, he was going to get on the train. He was as good as his word.

"The minute they got in, I was clearing my schedule to find a way to get there," he said.

Simmons made a very good living in the NBA. He has a place in Center City and another in South Florida. He has some businesses, including the 22nd Street Café, 22nd and Wharton.

This team, like his teams, is populated by Philly kids, three who played in the Public League and one from the Catholic League.

"I see they got North Philly, South Philly, Southwest Philly, kids from all over the city," Simmons said. "There are a lot of similarities."

And these players are having the NCAA success Simmons' teams did not have. It is almost as if they are making up for what could have been.

"They never really give up on themselves," Simmons said.

Simmons and his close friend Bobby Johnson, the long-range-bombing sixth man on the 30-2 La Salle team in 1989-90, went to Southern. Point guard Doug Overton went to Dobbins. His running mate for two seasons, Randy Woods, went to Ben Franklin. Shooter Jack Hurd was imported from Lititz, just north of Lancaster.

Bron Holland, part of a three-headed center rotation in 1990 and the player whose last-second shot got La Salle to its last NCAA Tournament in 1992, came down from Bangor, Pa. Keith Morris, the coach's son, played at Penn Charter.

The coach, Speedy Morris, just got St. Joseph's Prep to the PIAA AAAA Final Four. The top assistant, Joe Mihalich, has been the Niagara head coach for 15 years and just won the regular season in the Metro Atlantic, the league La Salle owned when they were all together.

To a man, they are absolutely thrilled with what John Giannini and his staff have done with these players. They may not be playing anymore, but they absolutely feel a part of it.

It was no secret that Speedy was not happy about how his career at La Salle ended. There was some real bitterness toward the school. He didn't think he had the proper support from the administration and many of his former players felt the same way. And he was definitely a victim of that conference move west.

Morris was recently inducted into the La Salle Athletic Hall of Fame and the Big 5 Hall of Fame. That lessened the chill. He also gives great credit to Giannini for reaching out to him.

"Giannini's the reason I came back, really," Speedy said. "He's such a good guy. He's real. He says what he means and you can tell he means it. He made a believer of me."

Just seeing the name La Salle on Selection Sunday was a major victory. To still be playing is really over the top.

"They're not backing down from anybody," Speedy said. "They're tough to guard . . . They play off each other."

Johnson just had the weekend of his basketball life. La Salle won on Friday and Sunday. On Saturday night in Hershey, Lower Merion, led by 22 points and 11 rebounds from B.J. Johnson, son of Bobby and Syracuse signee, did the unthinkable, beating seemingly unbeatable Chester to take down the AAAA championship.

"I basically said to B.J., 'Aren't you tired of losing to these guys,' " Johnson said. "I said you got to do something about it."

That is what Johnson's high school and college teams did. They did something about it. Now, a new generation at La Salle is doing something that many thought no longer to be possible.

"They're never out of it no matter what the score may say," Johnson said. "They definitely represented well for the city and especially La Salle."

Johnson has not forgotten his last game, a come-from-ahead loss against Clemson in the second round of the 1990 tournament. It was a lot like La Salle's game Friday against Kansas State - big lead gone. The difference was this team found a way to reverse the momentum. That team, against the giant front line of Elden Campbell and Dale Davis, did not.

"I had flashes of Clemson race through my mind," Johnson said of the K-State game.

Johnson, who played a few years overseas, works in family unification with children and has done case management and counseling at Glen Mills.

Overton has really wanted to watch the La Salle games. After a long NBA career, he is now a Brooklyn Nets assistant. His son Miles just finished playing for Speedy at the Prep and will play at Wake Forest in the fall.

"Every time they play, we have a game," Overton said from Phoenix. "I'm getting updates. Guys are coming behind my bench and giving me updates."

The Nets play in Denver on Friday after an off day, so Overton will be able to watch the Explorers-Wichita State game Thursday.

"I'm so happy for those guys," Overton said. "My mom told me the kids on campus were running in the street after the game on Sunday."

Keith Morris runs Morris Capital Management in Conshohocken. He is one of his dad's assistants with the Prep.

He was with several of his former teammates and his dad at the Friday afternoon Wells Fargo games. They left after the Duke-Albany game to head to XFINITY Live! to see Temple-North Carolina State and La Salle-Kansas State.

"Bron had secured a booth," Keith said. "We got to go crazy together as La Salle pulled out that first one. The place announced that Speedy Morris, the last coach to take La Salle to the dance, was in the house, and the place went nuts. Just the look on everybody's face, it's been 21 long years, even my father high-fiving guys. It was a lot of fun, a lot of good memories."

Saturday night, many in that crew ended up in the Field House in Center City watching games. And who walks in but Florida Gulf Coast coach Andy Enfield and his supermodel wife, Amanda Marcum.

When La Salle beat Mississippi on Sunday night, Keith got 50 text messages in a 10-minute period.

Keith, like his dad, had some bad feelings toward La Salle. That was all gone a few years ago.

"The fact that all that's gone away and kind of everyone's on board again, even some of my teammates that were upset at La Salle with everything that happened, for all of us to be able to kind of relive it together and have my dad right there with us has been tremendous," Keith said.

There used to be an older crew that traveled with the team back in the day - Gus, Louie, Gabe and Gal, a k a the Speedy Posse. They were lovingly called "The Cocoons."

When Keith kept seeing the L-Train on TV at the games, he texted him Sunday saying: "Does this make you a Cocoon?"

The original "Cocoons" are gone now, so the teammates may qualify for admittance one day.

Holland is a teacher and basketball coach at his alma mater, Bangor High. They won their league this year for the first time since Holland graduated in 1988. He has been following La Salle's run.

"It's been great," Holland said. "It's just like being a parent or a coach or a teacher, you always want to see your kids do better than you did. To see these guys have the success and go further than we did, it's awesome."

Holland watched the Mississippi game with his two sons, 14 and 12. He also has two girls, 9 and 8.

"It's the most I've been into a game, not having played since college," he said. "I was throwing pillows, punching the floor on bad calls, swearing inappropriately in front of my kids. It was just a great experience and to share it with the two of them. I tried to tell them about the things we did back in the day. I don't think they had a good appreciation for it until now."

Holland made plans months ago to attend the Final Four in Atlanta. He was not expecting his school to join him. With two more wins, it will.

Hurd, who lives in Collegeville, was the director of human resources in the West Chester school district and is now the HR director at the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit, working in Norristown.

"Anytime you see La Salle play and doing well, you kind of reflect back on when you were there," he said. "It was a special time."

Like many of us, Hurd wondered whether this would ever happen again.

"League affiliation really hurt recruiting," he said. "You just need to get the right couple of kids. That's the one thing about basketball. It just takes a couple of kids who are a little bit special."

They have those players now.

"I'm just so happy for the tradition that is La Salle," said Mihalich, who was a player and coach at the university where his father taught for years. "It's been a while since they had that feeling. It gets you thinking again. You hear the fight song again."

And it all comes back to you, what was and what is again.