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La Salle tops Davidson, joins crowd atop A-10 standings

A FEW MINUTES into La Salle's postgame news conference, Jordan Price was talking about his team's chemistry after a 91-83 win over Davidson. His coach, John Giannini, was next to him staring at the box score, shaking his head.

A FEW MINUTES into La Salle's postgame news conference, Jordan Price was talking about his team's chemistry after a 91-83 win over Davidson. His coach, John Giannini, was next to him staring at the box score, shaking his head.

He was looking at the stat lines for Davidson's two best players, 20-per-night scorers Jack Gibbs and Peyton Aldridge, who combined for 58 of Davidson's 83 points and together were 9-for-19 from beyond the arc.

"Aldridge and Gibbs are stunning," Giannini said when asked why his head was shaking. "And we knew they would be. But, wow. They're as good as there is and that's just amazing. And that was against decent defense, too.

"Davidson is one of the toughest outs you'll face as a coach. It's an elusive win, and we're thrilled that we got it."

The win, La Salle's fifth straight, coupled with Dayton's win over Richmond, puts the Explorers (11-5, 5-1 Atlantic 10) in a three-way tie atop the conference standings. A showdown with Virginia Commonwealth (4-2 in the A-10) is next on Sunday.

The Explorers got a season-high 29 points from Price, 21 of which came in the first half. B.J. Johnson (19), Pookie Powell (14) and Amar Stukes (12) joined Price in double figures, while Demetrius Henry had eight, plus nine boards, including two key offensive rebounds with follow-up putbacks in the waning minutes.

La Salle, after exploding for a 16-2 run to take a 49-40 lead at halftime, built a 15-point lead, 69-54, on a Johnson dunk at the midway mark of the second half.

But Aldridge and Gibbs, the latter of whom scored 13 in the first half and not again until until 3:21 remained in the game, wouldn't let the Wildcats go away quietly.

A pair of Gibbs free throws got the score to 76-71. But then Henry was able to corral two big offensive rebounds and turn them into points on back-to-back possessions to keep pace with Gibbs, whose three-point play later got the deficit to 82-79 with 1:41 to play.

A Johnson pull-up followed that. Then a Henry layup was sandwiched between two key defensive stops to preserve the win.

"We played good enough defense in the second half by holding them to - it's weird you say hold someone - to five threes," Giannini said. "But against that team, you really are just holding them to five."

Aldridge, who scored 33, did everything he could to keep pace while Gibbs wasn't scoring in the second half.

"He's the Larry Bird of the A-10. Zero exaggeration," Giannini said.

So, then, La Salle beat Larry Bird on Thursday night.

And now the Explorers have won seven of eight.

Take away losses against Temple and Texas Southern in the first week and change of the season, when Giannini's Explorers were still figuring themselves out, La Salle's only losses from mid-November on are to No. 1 Villanova, Georgetown and A-10 foe Dayton.

"I think there's something to be said just for simple game experience," Giannini said of his team's growth. "Whatever you do, I think you just get better the more you do it. Not everyone played last year, and I think it's just the benefit of experience and being comfortable and figuring out winning. Winning is really, really hard."

They're finding out as much. Especially when the third-highest scoring duo in the country comes to town.

"We take it one day at a time," Price said. "But we have goals. We have goals."

@Jeff_Neiburg