La Salle Hoping For Deep A-10 Tourney Run

By Matt Leon

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) --- After an up and down regular season, the La Salle Explorers are now focusing on the Atlantic 10 Tournament in Brooklyn. The Explorers are the #9 seed and they will open things up on Thursday with a second-round match-up with Massachusetts.

La Salle is 16-15 heading into the tournament. They had lost five of six before wrapping up the regular season with an impressive 55-53 home win over Dayton on Saturday.

"I feel good about our last game and I think that's what really determines a lot of your emotions," La Salle head coach Dr. John Giannini tells KYW Newsradio. "We beat the first-place team in the league and a team that was right on the verge of the Top 25 in Dayton. So we feel good about that. Of course, throughout the year, we wish we won more games like that. It's not a big difference, it's having an edge, it's getting a couple stops, it's making a couple free throws. But unfortunately we didn't do enough of that, but we did do it against Dayton and I think we're good enough to beat anyone in our league and that's certainly the mentality that we're going into the A-10 Tournament with."

Listen to Dr. John Giannini with KYW's Matt Leon:

La Salle played UMass twice during the regular season and lost both match-ups. On January 7th, the Explorers dropped a 71-65 decision at Gola Arena. Then on February 8th, UMass grabbed a 71-65 win in Amherst.

"Physically, they've been the worst match-up for us," Giannini says. "I think going into the last four minutes, we've had a good chance to win every game we've played in in the Atlantic 10, with the possible exception of the two UMass games. We haven't matched up well against them physically, but yet mentally I think, because of that, our guys will have tremendous respect for them and they'll be highly motivated and I actually like the match-up from the psychological point of view."

In order to win this tournament, La Salle will have to win four games in four days, but Giannini says that they first have to focus on the challenge in front of them.

"Every coach I've talk with about this," Giannini says, "and I would agree with it is, the biggest challenge is winning the first game. Obviously, every game is a 50/50 game, but you're not advancing at all unless you win that first one."

La Salle and UMass tip-off at noon on Thursday in Brooklyn. The winner of this game gets the top-seed, Davidson, in the quarterfinals.

You can follow Matt on Twitter @mattleonkyw.