La Salle Readies For Key Saturday Match-Up With Richmond

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The La Salle University men's basketball team will welcome Richmond to Gola Arena on Saturday afternoon for a key Atlantic 10 match-up.

The Explorers improved to 13-9 on the season (7-4 in the A-10) on Wednesday night with a 67-52 road win over Fordham up in the Bronx. Junior guard/forward B.J. Johnson returned from an injury to lead the Explorers with 26 points and eight rebounds in the victory.

"It's amazing because he wasn't 100 percent," La Salle head coach Dr. John Giannini tells KYW Newsradio. "He hadn't practiced for five days. So that really tells you something about his ability level, to do that without being 100 percent, without practicing."

Listen to the entire interview with La Salle head coach Dr. John Giannini:

La Salle held the Rams to just 34 percent shooting from the field in that one.

"We've struggled defensively this year," Giannini says. "We've been pretty good offensively, but our zones were good and our energy was good and things fell right in a place that's tough to win. (Fordham) had beaten VCU there and they had been playing well and just coming off a (double) overtime win against St. Joe's. So we were very pleased with the result."

The Richmond team the Explorers will face on Saturday is 14-9 on the season and tied for second in the A-10 with an 8-3 conference mark (La Salle is tied for third). The Spiders feature a pair of talented scorers in senior forward/center T.J. Cline and senior guard ShawnDre' Jones who combine to average more than 36 points per game (Kline 19.1, Jones 17.4)

"Those guys are tremendous," Giannini says. "Kline is really extremely difficult to guard because he can shoot threes and he can drive and he can post. So he can score in every way imaginable and they use him wisely in the 'Princeton' offense."

Last season, Richmond beat La Salle down in Virginia, 83-61.

Saturday's game will tip-off at 2:00 p.m.