Explorers Are Frequently Lost: Are You Not Impressed?

written by Sam

A promise of beers; no guarantees on which ones.

PHILADELPHIA—Improbably, the La Salle Explorers men's basketball team has started the season 8-2. Those wins have featured contributions from a variety of players, at home, on the road, and in neutral venues. But if the bellyaching on the ExplorerTown message board were to be believed, that other shoe will be imminently dropping, and anyone who enjoyed these wins is a huge fucking moron.

The Internet 1.0 message board is the primary place for discussion on the basketball team. The small but devoted forum posters live-chat throughout every game, and are very knowledgeable on the team and its history. But a common thread involves bemoaning the players, coaches, and school's mediocrity. ExplorerTown is fine to visit, but to live there involves a constant doom-scroll of negativity.

Some recent choice quotes: 

• "My god this is just terrible basketball... That last position of the half looked like CYO basketball." —from the Lafayette game
• "team is playing dumb tonight. bad decisions, over-penetrating, rushing everything.  the defense stinks too." —from the Temple game
• "A true ass whipping. No surprise of course. The talent gap just too large." —from the Duke game
• "Team does nt [sic] seem to box out and gets beat to the ball." —from the Northeastern game

These cherry-picked posts aren't all doom and gloom, but I prefer to spend my time enjoying the success than inviting the inevitable let down wash over us. I'm in the glass half full camp at this point, because there's enough misery in the world to pull me away from joy. I don't need to seek it out. I'm sure the forthcoming five-game losing streak is right around the corner. But as of today, I'll light my victory cigar and wallow in some wins for once.

Sure, La Salle has gotten a bit lucky in the outcomes. The season has featured many coin-flip games, and two overtimes affairs, with some blowout sprinkled in. 

Most of the wins have been nail-bitters, as five of the eight Ws were by margins of less than six points. Have they beaten any good teams yet? 

On sheer record, the combined record for the teams La Salle has played is 34-67 as of Dec. 10. If you strip out Duke and Temple (who we lost to), that record is 23-61. Of the clubs we beat in the eight wins, only Penn (6-5) has a winning record; Drexel is 5-5.

OK, so not a lot of goliaths mixed in there. But I'd advocate that scheduling some cupcakes is our prerogative. It's fun to high-five, chest thump, and gloat in victory. Who buys a video game and immediately sets the difficulty level to hard? La Salle's had a tough road over the last... well, forever. Can't we enjoy winning just a little bit? Even if those wins are barely eked out and against glorified CYO boys. I'm savoring the solid start.

Case in point. I attended La Salle's Tuesday 62-61 victory over the hated Loyola Maryland Greyhounds. It was a pretty sloppy game! I attended with my friend Frank V., and he quickly recognized how bad Rokas Jocius was at rebounding, as well as how poor the Explos were shooting (a woeful 15.4% from three in the first half). Ugly!

Similarly, Frank also registered his confusion on the beer signage. At the pregame bar, inexplicably housed at the cafeteria, the B&G, La Salle offers adult beverages available for purchase. Next to the register, a list of the options is printed. However, that list didn't match most of the actual booze you could buy. Frank was perplexed as to how this low-hanging fruit detail was so messed up. I, on the other hand, shrugged it off, happy that there's any beers on hand at all (and for relatively cheap). This imbibing ineptitude later resulted in our "premium" beers (normally $7) sold to us for a "domestic" rate (at $5). Sometimes the gods smile on you.

I'll further torture this metaphor to say, just enjoy what you get and attempt to shame my pompous friend with his exacting standards. La Salle is winning! Should they have been crushing the 1-8 Greyhounds and not have trailed for the majority of the game? Sure. Should a merchant at least possess a baseline knowledge of what it is they are selling? Of course. 

But the game's finale gave us great fun, regardless of how we got there. Loyola was up two points with possession when La Salle tipped the ball out of bounds. With two seconds left on the shot clock, the Greyhounds inbounded, and kind of took a shot? The ball landed in an Explorer's hands as the clock buzzed, and everyone kind of paused a beat. But the refs never blew the whistle, La Salle tossed the ball down the court, and Andres Marerro sunk his sixth 3 of the night to steal a win. 

The Gola was rocking. The Greyhounds were reeling. And the beers in my tummy, whatever they were, gave me a warm hum. I'll take it!

La Salle followed up that tight affair with a blowout win against the hated Lafayette Leopards (1-10) on Saturday, winning 67-51. Again the Explorers played disgustingly in the first half. Again Marerro came off the bench to score 20 points on five 3s. A win's a win!

Next Saturday, La Salle travels to Coral Gables, Fla., to play the hated University of Miami. The Hurricanes and their perplexing mascot, Sebastian the Ibis, are 6-1 and are ranked 15th in the nation. It likely won't matter what alcoholic beverages the Explorers list pregame, as Miami will probably drink our milkshake regardless. 

But for a week, while I'm sure the players study real hard for finals, I can bask in the glow of La Salle winning some probably meaningless games. I can envision a major upset. And I can be content for a second.

"Explorers Are Frequently Lost" strives to be a weekly column about the La Salle's Men's Basketball Team, but I hope is about other stuff, too.