BY ROCK HOFFMAN
St. Joseph’s University won the – and their – second Big 5 Classic at the Wells Fargo Center on Saturday. The Hawks (6-3, 3-0 Big 5) beat LaSalle 82-68 behind 24 points from Erik Reynolds II.
In the final second of the first half, the Hawks Dasear Haskins hit a jumper and was fouled, he completed the three-point play and St. Joseph’s was up 33-29 at the break.
Explorers head coach Fran Dunphy thought it was a key sequence as it helped the Hawks to open the second half with a 10-4 run and build a double-digit lead. The last time the Explorers (6-4, 2-1 Big 5) got the deficit under 10 was with 13:05 to go when they trailed 50-41.
Corey McKeithan led LaSalle with 15 points. The Explorers lost Demetrius Lilley, who had 12 points in 17 minutes early in the second half with an injury and were without Jahlil White, the second-highest scorer on the team, for an undisclosed reason.
It was the 22nd Big 5 championship for the Hawks, who got a very good all-around contribution from Xzayvier Brown, who had 21 points, six assists and four steals.
Villanova jumped out to a 9-2 lead over Temple in the third-place game and didn’t look back as they thrashed the Owls 94-65. The Wildcats (6-4, 2-1 Big 5) shot a sizzling 19-of-30 from deep which is a season high in both the number of and percentage of made threes.
“Our guys can make shots,” said Wildcats head coach Kyle Neptune, “We have multiple guys who can make three, four, or five threes in a game, multiple guys who have done it in college games, so we’re never surprised if guys make open shots.”
“It’s going to be hard to win when you give up 19 threes” is how Temple head coach Adam Fisher summed it up.
Jamal Mashburn Jr. was the leading scorer for the Owls (4-4, 1-2 Big 5) with 20 points.
In the fifth-place game, Drexel held Penn to just 17 points in the second half on the way to a 60-47 victory. Cole Hargrove had 17 points and 13 rebounds to pace the Dragons (6-4, 1-2 Big 5), it was the fourth double-double of the season for the 6-8 junior out of Methacton High School.
“I think a major portion is the [coaching] staff,” said Hargrove, who is averaging 12.1 points and 9 rebounds per game, when asked about his production. “They put me in the right spot to succeed and my teammates keep telling me to be better and play how I play in practice.”
The Quakers (3-6, 0-3 Big 5) shot 33.9 percent from the field, including four of 18 from beyond the arc.
“They did a good job limiting our threes,” said Penn forward Nick Spinoso, who had a game-high 21 points. “They let me go one-on-one and live and die by that.”
The Dragons are 2-0 in Big 5 games at the Wells Fargo Center after upsetting Villanova last season in the first-ever Big 5 Classic.
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