For as well as St. Joe's is doing, it's clear that John Giannini is struggling through this season at La Salle. You can't blame him. He has a very young, raw team to work with. Two of his top three offensive players, Kimmani Barrett and Rodney Green, are freshmen, while the third, Darnell Harris, isn't at full health.
Nonetheless, it was rather sobering to hear Giannini talk after yesterday's game. I count nine times that he uttered a sentence about having "a lot of work to do." More often than not, the subject of the sentence was himself. He used the plural a few times, but he clearly was putting much of the blame for the way things have gone on himself.
"I just have a lot of work to do – this game proves it," he said. "I don’t want to get into history, but this is the first year of building. This is the first year of building, and we have a long way to go. We have a lot of work to do."
Giannini will readily concede the youth of his team to anyone who will listen, though I can't help thinking he must feel he's repeated himself more than enough times this season.
"All we’ve accomplished so far in terms of building is bring some kids in who can get some points and rebounds at this level," he said. "But it doesn’t mean they know how to pass, it doesn’t mean that they know how to defend, it doesn’t mean that we don’t need to bring in better guard play, it doesn’t mean that we don’t need more size. We just have some young players that could have good futures that have been able to come in here and consistently make us competitive on most nights. Obviously, this was not one of them."
But Giannini won't let the players put their heads down. He was asked if his players feel discouraged, and gave what I think is a really great answer:
"No. I’d say disappointed and frustrated," he said. "Discouraged means you stop trying. You wouldn’t be human, you wouldn’t be worth your salt if you weren’t disappointed and frustrated. Any team in that situation is disappointed and frustrated. But we’ll keep working – we’ve got a lot of work to do, short term and long term. We have a lot of work to do."
I'm not afraid to say that I think Giannini's the right guy to do the work for La Salle. I hope, despite the team's struggles this season, that I'm not the only one.
