Greetings from the Palestra, where La Salle and St. Joe's have just tipped off in a Big 5 clash. The place is not full, but the crowd is still pretty healthy -- probably 7,000 -- and the split is about 60-40 for St. Joe's.
In other words, there's a quite healthy contingent of Explorers blue and gold in the house. The St. Joe's student section fills sections 120 and 220, but not much more; the La Salle student section fills sections 108 and 109.
As I've been feeling a bit under the weather the last couple days, I don't really have the energy to do a full liveblog as I have for other Big 5 games this year.
But here are the starting lineups:
La Salle
F 12 Yves Mekongo Mbala
F 20 Jerrell Williams
F 31 Paul Johnson
G 10 Rodney Green
G 11 Darnell Harris
St. Joseph's
F 52 Rob Ferguson
F 12 Pat Calathes
C 34 Ahmad Nivins
G 12 Darrin Govens
G 0 Tasheed Carr
I can also tell you that while the Hawks got out to an early 6-0 lead, prompting John Giannini to call timeout, Darnell Harris hit a three on the ensuing possession and the Explorers students threw blue and gold streamers backwards from the front row. That was awesome.
I don't know if there will be a photo in any of the papers tomorrow, but I wish that could happen more often.
Finally, this week's College HoopsCast is now online; you can listen to it here. This week, Mike Jensen joins me to discuss:
-- How high Temple will finish in the Atlantic 10
-- Whether Villanova will make the Big East Tournament
-- Monday night's game between St. Joseph's and La Salle
-- And a look at the week's big national stories, including the Kelvin Sampson controversy at Indiana and Saturday's big game between Tennessee and Memphis.
I'll be back at halftime with stats and a recap of rollouts, and again after the game.
