Oh Canada! La Salle Wraps Up North Country Tour With a Win

La Salle 66, Carleton 64
Trailing by four at the half, 37-33, La Salle poured in another 33 points while holding the Carleton Raven shooters to 27% conversion rate, allowing them to score ony 27 second half points. Carleton shot 6-22 (6-16, 0-6) from the field. "We got experience in two intense games that came down to the last possession..." observed Explorer head coach Dr. John Giannini, and indeed this was the second game decided by three or fewer points -- a single possession. The possession-based breakdown...

						FTA
Team	Pace	Eff.	eFG%	TOV	OR%	FGA	Ast%	PPWS
La Salle	61.9	1.07	54.5	19.4	34.5	16.4	29.6	1.11
Carleton		1.03	51.0	17.8	29.7	39.2	65.0	1.06

I had to check the calculation twice after I computed the Explorers' possession rate to 61.9, the lowest of the trip, and about 15.1% below their average possession rate in 2011. La Salle modestly outrebounded the perimeter oriented Raven squad 32-28, pulling just above the Division 1 average for offensive rebounding rates (34.5% vs 33%) while holding Carleton to less than 30% (29.7%) of their missed field goal attempts.

Carleton's Philip Scrub posted a game-high 19 points on 5-9 (4-6, 1-3) from the field to go with a perfect 5-5 from the line. Earl Pettis countered for the Explorers, scoring 18 points on 8-12 shooting (2-4, 6-8) from the floor. Two other Explorers, Sam Mills (17 points) & Jerrell Wright (11 points) also recorded more than 10 points. Wright paced all rebounders with eight. Other observations about the game....
1. Carleton was without two starters, Tyson Hinz and Cole Hobin, who are preparing with the Canadian National Team for the World University Games in China.
2. Tyreek Duren started, played 23 minutes and fouled out. Steve Zack picked up four fouls in eight minutes of play..
3. Dr. Giannini used a starting line up of Tyreek Duren (pg), Sam Mills (#2#/3), Earl Pettis (#2#/3), Jerrell Wright (#4/#5) and Devon White (/#4/#5), giving those five 66% of the time. He used a 10 man rotation, allocating double digit minutes to eight players.
4. Jerrell Wright started all three games, Earl Pettis, Sam Mills and Tyreek Dureen started two.


. Jeanty posted a game-high 34 points on 11-17 (8-13, 3-4) shooting from the field to go with a 4-5 night from the line. Jerrell Wright paced the Explorers with 19 points on a perfect 7-7 night from the floor to go with a 5-7 run at the line. Three other Explorers, Sam Mills (14 points), Tyreek Duren (10 points) and Devon White (10 points) logged double digit points. Mills also grabbed a game-high seven rebounds. The teams played for about 69 possessions, closer to the NCAA Division 2011 average of 66.7 than the exhibition-level 73 possessions versus Ottawa.

Next...
La Salle returns home with a 2-1 exhibition record. And hopefully some ideas to improve their showing in the conference.

Further Reading
A background piece on the CIS by Mark Wacyk, who blogs about Canadian basketball on the CIS Hoops.ca blog.
The game recap as told by La Salle along with the box score.
The Carleton University game recap.