Since John Giannini took over La Salle's struggling program in August 2004, he hasn't gone for the traditional players. Instead of seeking out those with the best skills, he's gone for the best athletes. Take a 6-foot-5 wing and teach him how to play the point. Take the unpolished scorer Rodney Green and turn him into a Mardy Collins.
"That was a conscious choice," he told me.
That vision paid dividends against Penn for the first time in Giannini's tenure last night, when Green and fellow wing Kimmani Barrett combined for 32 pointsto make up for stud senior Darnell Harris's uncharacteristically poor night.
The Explorers were rewarded with their first victory over Penn in eight years, a game that Giannini called an important "measuring stick" for his program's health. If you're good, he reasoned, you should be winning in your own backyard.
So last night's contest offered a snapshot into two separate rebuilding processes, run by two very different men and caused by two very different basketball traumas.
For Penn, it was the graduation of three program cornerstones last season without the right pieces around to replace them.
For La Salle, it was a wave of legal trouble that was another setback for a program not accustomed to competing for the NCAAs every year like Penn does (or did).
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Giannini is all about the big picture, which is why he seems well-suited to a long and winding road back to respectability. He inherited a 10-19 team and has since endured a collective beatdown from the rest of the Big 5, even in the heyday of his lone superstar, Steven Smith.
But he sold his players on the long term, on the eventual return to normalcy and, hopefully, competitiveness.
"They really want to build this program," Giannini said. "I'd go to war with these guys any day. They're great people.
"We're going to build this thing, even if it's not the prettiest process all the time."
It provided for a striking contrast last night. After the loss that he felt his team didn't deserve, Quakers coach Glen Miller couldn't look ahead. When asked what this three-game Big 5 stretch means in the context of Penn's season, the visionary in him fell by the wayside.
"I don't mean to be sarcastic," he said. "But I can't even answer that . I can't think about the next Big 5 game or the next Ivy League game."
Miller said that his players were especially disappointed because they felt they had done all their homework during their eight off days. And to an extent, they did deserve to win last night. La Salle shot just 31 percent, but managed to win the game from the free-throw line anyway.
Miller was moribund about himself, too, joking about what he would do if he were "lucky enough to coach here for a few more years." Well, he doesn't have to worry. He's a fine coach and will be here for a while, hopefully a long while.
But he's still discovering how hard it is to get a decimated team back to the highest level, an obstacle that Giannini has been dealing with for years and is finally starting to surmount.
Andrew Scurria is a junior Political Science major from Wilmington, Del., and is Senior Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is scurria@sas.upenn.edu.
