'Simmons Era' Is Still Young

By BERNARD FERNANDEZ, Daily News Sports Writer

Posted: March 17, 1988

La Salle University's basketball team has been invited to appear in the Big Apple NIT next season, and in the Sugar Bowl Classic the season after that.

The Explorers' appeal to preseason and holiday tournament selection committees in the next two seasons more or less corresponds with the major reason for their success over the past two seasons: the presence in the lineup of sophomore Lionel Simmons.

Simmons, who leads La Salle (24-9) against Kansas State (22-8) in a first- round NCAA Midwest Regional game tonight in South Bend, Ind., already has a status few players ever can hope to attain. Explorers fans have begun referring to his still-young career at La Salle as "the Lionel Simmons era," just as they previously defined the most glorious periods of the school's basketball history as "the Tom Gola era," "the Ken Durrett era" and "the Michael Brooks era."

Being a good player, even a very good one, is not enough to be accorded era status. As valuable as their contributions were to La Salle basketball, few would suggest that, say, Ralph Lewis or Chip Greenberg rose to the same plateau as Gola, Durrett and Brooks. Players of that caliber come along only so often, and their association with a program is cherished.

In the two seasons before Simmons, a 6-6 forward from Southern High, arrived, La Salle went 29-27 and twice was eliminated in the first round of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament. With Simmons, the Explorers last season were 20-13 and advanced to the championship game of the NIT. This season, they swept past 17 consecutive MAAC opponents and earned an NCAA Tournament berth for the first time since 1980.

Kansas State, a school with a fair amount of basketball tradition, has a player, first-team All-Big 8 Conference selection Mitch Richmond, who has played so well for the Wildcats that he probably is worthy of his own era alongside such past KSU heroes as Bob Boozer and Rolando Blackman.

BEST OF THE REST

If you live in cable-less Philadelphia and crave to see more NCAA Tournament action than La Salle-Kansas State, you're in luck - sort of. Channel 10 is televising the Nevada-Las Vegas-Southwest Missouri State game at 11:30 p.m. for insomniacs who rather pass on the "Tonight Show."

Suburbanites can gorge themselves, however, on an ESPN hoopfest of five games: Auburn-Bradley at noon, Syracuse-North Carolina A & T at 2:30, Wyoming- Loyola Marymount at 4:30, Notre Dame-Southern Methodist at 7 and De Paul- Wichita State at 9:30.

BEST BET

Kansas State vs. La Salle

7 p.m., Channel 10, WSSJ-AM(1310)