LOS ANGELES – La Salle insisted its run to the Sweet 16 as a No. 13 seed was no Cinderella story, but Wichita State penned the final chapter for the Explorers on Thursday night.
The ninth-seeded Shockers put La Salle in a big early hole and never gave it a chance to recover, rolling to a 72-58 West Region semifinal victory at Staples Center. Wichita State led the Explorers 17-3 as fans were just getting to their seats, built a 22-point lead and never let LaSalle get closer than 11 points in the second half.
Wichita State (29-8) will play for a spot in the Final Four on Saturday against Ohio State at 7 p.m. EDT. The Shockers have been to two other regional championship games and won both, but that was in 1965 and 1966.
“We have to grab this opportunity the best we can,” WSU’s Ron Baker said. “We have to hold on it it and not let it slip away. There’s 40 minutes against Ohio State and that’s a challenge.”
Malcolm Armstead had 18 points, Carl Hall had 16 points and eight rebounds and Ron Baker had 13 points for the Shockers. Jerrell Wright and Tyrone Garland each scored 16 and Ramon Galloway added 11 points for La Salle, which shot a miserable 36% from the floor and was outrebounded by the bigger, stronger Shockers 47-29.
“Wichita State won the game in the first half,” La Salle coach John Giannini said. “They really overwhelmed us. It took us a half to kind of adjust to the level they were playing at.”
Wichita State saw its 22-point lead whittled to 49-38 on Tyreek Duren’s three-point play with 12:43 left, but Armstead had nine points in a 17-8 spurt that iced the win.
The Shockers were all over them right out of the gate, at one point scoring on six consecutive possessions, and going up 17-3 in less than seven minutes. WSU rode that early lead to a 38-22 halftime advantage, never allowing La Salle closer than eight points at 29-21 on a Galloway layup with 3:39 to the break. And it closed the first 20 minutes on a 9-1 run.
“They were all over the place. They came to play,” Galloway said. ” I can honestly say by far one of the most physical teams we’ve played.”
Hall was an unstoppable force early, scoring 10 of the Shockers’ first 14 points and collecting 14 with six rebounds by halftime. He’d totaled just 19 points in the their first two games and confessed that he was down on himself for getting only one rebound in the Round of 32 upset of top-seeded Gonzaga.
Galloway and Garland of La Salle struggled mightily against the WSU defense in those first 20 minutes. The two were a combined 4-for-19 from the floor and had just 13 points between them.
