Freshman Clark comes up big for Explorers in debut

Being winless was bad enough for first-year La Salle coach Ashley Howard. No one wants to win more than the Monsignor Bonner All-Delco player and former Villanova assistant coach.

Then Howard found out he had to face his old team, the defending national champions, without leading scorer Pookie Powell (back spasms), starting forward Jared Kimbrough (plantar fasciitis) and reserve guard Cheddi Mosley (concussion).

As any coach would do, though, Howard tried to make the most out of a difficult situation. He decided to use the game to take a look at freshman guard Jack Clark, who has been on the mend since tearing his ACL last January as a senior at Cheltenham High School. The 6-8 Clark only recently was cleared to play and came through in a big way in his first collegiate game.

Clark scored nine points, was 3-for-4 from 3-point range and was a big reason the Explorers were able to push the Wildcats to the limit before Villanova pulled away in the second half to extend its Big 5 winning streak to 23 games with an 85-78 victory over the Explorers.

“We’ve been testing Jack Clark out in practice and we had it in our mind that we were going to give him a shot just to see how he looked,” Howard said. “I looked at it like, ‘All right, these guys are out, it’s a great opportunity to play him.’ I thought he played great for his first college game vs. Villanova. Who else will ever be able to say, ‘My first college game, I’m from Philadelphia, Big 5 vs. Villanova at the Palestra?’ He stepped up huge for a freshman.”

••• In the old days of the Big 5, it was tradition for the team that scored first to throw streamers onto the court.

It’s frowned upon these days and a violation of NCAA rules, but that did not stop La Salle fans from reviving that custom when Traci Carter drilled a 3-pointer for the Explorers’ first bucket of the game.

The La Salle faithful threw blue and white streamers after Carter’s triple, which, of course, resulted in a technical foul.

Villanova coach Jay Wright, however, played the role of good sport and sent sophomore forward Dhamir Cosby-Roundtree to the foul line with explicit instructions to step over the foul line for a violation.

“I didn’t find out until right before the game that they were doing that so I had to make a game-time decision,” Wright said.

Wright said he would have sent guard Phil Booth, one of his better free throw shooters to the line, but feared it would have counted as a missed free throw. It does not under NCAA statistical guidelines.

••• NOTES >> With his 19 points, Booth raised his career total to 974 and has a good chance to join the 1,000-point club at home. The Wildcats host Temple Tuesday and Saint Joseph’s Saturday. Villanova closes out Big 5 play against Penn at the Palestra Dec. 11. The Wildcats play all four of their Big 5 games over a 10-day span. … Villanova senior Joe Cremo’s four assists tied his season high . ... Villanova has scored 80 points in four of its six wins. It’s also the fourth time in eight games that the Wildcats have allowed 73 or more points.