Tuesday, November 25, 2014 7:00 p.m.
Convocation Center, San Antonio, Texas

The Ramblers play Texas-San Antonio, entering their second season as members of Conference USA, for the first time ever. Former Rambler head coach Ken Burmeister coached the Roadrunners from 1986-1990, when they were members of the Trans-America Conference. UTSA became a D-1 school in 1981 as an Independent, and focusing primarily on football (it is Texas, after all), climbed the conference ladder through the Trans-America, Southland, and Western Athletic Conferences to CUSA in 2013-14. Their athletic department expenditures have grown to nearly $25 million along the way, but basketball is still a relative afterthought at the school despite a play-in game NCAA Tournament win in 2011.

UTSA is 2-1 on the season, having defeated a non-D1 school and overcoming a 14-point first half deficit to beat Texas State 80-67 on Saturday. Their one loss was also at home, 63-62, against Texas Pan American. The Roadrunners start three guards, a center and a forward. Junior Ryan Bowie, 6’2” senior Keon Lewis, and 6’2” freshman Larry Lewis, Jr. start in the backcourt and distribute the ball somewhat equally. Keon Lewis, weighing in at 220 pounds, leads the team in scoring at 17.7 ppg despite shooting only 34% from the field. Bowie is the best three point shooter, connecting on 36% behind the arc.

In the frontcourt, the Roadrunners have size in 7’0”, 270-pound Kaj-Björn Sherman, who pulls down 6.3 boards per game but only connects on 32% of his field goal attempts. Their rebounding leader and second leading scorer is Jeromie Hill, a 6’8”, 250-pound senior forward from Australia. Sherman and Hill play a lot of minutes, because although the Roadrunners have a lot of size on the bench, they aren’t very effective. Freshman guards Christian Wilson (15 points in his debut against Texas State) and Austin Karrer provide most of the bench minutes and scoring, and 6’10” freshman forward James Ringholt adds some interior defense and rebounding for about 10 minutes per game.

If Loyola hopes to break their 20-game road losing streak, they’ll need to rely on superior athleticism and solid defense to overcome the Roadrunners' height. The Ramblers are coming off a drubbing at Michigan State in which their weakness in the frontcourt was fully exploited. If they were able to learn anything from their trip to East Lansing, it will probably show up in whether Loyola can limit UTSA’s Jeromie Hill down low, or if they can shut down UTSA’s guard production-- especially rebounding from guards. Ryan Bowie, at only 6’1”, captures 7.3 rebounds per game in the early going. Loyola will need to keep an eye on Christian Wilson (listed as 6’2” and only 150 pounds), who was very active and ignited UTSA’s comeback against Texas State as soon as he entered the game.

Loyola game notes: http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/loy ... 124aaa.pdf

UTSA game notes: http://www.goutsa.com/pdf9/3001107.pdf

Television: Comcast Sportsnet Alternate, American Sports Network (http://www.americansportsnet.com/)

Vegas line: UTSA by 1.5

Your prediction for the UTSA game is "PENDING" as well, sir.

I know it's early in the season to throw around terms like "must-win", but this would be a killer loss for the Ramblers. And from the sound of it, it's a game where we should win by a comfortable yet not necessarily blowout margin (10-15). We cannot afford to let a team like this hang around like those games last year. We have to show some improvement from the MSU game and play 40 minutes of really good basketball.

Here is the Loyola press release about tomorrow's game:

http://www.loyolaramblers.com/sports/m- ... 14aaa.html

I wonder who wrote this piece of crap?

Its tone is all wrong for a press release. It's much too negative and didactic. It's frankly amateurish and sophomoric, and reads like a term paper submitted for a remedial English class..

The author uses "hoopers" for "hoopsters", is overly fond of adverbs and awkward transitions, is repetitive, and for whatever reason eschews using periods at the end of half of his/her sentences.

Terrible.

This is a tough one to predict-- I'm worried about their big guys, Hill and Sherman. They're really only average players, but with our lack of size down low and what I saw against Michigan State, they could look like superstars against us. Their guards don't really frighten me much, with the exception of Wilson off the bench, who scored 15 points in 24 minutes in his first college game. His activity really turned around the game (and he was part of a double technical, after which UTSA outscored Texas State 26-12).

UTSA 68, Loyola 64

I'm fairly confident in our guys to turn this around. 67-54. Please don't let me down.

The soundtrack for the 2014-2015 season (or, really, every Rambler season)


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Cigarboy sucks!

It continues to baffle me why we could not get any bigs for the year.Even a school like UTSA has some bigs. Did we think we weer getting Om(h)ara from Bennet? Did OLeary and Osbourne leave to late to get actively involved in the recruitment of other bigs?. But this seems like a game where the only factor that could lead to our defeat would be a 7 footer dumping in gimmies. This could be the narrative for the year.We play hard , but loose because we cant compete inside. It is hard for me to believe that there were no centers out there interested in an excellent education worth 52 grand , on a decent campus in a great town.
Having said this....if it turns out early that we cannot compete inside and it is such a factor that we are losing.....do we need to go to say a full court press .....or who has an idea?

Marlon Jones was probably supposed to be a big part of this team (pun intended), and if they're still holding out hope he comes back to LU sometime soon as was insinuated in the press release, then he would play big minutes (still pun intended).

If we can't compete inside, then we have to be a lot more aggressive in keeping the ball out of the paint however that may be (full court press, VCU havoc, great defense from our guards, horrendous guard play from our opponents). And PM's shot clock management offensive strategy (better known around these parts as "oxen-ball") will be key to keeping the ball out of our opponents hands.

P.S. - the campus is more than decent.

Marlon Jones was going to be a big part of this team and it really hurt us that he did not qualify. If he ends up here next year we will have alot more size with Kirby and Adgei as well. Though this year it will be a struggle to compensate for the height. Also the campus is way more than decent not many campuses and you be in a big city and right on the water.