Kevin is a great college basketball follow if you're on Twitter, covered Loyola a lot while at Northwestern for his undergrad and now works for SI.

Love what he's saying after attending practice today.

Here's an excellent recent breakdown of our defensive gameplan against Illinois in the tournament. Exciting as I think it is common knowledge that Coach Valentine has always had a pretty active role in our defensive strategy during his time here.

gosh that is fun to watch...I mean how lucky were we to follow a team that won with team defense. If you check box scores . the number of times that we held opposing leading scorers is pretty darn good. Watching Brady and Billicheck last night wondering how one would do w/o the other brings up some interesting watching for us this year.

Three Man Weave came out with their MVC preview today (they are a fun read and good podcast that devotes more time to midmajors than others) and have Loyola at 2nd place behind Drake. Also predicting that we’re in a good position for potential at large consideration. One interesting tidbit was a focus on Chris Knight with highlight video included, they didn’t call him to start but said he would be a close fill-in for Krutwig. Not sure I see that passing wise but he sure looks like he has good post moves, a good shot, and is extremely athletic. Hopefully he bounces back strong from the injury. It’s crazy to see how much depth there is this year, we have legitimately two starting 5s, Coach V has his work cutout figuring out playing time. Great issue to have.


https://www.three-man-weave.com/3mw/mis ... 22-preview

Only a few minutes into this, but feel like it's going to be great. First 15 or so minutes appear to be with Drew, then their panel doing some analysis. Love that the team continues to get national exposure like this.

Some good words about Saint Thomas. Sounds like he might be a freshman that sees some playing time.

Coach Drew presents himself so well for the youngest coach in college basketball. Collected, personable, relatable. We are lucky to have him--let's go win some ball games in a month. Although I don't like the last few minutes of the panel discussion--talking about Coach Drew being a "riser" and how one great year could get high majors to come knocking sooner than later. Kevin Sweeney sticking up for Loyola though.

Jeff Goodman does a great job with the Field of 68 network. Covers a lot of teams and goes in-depth (as evidenced by 30 minutes dedicated to just Loyola). Big fan.

For those not on Twitter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQTnsPh3mBI

Ramblers land at 28 on Matt Norlander's 1-358 rankings. Going back thorough all 3 articles is interesting to see where he puts other Valley teams as well.

I think Drake landed at 72 and Missouri State was in the lower 70s or upper 80s if I remember correctly.

I’m (pleasantly) surprised with how big of a gap there is between us and number 2 (Drake) in these rankings…don’t get me wrong, I still think we are the best team in the Valley this year, but I’m not sure it’s quite that big of a gap. Maybe I’m overestimating the loss of Porter and Krut, but I just assumed the gap would be a little more narrow, especially with all that Drake is returning.

It's a ranking of 358 teams. Some liberties are going to be taken and I think with all of the pieces he has to fit together "Does my ranking accurately capture the gap between number 1 and 2 in the MVC" has got to be low on his priority list. Frankly I'm not sure we're going to be better than Drake. It's possible, but the centerpiece of our offense and the person who designed it are both gone. The offense is a huge question mark right now, and maybe that question has been solved behind closed doors in practice, but we will need to beat good teams in the non con before I'll forecast us as better than Drake. Drake has proven itself on both sides of the ball. We can't say that about this squad.