A lot of frustration on the board and a lot of venting. Great therapy!
Afterall this has to be in the top five of all time Loyola losses. Unbelievable, like the sinking of the Titanic.
While Aher has been disappointing, this loss was not his doing.
Free throws have been an issue all year. That is stating the obvious.
But it is the symptom of a disease, not the cause. And it is not all physical.

A lot of it is mental! You take teach the physical and you can practice but what is the real cause?

FEAR! Fear is the cause.

So why is there fear?

When you shoot a free throw you are standing there alone, all alone.

And if you miss, everyone knows it, it is entirely your mistake. And if you make an obvious mistake, you MIGHT lose playing time.
So you begin to think about that and lose focus.
There are therapies that deal with fear.
That is where the off season analysis needs to begin.

As for this being the offseason, it is. Loyola will not invest in those tournaments.
Personally, I would rather Loyola invest in going to quality pre season tourneys and if you win twenty games consistently you will get those invites.

So, time to move on (somewhat) beyond anger. But time to really reflect on how to remove that fear from a very talented group of players.
Its been great to attend the games and to see the Joe filled.
I am grateful to Steve and Porter and all of his staff from all their hard work. Great expectations lead to great disappointment.
But at least this group of leaders has given us those expectations.

This one does hurt, everyone is frustrated, especially with the way we lost. We played with fire often this year with blowing big 2nd half leads and missing free throws. It’s a bit odd that they never really improved on that, from Coppin St to S. Florida to Colorado St, through conference play the trend continued. Hopefully the team learned from this season and as said, someone comes up with that killer instinct (my guess is Kennedy will be the one next year to demand his shot late) and work on Free Throws. 50% next year will not cut it, if we really expect to be a Tournament team in 2021 we to be 70+ in three throws at least, if not we will be in the same position next March unless the team works on that.

It isnt right to pin the whole loss on Aher; he played poorly yes but this was a complete team loss. No one except Clemons really showed up, Our leaders Williamson and Krut included, and some blame also goes to Porter for not having the team ready to beat a team in short rest. I do agree that with the players coming back next year, Aher should be a reserve and Kaifes should start over him. Sheesh lack of offense or even improvement after 3 years in the program is maddening and he has had enough time, we need guys that can score. Krut, Williamson, Tate, Kaifes, Clemons should be the starting five. A reserve unit of Frank, Welch, Aher/Wojick, Kennedy, Norris would be a starting five in most conferences and we have to take advantage of that depth.

Know Porter said that it’s the off-season now but I hope that if there is an invite to the CBI/CIT that we would take it. Any additional experience in a single elimination tournament and the ability to respond to a brutal loss like this is important for a team, especially one that will have major expectations next year. Think the CBI tournament did more to prep for the boys on the Final Four team more than we can imagine and I’d hope Porter would advocate for more opportunities for the team to grow and work on it’s glaring issues. Is it disappointing? Yes, everything broke our way to get to the championship, it does sting badly; but I don’t want to see the season end on this note.

Good post, 303. It was a total team loss.

I'm fine either way on the CBI question. On one hand it might be good for the team, but on the other hand, I don't like going from the Final Four to the NIT to the CBI.

Can you imagine what the board would be like if Mullins was in the semifinal today and we were going home?

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That sucked. We had so many opportunities at the line that ultimately ended up as nothing more than a turnover. Those 3 travels/out of bounds/flagarent foul call in like 2 minutes of game time really flipped the momentum.

Kiser and Fazekas played their asses off; as did Sackey. One thing I noticed with Valpo is they played better against us when JFL was out of the line up. Their comebacks here and at Valpo were both with him stuck in foul trouble.

On our end, hats off to Keith. He’s played his best in important games this year and deserved more help. I think our game plan was fine. We got up 18 with it; just lacked urgency like we have all year: whereas Valpos seniors played like seniors. Blaming Aher is easy, but the fact is we had one player in double digits for scoring. Im guessing he also played so much because we were getting destroyed on the boards when he was out. Lucas played great D late but was 3-10, Krut and tate weren’t getting anything either. Thank god we have shooters to spread the floor next year.

I gotta say tho; I wish we woulda seen more Tom/Pax/Pip. They all played pretty well early on, and gave a different look. I was really excited seeing Tom hit a 3 on such a big stage and Pax getting some shots to fall inside. The stage didn’t look too big for Marquise either. No excuses next year. We’re loaded and have what we’ve lacked in years past!

After some reflection, I think it might be my fault. I've missed Arch Madness twice now and both times have been when we've failed to win a game. When I've gone, we've at least won 1. I'll try my best to go every year. I'll take donations starting now if anyone wants to help pay for my future trips

I am still confused as to how they were able to contain Krut like they did. He wasn't able to do his normal work downlow, we had trouble feeding him the ball. He has 70+ lbs and quite a few inches in Kiser.

I know we have done enough piling on Aher in this thread so I'll just say--you cannot have an offensive liability like him be court for 30+ minutes just can't.

Poor shooting and leadership by Lucas/Krut. Had the ball with a chance to win with 9 seconds. Then taking the ball out under the hoop with 4 seconds and turned it over--awful execution out of a timeout that almost led to us losing in regulation.

Tate is the most maddening. Worst free throw shooter on the team. And then absolutely disappears for entire games. But then he shows what he is capable of by going off in random games. He is too inconsistent to be our 2nd scoring option. If he can't figure it out, I'd like to see Kaifes or Marquise become that 2nd leading scorer next year.

Agreed on the point above regarding Pax/Welch/Pip. Thought they looked really good out there and (I think) they were the lineup on the court when we really extended the lead. Ride what is working.

Will give some credit to Valpo. Obviously we let them back in it through missed free throw shooting and sloppy play, but they took advantage of it through absolutely clutch shooting. Will be happy not to see Kiser and Fazekas launching 3s against us again.

I know I have multiple long posts in this thread, but it just sucks to see it end this way. After UNI lost, the path was clear. Think we were all making weekend plans in our minds and envisioning a Sunday showdown with Bradley. Now we have to watch the 4, 6, 7 and 8 seeds duke it out for the conference's bid. Think I'm pulling for Drake but it'll like be Bradley stumbling their way to the bid again.

Kiser worked his ass off against Krut.

The other bad play at the end was after Aher airballed the layup, Clemons poked it away, back to Aher and he went right to the basket and got blocked. Gotta know the time there and back it out.

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We lost because of the same 2 problems that persisted all season:

1. The obvious horrible free throw shooting, and
2. Inability to stop getting layups blocked.
All year and last year guys would go wide open to the basket and get blocked from behind. I can’t remember any team having that happen as much as it has happened to the Ramblers. Krutwig has it happen constantly.
I feel like some of that is a result of the poor free throw shooting. Guys may be afraid to get fouled and are trying to avoid contact?
These 2 things killed us all year and were our downfall yesterday.

He did. But simply working your ass off shouldn't be enough to shut down an all-league guy that has 70 lbs and a few inches on you. I don't get how it happened.

Krut was getting delayed doubles. He’d catch, start dribbling and then a double would come late from behind. Kiser was also a mismatch for Krut on offense because he could dribble drive and wear him down. They scored the last point by having Kiser drive, getting around Krut, lucas came to help leaving Gordon wide open.

Offensively, outside catch and shoot threats would help open up one on one space as well. McMillan/clay were also grabbing and shoving him every time they were on him. It was real physical. Oh and when he did get deep in the post the one old ref called him for back to back travels which... idk. He was constantly chirping at Porter and was the one who tried calling the foul in the LAST SECOND of a tie game after the clock had expired.