There were 4 Ramblers who had medical problems last year, whose status this year is still to be determined.

1. First was potential All-MVC candidate, Milton Doyle.
Doyle to the surprise of many played with a serious labrum injury last year in his shooting arm, thanks to the special permission from the NCAA to wear an experimental sleeve on his shoulder. Added to that were his foot & ankle injuries that kept him out for 12 games, not returning at full strength until the post season games.

But by the end of the season he came back better than ever. The Ramblers were 19-6 when Doyle played, 5-7 when he was out.

His FT shooting was slow to start at .605, but when he finally came back for the last 6 tournament games of the year he hit FTs at .808.

His solid 16.2 pp40 until the CIB tournament was below his last year number of 18.2 pp40, but in the season ending 5 game CIB tournament he posted a better than ever 19.1 pp40. Balentine & Akoon-Purcell are the only MVC returners who had a higher pp40 than that & their FG% & 3PT% were far below Doyle’s.

Last season Doyle improved big time in his ball handling, compared to his first season. His assists improved from 4.4 ap40 to 6.3 ap40 (well ahead of all MVC players, except VanVleet who averaged 6.6 ap40). Likewise Doyle improved his assist to turnover ratio from 1.06 to 1.38.
Unless he has more injury problems, I look for big things from Doyle this year.

2 Second, as I mentioned in an earlier posting, Julius Rajala was showing great improvement in his last 5 games, before breaking his hand to end his season.

In those 5 games he averaged:
14.6 points per 40 minutes
8.5 rebounds per 40 (better than any other Rambler regular’s rp40)
57.1 FG % (better than any other Rambler regular’s FG%)

Playing behind Kirby and next to James and Ingram, will give his opponents less time to concentrate on him, freeing him up more.

If he comes back healthy & continues to improve like he did last season, he could be a big help to the Ramblers in the upcoming season.

3 Third, Jeff “Kiki” White was one of LU’s top returning players last year - until he had operations on both knees, keeping him out for the first 2 games & slowing him down.

With less bounce in his legs, his FG & 3PT shooting were the worst in his career, dropping greatly from his sophomore year. His points per 40 minutes also crashed. On the plus side, his .781 free throw percentage, was still good enough to place him 16th among next year's returning MVC players.

But his ball handling stayed solid, averaging 4.8 assists p40, ranking 7th among returning guards, and his assist to turnover ratio was the best in his career at 2.0, second only to VanVleet among the MVC’s top assist men.

Hopefully over the summer his leg strength will improve. If he is healthy, he can be a quality point guard.

4 Fourth & finally is the question of Jay Knuth. After playing the first 4 games of the season, he missed 4 straight. He then played decent minutes for 16 straight games. He then sat another game & was used for limited minutes for the last 12 games of the season.

The 6-6 205 freshman’s play was primarily at power forward, due to LU’s lack of size. His was clearly not a muscle guy. However, his FT shooting .882 was best in the MVC and his 3 point shooting .423 was very impressive. His 12.0 pp40 for a freshman was decent. He clearly has talent.

He is a mystery that I can’t even guess at.

Are there other injury problems? I don’t know. But they can make a big difference in any team’s season.