Saturday, March 2, 2019 5:00 p.m.
Gentile Arena, Chicago, Illinois

The wild ride of the MVC’s 2019 regular season comes to an end on Saturday. Three teams—Loyola, Drake, and Missouri State—have a shot at winning the league’s regular season title and the top seed for Arch Madness. Loyola is in the unique position of being able to clinch the title by winning their game; Drake could potentially tie with the Ramblers by winning their game at Missouri State, but Loyola swept the Bulldogs in the regular season to capture the tie-breaker.

Meanwhile, Bradley-- Loyola’s opponent in the final game of the year-- has the best record in the MVC over the last seven games (6-1), and is tied with Drake for the best record over the last nine games (7-2). Part of that 6-1 record over the last seven games was Bradley’s come-from-behind 61-54 win over the Ramblers at Carver Arena on February 13. The Braves have had big road wins in Normal and Cedar Falls over that seven-span; their only loss was at Drake. Bradley can finish as high as the 4th seed with a win and some help from other teams. BU can drop to the play-in round on Thursday if Loyola, ISU and UNI all win.

Loyola will be playing for their 2nd straight conference championship while honoring seniors Clayton Custer and Marques Townes. Custer and Townes were the two enormous transfers that followed Milton Doyle to transfer success at Loyola, leading the Ramblers to the 2018 Final Four, an MVC regular season championship and an Arch Madness Championship victory. Heading into Saturday’s game Custer has accumulated 1147 career points as a Rambler (ranking 32nd on Loyola’s all-time points list); Townes has 890 career points at Loyola (with an outside chance of topping 1000 in postseason) and with a Loyola win would be the front-runner for the 2019 MVC Player of the Year award—the same hardware Custer won last year.

Most Loyola fans and MVC-watchers already know Bradley’s starting lineup and their capabilities. Three players have started every Bradley game this season: 5’10” junior point guard Darrell Brown, 6’7” sophomore forward Elijah Childs, and 6’4” senior guard Dwayne Lautier-Ogunleye. Brown averages 15.0 points per game, and leads the team in assists and steals. The rest of the team takes their cues from Brown, and BU depends on Brown perhaps more than any other team in the league depends on a single player. Since Bradley started their run of winning nine of the last 12 games, Brown has led the team in scoring five times, all of which were Bradley wins. He has the ability to knock down deep NBA-length threes with uncanny accuracy, which tends to flummox standard perimeter defenses. On the season, Brown shoots 45.7% on threes, but only 36.1% on two-point shots.

Childs averages 12.4 points and 8.1 rebounds, passes well, and is one of the best shot-blockers in the league. In league play, Childs has been especially good lately, averaging 18.3 points and 10 boards over the past three games. Lautier-Ogunleye is the team’s top on ball defender, and adds 8.5 points, 5.6 rebounds and 2.2 assists. Filling out the playing time are 6’11” junior center Koch Bar, 6’6” junior guard Nate Kennell, 6’9” senior forward Luuk Van Bree, and 6’3” guard Luqman Lundy. Highly-touted 6’6” freshman guard Ja’Shon Henry has been playing well lately, and redshirt junior Antoine Pittman has recovered from injury—these two players give Bradley a lot of athleticism off the bench.

The Ramblers got a huge mid-week road win last time out, thanks in large part to the return of Lucas Williamson to the lineup. The 6’4” sophomore guard has missed 18 games this season; the Ramblers are 8-4 with Williamson in the lineup, but only 10-8 during his injury. Against UNI, Williamson had 12 points on 4-of-6 shooting, four rebounds, and four steals.

Loyola should have a rowdy, rockin’ full house for this game. It will be one of the few Saturday games this year, it’s the farewell game for two key seniors who played an enormous role in Loyola’s resurgence as a program, and it’s the decisive game for a regular season conference championship. A win would also lock in an NIT bid if Loyola falters at Arch Madness.

Loyola game notes: https://loyolaramblers.com/documents/20 ... df?id=8398

Bradley game notes: https://bradleybraves.com/documents/201 ... f?id=10747

TV/Streaming video: ESPN 2 http://www.espn.com/watch/_/id/3473686/ ... basketball

Live stats: http://stats.statbroadcast.com/broadcast/?id=234969

Vegas odds: Loyola by 7.5

Thanks for another great preview, JCT.

We are the last game on Saturday so Bradley will know beforehand whether they need to beat us in order to avoid a play-in game on Thursday. I'm thinking it might take a little off their intensity if they know they're assured a Friday opening game at Arch Madness regardless of the outcome.

Thanks again JCT! We all appreciate your hard work and the fact that you are so knowledgeable makes all of these a MUST read.

I wouldn't go that far.

Curious to see how many students hung around campus for this

It appears that with today's outcomes so far, the Thursday night games are set: Illinois State vs Evansville, Indiana State vs Valpo. Bradley is locked into the 5 seed.

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Pretty frustrating moment and bad look for the school. Myself and a few fellow alumni that come to every game and always grab some pregame drinks in Ireland’s arrived to see that Bradley had rented out Ireland’s from 2pm-5pm on the LAST game of the year. The ONLY bar on campus was taken over by the opposing team on the last game, and senior night for two of the greatest players in Loyola history, very dissappointing. Probably isnt directly connected to athletics and instead connected to the Damen Student Center but just a bad look and pretty frustrating.

Illinois State in the Thursday night game? Couldn’t have happened to a better group of guys.

They rented out the entire bar? How do they even allow that. I was planning on going there before every home game like I always do. That’s extremely embarrassing, great job Loyola.

This worked out good for us, on paper. Bradley now doesn't have anything tangible at stake while we're playing for the conference championship and an automatic NIT bid. Plus it's seniors day.
I'm hoping this will cause Bradley to let up a bit and maybe Wardle to substitute more liberally.

Of course you could also speculate that Bradley may play better with the pressure off.

We'll soon see.