Monday, December 28, 2020 6:00 p.m.
Gentile Arena, Chicago, IL


The Ramblers play the Redbirds Monday evening at Gentile Arena in the second of the first pair of back-to-back Missouri Valley Conference league games. Loyola, who opened as 16-point favorites in Sunday's game, was hitting on all cylinders as they defeated Illinois State in the first game on Sunday. The 90-60 final margin had been as high as 36 points before Loyola began subbing players deeper on the bench.

Twelve Ramblers scored in the first game, led by Lucas Williamson who put up 18 points in 19 minutes while pulling down six rebounds and dishing four assists. Cameron Krutwig added 15 points on 7 of 9 shooting, and Tom Welch was impressive with 10 points in 11 minutes on the court. Loyola handled ISU's zone defense with ease, and the Redbirds went scoreless for long stretches as Loyola's defense was smothering at times. The Birds committed 16 turnovers and shot only 42.3% from the field. The Ramblers owned the glass, out-rebounding ISU 37-22.

DJ Horne led ISU with 18 points, and Dedric Boyd came off the bench to score 17. They were the only two Redbirds in double figures.

Coach Muller has put together a promising group of young players who haven't yet gelled. The starting lineup includes three sophomore guards, 6'3" Josiah Strong (14.0 ppg), 6'1" DJ Horne (13.5 ppg), and 6'4" Simeon product Antonio Reeves (13.3 ppg). At forward is 6'7" freshman Harouna Sissoko, and the center is 6'10" Niles Notre Dame product Dusan Mahorcic. Strong is a promising newcomer who leads the team in points, assists and three-point shooting percentage (45.2%); the Minneapolis-area product sat out last season as a transfer from Navy. Sissoko has been adjusting to college ball nicely, settling down with his shot selection and pacing while averaging 7.0 points and 4.7 rebounds. Mahorcic, who started his career at Lewis and played last year at a junior college, missed the first three games of the season but was elevated to the starting lineup for the past two games. He's averaged 13.3 points and 8.7 rebounds over those three games, and shot 78% from the field.

The top bench players are 6'4" junior guard Dedric Boyd (9.0 ppg), 6'9" sophomore forward Abdou Ndiaye, 6'6" freshman guard Emon Washington, 6'8" junior forward Sy Chatman (a transfer from UMass), and 6'5" freshman guard Howard Fleming.

Sunday's convincing win moved the Ramblers up to 50th in the country in the KenPom.com rankings. Drake continued their perfect record with an 81-63 win at Indiana State, and the Bulldogs have moved into second place among MVC teams in KenPom at #85. Drake has a .09% chance of going undefeated according to KenPom, and the Ramblers have a 1.2% chance of running the table in the league.


Loyola game notes: https://loyolaramblers.com/documents/20 ... 27_20_.pdf

Illinois State game notes: Pending

TV/Streaming video: CBS Sports Network https://www.cbssportsnetwork.com/

Internet audio feed: https://loyolaramblers.com/watch/?Live=44&type=Live

Live stats: http://stats.statbroadcast.com/broadcast/?id=324597

Vegas odds: Loyola by 18

This is where the interesting part of our new format valley schedule. It’s where good coaching comes into play.

On the ISU side, Muller has his work cut out for him. Normally I think you could hammer a team and scream at them for a 30 point blowout and embarrassment. Give the kids a day to sit with your disappointment and spend the next few days motivating them to get better. You can’t do that now. Muller has to convince his guys to erase it from their memories and focus on Game 2. BUT - behind the scenes he’s got to go back and look at the tape, analyze it all, and come up with a new game plan by morning, so he can meet with the team, first thing, and give them their assignments and game plan before, presumably, a practice. Also - he probably has to do it in a hotel room with a laptop. Keeping morale up, building a new game plan, recovering from the last game, and coming up with a new game plan has to be daunting.

On a side note - I hope our athletic department, in these times, is being gracious and hospitable when we host teams for series games like this. I’m hoping we are cool about giving them gym time at our facility and not being jerks in a time when we all have to adjust to an unorthodox way of playing these games.

Porter’s side seems just as hard. It’s probably less game planning and more trying to keep our guys focused. With a 30 point beatdown, it might be tough to not just assume the Game 2 outcome is a foregone conclusion. Hopefully that’s not happening with our players.

Minutes management was perfect in Game 1. My hope for Game 2 is that Porter doesn’t let off the gas, if by chance, we build a decent lead at halftime. I think it’s important to develop our bench, and I’m happy with their progress, but it’s also important that our main guys get 27-30 minutes together to toughen up and her comfortable with each other in game time situations. We’ve only really gotten that in 3 games so far, and we are about to finish January. Normally at this point we are 12 games in with at least 6 competitive games.

The two guys I’ll be watching closely in this one are:

1) Uguak - he played perfectly - 9 points, 2 assists, 4-4, no turnovers. Anything close to a repeat performance would be very assuring.
2) Williamson - he looks like he’s focused in hard to start conference play l, and I’m really liking his confidence shooting. I really want to see him hit double figures again. He looks like he’s ready to lead.

This team is so talented, it’s scary. If three guys per night have a “good” game, it feels like we will win easily in the valley. Game 1 it was krutwig, Uguak and Williamson (with Welch being the icing on the cake). But we still had Hall, Clemons, Norris, and Kennedy out there, who are all capable of double figure scoring. It’s so nice to not be so dependent on one guy to win is a game night-in and night-out (like the Milton Doyle years).

If I was ISU I might try to employ a press to start the game to see if I can create turnovers if they do that, I’m hoping we see Norris and Clemons out there at the same time to counter it.

Uh oh. It’s not just a CBS Sports Network game, it’s a Tim Doyle CBS Sports Network game.

They need to hire a sports psychologist just for Tate Hall

I wish we could play Illinois State for all 18 games.

Wasn’t expecting a Hamilton’s mention tonight

Uguak!

Granted, Illinois State is terrible, but our movement on offense is looking really, really good. Especially for it only being the 8th game of the year.

Lucas didn't even attempt a shot in the first half and we still have a bigger halftime lead than yesterday.

Evansville knocks off the Salukis handing them their first loss of the year. Seems that the Aces are improved this year and it may be a battle between ISUr and Valpo to stay out of the cellar. The Valley!