Saturday, January 2, 2021 6:30 p.m.
Gentile Arena, Chicago, IL


Just about 24 hours after getting the news that Bradley was unable to play this weekend due to positive Covid-19 tests among core personnel, the Ramblers replaced the two games at Bradley with a home contest against one of the top teams in Conference USA-- the North Texas Mean Green. UNT teams were known as the Eagles before the Mean Green nickname caught on in the 1960s, thanks to the play of future Pittsburgh Steelers player "Mean" Joe Greene.

UNT was projected to finish 2nd in the 14-member CUSA this season, behind Western Kentucky. Coach Grant McCasland took over North Texas four years ago, and has won 20 games or more every season at the helm, starting with a CBI Championship in his first season. Roosevelt Smart, a former Loyola commit, was a juco transfer into McCasland's first team at North Texas, and averaged 19.5 ppg. But McCasland continued to win in ensuing years even as Smart's contributions declined because of injuries and a DWI arrest. Last year, the Mean Green won the CUSA regular season title before Covid-19 cancelled the conference tournament.

The 2020-21 UNT squad has a lot of experience, starting four seniors and a junior. In the backcourt are 6'2" junior transfer newcomer Mardrez McBride and 6'4" senior Javion Hamlet, last year's Player of the Year in CUSA. In the frontcourt are 6'6" senior forward Thomas Bell, 6'4 senior forward James Reese, and 6'10" center Zachary Simmons.

Hamlet leads the team in points (12.1), assists (6.3), free throw attempts (19) and free throw percentage (89.5%). McBride leads the team in made threes (14) and three-point percentage (53.8%), while adding 9.1 points per game on average. Simmons and Bell both finish well at the basket, with both averaging around 60% on two pointers-- they don't shoot much from outside. Reese averages 10.3 points per game and shoots mostly from outside (but he has a pretty good scooping floater from 8 feet out).

The top four players off the bench are pretty good. In the game I watched, 6'5" freshman guard Rubin Jones was really good on both ends of the floor; Jones averages 8.7 ppg, leads the team in steals, and shoots 44.4% from distance. Six-seven junior forward Terrance Lewis (8.0 ppg, 67.6 FG%), 6'10" freshman forward Abou Ousmane (5.3 ppg), and 6'1" senior guard J.J. Murray (2.1 ppg) get minutes in just about every game.

UNT is predominantly a defensive team. KenPom.com ranks North Texas as having the 86th best defense in D-I, with the offense ranked 123rd and the team ranked 103rd overall. The Mean Green plays very energetic, close on-ball defense, and they're good at switching and getting around screens. They use a full court press and like to trap guards near the half court line. Simmons is a pretty good passer (1.9 assists per game) and sometimes steps out to the high post to feed cutters and outside shooters. At 6'10" and 240 pounds, Simmons can also bang for position; he hits on 63.8% of his two-point attempts and has a soft touch on his layup.

The Ramblers are coming off a sweep of Illinois State to open the conference season. The Ramblers won both games convincingly, averaging 88 points on offense and giving up only 57.5 on the defensive end. For the season, Loyola is shooting 54.4% from the field (5th in the nation) and shooting 42.5% from behind the arc (7th best in D-I). North Texas also shoots well, ranking 26th in overall FG% (.500 on the season) and 13th in percentage from distance (41.3%).

The Ramblers have never faced North Texas before. Loyola has not lost to a Texas team since losing at Stephen F. Austin to start the 2000-01 season; since then the Ramblers have beaten Texas Tech, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi (twice), UT-San Antonio (twice), Texas-Pan American (twice), and Abilene Christian. Loyola is 10-10 all time against current members of CUSA.


Loyola game notes: https://loyolaramblers.com/documents/20 ... _2_21_.pdf

North Texas game notes: https://meangreensports.com/news/2020/1 ... icago.aspx

TV/Streaming video: ESPN+ https://www.espn.com/watch/player/_/eve ... =401274399

Internet audio feed: https://loyolaramblers.com/watch/?Live=45&type=Live

Live stats: http://stats.statbroadcast.com/broadcast/?id=324803

Vegas odds: Loyola by 8

This is a great game for us in terms of measuring how good we are. I think they would be in the top half of the Valley. They've rattled off a few winning seasons now, and McCasland is a coach who is getting talked about in similar coaching change discussions as Porter.

I'm kind of interested in why they're coming up here or why we did this as a 1 time deal; I could definitely have seen us going to their place for the game and then maybe they would come to Gentile next year. They're the exact type of mid-major program we all say we want home-and-homes with.

I wondered the same thing. I thought about Roosevelt Smart first. I looked up Baylor Hebb's recruiting (he's from about 30 miles away from UNT), but he didn't get an offer from North Texas. Hebb was recruited by several other CUSA teams (UTA, Charlotte, Louisiana Tech) and got some other offers from Texas schools (SFA, Abilene Christian). Then when watching their game against Mississippi State, I thought that they use a similar defensive scheme as Loyola, and their coach might want to see how they match up against each other. On BartTorvik.com, Loyola is ranked at #47 and North Texas at #72, so it's a good non-con match up for both teams even if there isn't any deeper or long term rationale.

Not to go off on a tangent though, because it's a crazy year scheduling, but we did lock up a 4 year series with UIC, a much inferior team to North Texas, on a whim. By the end of it, I think Yaklich would have something going on there (if he's still coaching at UIC), but they're not nearly as competitive as UNT in the near term in terms of NET rankings, KenPom, etc. The main thing scheduling UIC gives us is a way to not be hypocritical when we complain about DPU/NU not scheduling us, which is pretty useless because those programs are already immune to shame.

Thanks as always for the nice preview JCT

JCT you have to do some quick turn around work, it is appreciated the previews have been great...
North Texas was in the Missouri Valley back in the day when the Valley of my youth included Cincinnati, St. Louis , Tulsa. Lots of changes over the years. Drake is by far the member school with the longest tenure....all the way back to 1907 except for a protest year over a racial incident in 1956.
We had a lot of trouble with the defensive pressure that Richmond threw at us, so will be interesting to see if we have improved.
Also I think we will see the rotation Coach intends to use in the Valley against NT

Can you believe this guy JT ???? What would he come up with if he had little time to put
it together ??? WOW !! Neat JT !! Like an old vintage wine he Just keeps getting better !!!

BROT says we win a close one

Always a great thing to hear from Brot, especially on the first day of a new year! Hope you're doing well, Brot

Many may forget that UIC was the “front runner” to go to the Valley when the spot we took opened up. They had a better arena more comparable to other Valley teams and their program, overall, was in better shape. We had a losing record 7 out of the prior 10 years. They had a losing record only 3 out of the prior ten. We had a new coach who just finished his first two seasons at 1-17 and 5-11 in conference, with both overall losing records. Had the Valley picked UIC over us, I would not have been shocked.

The first year we moved to the MVC, UIC could have had sour grapes and refused to play us. They didn’t. We played them the following year as well.

I don’t like UIC in the sense that they are a “local rival,” but I don’t want to do to them what DePaul and Northwestern do to us. If UIC wants to play, I think we always say yes.

Also, I have no inside knowledge but I assume we are the ones that wanted the 4-year deal. It seems very obvious that the thing Porter hates most about his job is scheduling. Solidifying 4 years of UIC, a division 1 team that costs us virtually $0 in travel and allows our fans to attend 2 extra games we normally wouldn’t get to see, in-person is a good deal. Geography and budget seem to dictate that we have to play at least 1 horizon team a year ... so it might as well be them.

If you remember the Roosevelt Smart / Sunrise Christian / Wichita State conspiracy theories... you might be a Ramblermaniac.

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