Loyola Ramblers Preview – https://loyolaramblers.com/news/2025/2/7/mens-basketball-ramblers-open-two-game-trip-vs-dukes.aspx

Duquesne Stats and Intel - https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/sc ... /2025.html

Record: 9-14 (4-6, 9th in A-10 MBB)
Coach: Dru Joyce
PS/G: 68.3 (310th of 364)
PA/G: 66.7 (49th of 364)
SRS: 0.04 (153rd of 364)
SOS: 0.54 (130th of 364)
ORtg: 104.1 (253rd of 364)
DRtg: 101.6 (129th of 364)


Loyola Chicago Ramblers (14-8, 5-4) at Duquesne Dukes (9-14, 4-6) – 5:00pm CST UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse, Pittsburgh PA.

After winning their last two at home, the Ramblers will try to take two more on the road this week, starting tonight at Duquesne. Loyola Chicago and Duquesne will meet for the only time this regular season.

Loyola enters tonight having won its first consecutive games since early December, and 3 of their last 4 overall, and is looking to build on a dominating 77-53 win over St. Bonaventure to improve to 14-8 on the year. With last night’s continued cannibalism in conference play, and very little margin between spots #3 thru 8, the Ramblers are now temporarily in 4th place! Team defense has been carrying the load as of late, with opponents getting held to an impressive 58 points per game on a difficult 42% FG percentage in those 4 games. This drastic improvement has resulted in LUC’s return to defensive relevance – and they might finally have found something. The Dukes, who struggle offensively (#310 in the nation) are the perfect candidates for this to continue a 5th straight game.

Meanwhile, the Dukes also play some team defense themselves - ranking fourth in the A10 in scoring defense (66.7 ppg) and 49th in the country overall – However earlier this week, they couldn’t pick up the lowly Richmond Spiders - who shot 61.0% from the field and 66.7% from three.

Riding high from a late season surge, an A10 Tournament Championship and NCAA Tournament auto bid, and a first-round victory over BYU before dropping to Illinois in the second round last March, the Dukes began this season 0-6 under first year head coach Dru Joyce (taking over from retired Keith Dambrot) before winning their next 9 of 12. At present, they are struggling in A10 play and are looking to snap a 5-game losing streak.

The Dukes sit at 9-14 overall and 4-6 in A-10 play heading into the weekend. They hold a 6-6 home record and are in a four-way tie for ninth in the A10 standings. The Dukes are one of the lowest scoring teams in the league, averaging just 68.3 points per game, but they find success from three-point range, averaging third best in the league at 34.8 percent.

Tre Dinkins III leads them with 12.3 points per game, while shooting 40.4 percent from the field. He also has the most makes from deep at 56. Dinkins III is on an eight-game double-figure scoring streak, dropping 27 and 26 points on Saint Joseph's twice already. Jake DiMichele averages 10.9 ppg to round out the pair of double-digit scorers for Duquesne. Jahsean Corbett, transfer from Chicago State, is also a producer for the Dukes, averaging 9.5 ppg and a team leading 5.6 rpg. Kareem Rozier is also a contributor, averaging a team-high 3.7 apg, with Cam Crawford (7.8ppg) and Maximus Edwards (7.6 ppg) also providing them some scoring options off the bench.

We could either be in for a weird one or another convincing Ramblers victory, as Duquesne has lost 5 in a row and the Ramblers have lost 3 in a row on the road. Duquesne is back to looking like the dumpster fire that they were earlier this season when the Dukes looked like the farthest thing from the team that made the NCAA tournament last season.

Duquesne Probable Starters – (Mostly unknown as they’ve run 8+ different starting lineups this season and none look to make sense on the charts) – Starters of last 2 contests have been 6-5 G Cameron Crawford, 6-2 G Tre Dinkins, 6-8 F Matus Hronsky, 6-8 F Jakub Necas, and 6-8 F Eli Wilborn.

Loyola Probable Starters – Watson, Dawson, Edwards Jr., Houinsou, Rubin


LAST 10 GAMES FOR BOTH SQUADS

Dukes: 4-6, averaging 68.9 points, 30.1 rebounds, 13.6 assists, 6.9 steals and 4.4 blocks per game while shooting 42.0% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 69.3 points per game.

Ramblers: 5-5, averaging 68.9 points, 28.8 rebounds, 14.5 assists, 6.1 steals and 4.1 blocks per game while shooting 46.5% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 70.8 points.


Watch / Listen – Tonight’s game can be watched on CBS Sports Network with Carter Blackburn and Pete Gillen on the call, and can be listened to Rambler Sports Network with our friends Sudikoff and CT.

Postgame Show - Tune in to Sudikoff on RSN, followed by TalkinBlers Spaces on the X: https://x.com/blerstalking?s=21


Odds: Loyola -1.5

"Road Dogs" lol

Prime opportunity to carry momentum and solidfy ourselves in the top 4. Instead, we turn the ball over a disgusting amount of times and generally play an ugly basketball game. And now we fall back to the mushy middle.

Turnovers have plagued this team every year under DV's tenure. It's old. It's tiring. He never seems to make efforts to fix it. I'm over it.

I won't to with the silly stupid turnovers. That's been done over and over. I won't go with stupid, unnecessary fouls 30 feet from the basket - that also been done to death.

Today I'll go with our total lack of game awareness. Down 8 points with less than 2 minutes to go, time to go fast. But Des dribbles the ball at the top of the key for nearly 15 seconds while we were what....trying to set up a play? All we proceeded to do was pass the ball around the perimeter 5 times with several guys passing up decent looks. No basket, but more important we took about 40 seconds to get a shot up. Next possession, still down 8, Kimane is driving to the basket and has a shot an easy quick 2....but throws the ball back out where we proceed to take more time off the clock passing the ball around. Absolutely no situation awareness.

I was foolishly optimistic that we could beat a banged up, bottom half Duquesne team today and stay in the conference top 4. . A hugely winnable game, but our old habits showed up.

We need to handle the press better as the TOs are now deadly, again.
OK, next game please.

Hot take... Dawson isn't that good of a shooter.

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MBB Scholarship Chart

Watson 6 for 19 today….. What? Why?

Dawson 1-8 on three attempts. No reason to be launching from deep when pounding the paint won last two games.

We are now 1-8 in “away” non-home games this year. Counting Milwaukee injury fest, Hawaii stinko, and all but one A10 road games. This gives zero confidence for the remainder of this month and next month in DC.

At one point in the game, sometime in the second half, all of our starters had nearly more turnovers than defensive rebounds. I think the final stat was 24 rebounds to 15 turnovers OMG

When Duquesne started the second half on that 0-12 possessions scoreless stretch we should have gotten more than only 7 points out of it.

The offense is inept and awful.

Very poor bench usage and involvement.

Absolutely need to find a quality backup / secondary PG / ball handler for the roster next year.

Upsetting loss. Felt we needed to go 2-0 this week, considering the two inferior opponents, before the showdown with SLU on Friday.

The above comments say it all….. Lack of consistency is mind boggling. Lack of true talented PG is obviously hurting, and lack of any decent plan B is obvious. OK, so now what? When do we just quit trying to act like the next game will turn the corner and think long term?
Too much pressure to win now leaves us not developing our freshmen as early as possible. Are we satisfied hoping for some lightening in a bottle this season or should we expect more going forward. I’d like to see Drew secure in this job so he doesn’t feel pressure to win NOW. Go Ramblers…Do better!

I am not going to give up on this team even though it seems like average might be the best we can do. I hope I am wrong and this team becomes a Phoenix...but my gut says average. What I do want to remember and not lose is what LU has built in the last 8 years. Pretty full gym , student involvement , competitive team, good academic accomplishments....All of this is easy when you have a tournament team but now it is harder when it looks like you may not be....Now it is up to the fans to support the team even if they cannot reward us with riches. Only question is do we have good kids who play hard and deserve our support?. Sometimes you dont have the pieces or you lose some of the pieces. So up or down I hope we continue to support the team and the overall program that has been established after decades in the wasteland. Win or lose lets keep it going.

So agree with you Nate!

When the threes aren't falling, our offense is really bad because we really don't have anyone who create their own shot. Last year we could dump it down to Dame and let him do his thing.

Quinn is probably the only guy who can consistently beat his guy 1-on-1, but seems to lack the confidence to really take over a game. Unless he takes a leap soon, we're just going to have to hope we get hot from deep in the A10 tourney -- which is certainly possible, and if that happens we've got a shot to win it IMO.

Just frustrating to see the team take a step back this year, especially since next year looks like it might be a bit of a rebuilding year. Hope I'm wrong about that, but the 4-star freshmen so far seem like they were wildly overrated (although I'm still intrigued with Young), so we'll have to get lucky in the portal.