I say again , a team especially a Loyola team does NOT score 98 and loses !! But we did ! Why ?? We are too little !! At least this game !

Drake shot 53.8% from the field, which is bad enough, but they shot even better (55.6%) from behind the arc. And all 10 of their made threes came from players at 6'6" or shorter. Three players-- Nick McGlynn, Ore Arogundade, and De'Antae McMurray-- had new career highs in points. Arogundade and McMurray are guards at 6'3" and 6'2" respectively. Although he's a juco transfer with only 13 games under his belt, McMurray's 24 points shattered his previous high in points by 10, and he came in averaging only 6.6 per game. Add in the free throws-- 22 more points, with 18 of them coming from players 6'3" or under-- and it wasn't necessarily the big guys that killed us.

Yes, we got killed on the boards 40-27, but we usually are behind on rebounds in most games, often as a product of our high shooting percentage and the fact that we usually have a big turnover margin that gets us more shots than the opposition.

In short, we win by making possessions mean more-- by making our higher shooting percentage more impactful, and by creating turnovers that give us more possessions than the opposition. Last night, we played in a way that ceded those two advantages to the oppositon. We didn't press until it was WAY too late (5:30 left to play and down by 21). We didn't control the tempo. We got into foul trouble, which put worse shooters and defenders into the game for longer periods.

Also curious if the 1-3-1 caught us by surprise? Has Drake used it previously or did they bring it out for the first time last night?

What a frustrating result. I couldn't watch most of the game straight through but were Bruno/Tyson so ineffective that those were all the minutes they could get?? The heavy minutes on Ben/clay/vlatko seems to be becoming more than just something before a long layoff and I'd certainly trade a few non-con wins if it meant they were more equipped to play in conference. Brunos minutes are especially jarring to me from the outside looking in. Fouls killed us for the third game in a row as well. Yikes. I still love the furious comeback. But the next step for a program is to come out furious and stay furious, even if you're on paper significantly better than the opponent.

Drake clearly went off but... This is upsetting. I didn't see us matching up well with ISU before hand... So it could be a rough start to conference play. Let's hope this drives out guys a bit more. Major props to Donte for his string of performances though!! Let's try to get out to Gentile and help them bounce back!

I don't doubt your expertise, but in the game you saw last night, Loyola had 22 assists to 17 for Drake. For the season, Loyola is averaging 16.3 (number 59 nationally for a team that is only 78th in scoring) to 10.8 for opponents. Milton Doyle is the team's only senior, its most talented offensive player, not a point guard, and absolutely the go-to guy, yet he leads the team with 4.5 assists.

I wondered how often Loyola scored 98 and lost. It hasn't happened since March 1989, a 115-101 loss to Detroit, and only five other times going back to 1948-49 (in the dead ball era):
104-115 vs Evansville 2/89
107-111 vs Bradley 12/88
99-118 vs Oklahoma City 2/81
98-113 vs BYU 12/66
99-107 vs Western Michigan 2/61

Only 27 times since 1948 has LU scored 90 or more and lost, a 103-93 loss to Georgetown in 1959, 6 times in the 60s, 4 times in the 70s, 11 times in the 80s, 3 times in the 90s, and twice in this century, 93-94 (2 OT) vs Milwaukee in 2001, and Thursday against Drake.

A COMPLETE DISASTER!

I didn't know we were playing an NBA team. This was the most disappointing loss in the Porter Moser era.
We played down to them.
UIC, Toledo and Drake all ran a weave offense and we kept chasing them around and then they drove the middle. At UIC and at Toledo what changed the momentum was going to that zone.
We needed to switch up defenses OFTEN!
IF a team is shooting very well and is hot you have to change the momentum. They kept bringing the ball up and setting up their plays. Why not an occasional soft trap and then a hard trap! Make them adjust or at least think about it. When we pressed at the end, the Bulldogs looked lost and like a junior high team. The Bulldogs are not a good team and we let them beat us. This should have been a fifteen point road win.
VERY DISCOURAGING TO SAY THE LEAST.
Kirby or Granic have to be on the court more. The value of Kirby is in his size in guarding the middle or racing out to get in the face of the three point shooter in the corner. Any shooter having a 6'9" 260 pound player charging at you with his arms up is going to have to alter the shot.
I didn't think we could play this bad but we did!

I'm not sure if I would call it Drake's primary defense, but I'm guessing they've used the 1-3-1 at least 25-30% of the defensive possessions this season. I guarantee you Loyola would have seen a lot of it when scouting the Bulldogs.

There is no metric which indicates that the zone was really a problem for us. We scored 98 points, we shot 51.4% from the field and 46.7% from three. We had 22 assists and only 10 turnovers. Drake had only 5 steals. Although rebounding (especially offensive) was terrible, we're often not a great rebounding team, even when we win. We were almost even on rebounds in the second half-- I remember we were down 22-11 on rebounds at or near the end of the first half, which means we were behind 18-16 in the second half.

The problem was defense. You could tell that it was in the first 3-5 minutes of the game-- the pacing was not to our advantage, and they were ready to pass when we helped. Drake scored at will, early in the clock. Why would you try to get into a shootout with a team that's good offensively and terrible on defense--- on their floor? We showed what we were trying to do from the get-go, with the quick alley-oop play on the first possession.

This is exactly why I keep trying to legitimize the message that we need to control the pace to our advantage, focus on defense, slow down the game to make our opponents' better athletes work their asses off, and take advantage of the areas where we are generally better--- ball handling, defensive discipline, shooting ability, good hands, quickness, fitness, and exploiting beneficial match-ups. The faster you get, the sloppier you get. And we do not have the margin for error to be sloppy. We are not physically superior to all our opponents like a Power 5 conference school playing a mid major. We are not faster than everybody else. We are certainly not taller.

We are not demonstrably more athletic-- even on a smaller size scale-- than Illinois State or Wichita State or San Diego State. Look at our next opponent, on the individual starting lineup match-ups, position by position. Paris Lee (6'0" senior) vs. Clayton Custer (6'1" sophomore). Tony Wills (6'4" senior) vs. Ben Richardson (6'3" junior). MiKyle McIntosh (6'7" junior, 234 pounds) vs. Donte Ingram (6'6" junior, 215 pounds). Deontae Hawkins (6'8" senior, 220 pounds) vs. Milton Doyle (6'4" senior, 185 pounds). And Phil Fayne (6'9" sophomore lefty who plays above the rim and has a wingspan across the paint) vs. Aundre Jackson (6'5" junior). Only Doyle is faster than his counterpart, only Custer is taller (by one inch), only Jackson is heavier/stronger (but he's five inches closer to the ground). Their first guy off the bench is 6'6", and ours is 6'4". They have a 7-footer to bring in, and our tallest guy is 6'9". And yet people still can't resist trying to get into a run-and-gun Wild West shooting match against EVERY. SINGLE. TEAM. WE. PLAY..... Well you got exactly what you asked for against Drake.