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PostPosted: Thu Dec 05, 2019 7:37 pm 
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Location: Chicago, Illinois
Saturday, December 7, 2019
Gentile Arena, Chicago, Ill.

Loyola suits up against D-II Quincy University for an all-too-rare Saturday home game. The Quincy athletic department is very familiar with Gentile Arena, as their men's volleyball team plays in the MIVA conference as a rival of Loyola's men's volleyball team. The Ramblers will face Quincy, the only Illinois team on this year's non-conference and exhibition schedule, for the first time ever in men's basketball. Quincy plays in the same conference as Lewis, Indianapolis, Rockhurst, and McKendree-- all teams Loyola has faced in competition over the past several years.

Cue this year's argument about whether it's worthwhile or productive to have a game against non-D1 teams during the regular season. I'm against it. A few years ago, the Ramblers had a highly-touted scholarship player go down for the season in a meaningless game against a D-III team with hardly anyone in the stands. That promising player never saw another minute playing at Loyola.

Yes, it's nice to try different lineups, new plays, and new tactics against a competitive team while getting a "W." But strong teams should be able to do the same thing against weaker D1 teams and late in blowout games. And now there's a new phenomenon, which we saw against Indianapolis in the pre-season: some players on non-D1 squads that get so psyched up to show they could have played D1 that they get over-aggressive and it results in an injury.

Quincy lost in their two previous games against D-1 schools this year. In an exhibitions against Northwestern, the Wildcats went off on the Hawks, 105-64. QU played a close game in exhibition at SIUE, losing 61-52. In regular-season play, Quincy is 3-3 thus far with a triple-overtime win at a neutral site, two home wins, and three road losses.

Hometown junior forward Tanner Stuckman is the star and offensive focal point of QU's team. The agile 6'9" Stuckman does a little bit of everything; he averages 20.6 ppg on 53.7% shooting from the field, pulls down an average of 7.0 rebounds, and steps behind the arc to shoot 39%. Along with Stuckman, QU is likely to start Ryan Briscoe, Aziz Fadika, Viktor Kovacevic and Austin Downing.

Loyola is coming off their best win of the season, on the road, against an experienced Ball State squad. Loyola built a 23-point cushion midway through the second half before cruising to a 70-58 win. Newcomer Keith Clemons scored 13 points in his first D1 game after returning from injury, and the Ramblers had by far their best performance shooting from distance (9-of-15 on threes for 60%).

It's nice that Loyola can play another Illinois team in the non-con season... But it's kind of weird that Illinois, UIC, DePaul, Northwestern, Chicago State, Northern Illinois, Western Illinois, Eastern Illinois, and SIUE aren't among them. And it's especially weird that so many other Illinois teams are playing games against one, two, three, or even four Division I Illinois teams on their non-con slate. SIUE plays three non-con D1 teams, NIU plays three, Northwestern plays three, DePaul plays two D1 teams plus U of C, etc.

Let's hope both teams learn something, people have some fun, and no one gets hurt.


Loyola game notes: https://loyolaramblers.com/documents/20 ... 2_7_19.pdf

Quincy game notes: Pending

TV/Streaming Video: ESPN3 https://www.espn.com/watch?id=2da4a468- ... 75c512212a

Live audio feed: https://loyolaramblers.com/watch/?Live=11&type=Live

Live stats: http://stats.statbroadcast.com/broadcast/?id=280002

Vegas odds: N/A


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 07, 2019 9:26 am 
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I really do not like having this game on the schedule either. I just want to see us come away with a 15 point win... not because it’s that close... just so we can get Krut, Williamson and Hall out at halftime, and give our bench some valuable game minutes to prep for the rest of the season.

I’d like to see Frank, Welch, Aher, Skokna, and Kennedy with a majority of the minutes the second half, sprinkled in with wojcik, pipkins and maybe a little Clemons in relief. Baughman and Alcock should play the last 4 minutes. If that happens we played this game right.

Build a 16 to 20 point lead at halftime and coast. That second line should be able to play even with these guys no problem. If not, I’ll be a little disappointed.


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 07, 2019 1:07 pm 
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Pull out to a big early lead and Quincy can’t do much so far as expected. I hope we see the bench heavily in this game. I’m hoping to see Welch get some minutes specifically. He could use these type of minutes to get comfortable.


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 07, 2019 1:09 pm 
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The legend Clay Custer is on the bench in a nice suit. Glad to see him in whatever made up position we gave him!!


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 07, 2019 1:29 pm 
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Location: West Town, Chicago, IL
zha_blers_mafia_17 wrote:
The legend Clay Custer is on the bench in a nice suit. Glad to see him in whatever made up position we gave him!!


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 07, 2019 1:50 pm 
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If this game is the game that gave Williamson his confidence back.... I'm glad we played it...


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 07, 2019 2:17 pm 
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Frank needs to start improving his rebounding


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 07, 2019 3:31 pm 
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Nobody got hurt. Everything went the way it was supposed to. No big deal - but I really hope this is the last D2 game We play for a while. All it takes is a hothead like No. 3 for Quincy to get frustrated and undercut a guy, and we’ve got a massive problem.

For Williamson - doesn’t matter who you’re playing - open looks from 3 are open looks from 3. Keep knocking them down !


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 07, 2019 4:59 pm 
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Location: Livin in the middle, between the two extremes
As much as we hate these games, for this year it was clearly necessary. For one, Williamson was given an opportunity to find his stroke during live game action. That was really nice, and could pay big dividends. More importantly, it gave the younger kids experience. There were numerous moments where it was obvious they were not in sync with the offense, and still learning. One moment in particular Porter was pretty vocal that one of the Freshman either didn’t hear or didn’t understand the play call. Better to work through those mistakes in a game like this than a game where that could hurt us.

I noticed at one point the Quincy coach eyeballing either Porter or the bench almost like he wanted to fight him/them. No idea what that was about. If he was upset we had our regulars in so long, maybe he just didn’t know we’ve been playing 10/11 guys right now regularly, and we’re using this game as an opportunity to try out different lineups (as we should’ve been).


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 07, 2019 6:22 pm 
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If the Quincy coach didn’t like it, he shouldn’t of scheduled the game. If we would have left Krutwig in longer than usual, things would have been much worse. With the exception of the beginning of the second half I thought Porter used everyone the perfect amount. We only let Williamson pull the trigger one more time in the second half after he torched them in the first.

In the last 14 minutes there was really no one left to use.


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