If I’m Drew and the staff, I’m using the card of one of the biggest in-season turnarounds in history to the players.
https://www.ncaa.com/rankings/basketbal ... t-rankings

Just pathetic.

For those of you blaming this on NIL/portal/etc., well our recruiting/transfer class was 3rd in the A10, behind VCU and SLU and ahead of Dayton: https://247sports.com/college/loyola/season/2025-basketball/overallteamrankings/?Conference=A-10

It was good for 84th overall in CBB (not to mention a returning Rubin...) and yet now we're 12th from the bottom in the NET. Still think this isn't Drew's fault?

I think it is too simple to blame it on Drew. It is EVERYONE's fault. Drew clearly missed the mark on his recruiting, the offense completely lacks identity, and the guys have not looked ready to play defense the entire season. I am not sure what these guys do in practice or spent all of the offseason doing. All of that is on Drew.

At the same time, we have to talk about the players. As a unit, just insanely disinterested in playing basketball and winning. I have seen pretty much 0 emotion out of this team in every game that has been played. Player highlights:

Justin Moore... what is going on there? 0 emotion or leadership out of him when he is on the floor. I watched him play against DePaul with my own eyes in the exhibition and it was like a different athlete, so the talent is there. Instead during the season he makes very poor decisions and dribbles into triple teams for heavily contested 2s. His scoring averages look pretty good, but they are coming from horrific efficiency and he is averaging over DOUBLE the amount of turnovers as last season.

Miles Rubin is a bright spot on this team and his production is clearly there. At the same time, the squad really needed him to step into more of a leadership role and I just do not see it out of him like I was hoping. Most of the time he looks like he is regretting his decision to stay (which at this point I get).

Chuck Love is giving it his all and will be special. Tavarez also looks like he is trying to give it his all. Dotson and Ola-Joseph have been disappointing, but honestly they weren't expected to be the key players this year anyway, so cannot blame them too much. Kymany looks fairly checked out this season and seems to be battling a lingering injury on top of it.

Richardson does not look ready to play high-level D1 basketball. Drew has started to realize this as well as his minutes have been diminishing. Could be good in the future, but this is not his season.

Dominick Harris was supposedly a 3 point specialist. His problem is that he can't hit 3 pointers-so there really is not much else he can do, and is thus playing even less now. Based on how the recruiting timeline and everything else played out, I am not entirely sure that Drew actually scouted/recruited him to the degree that was needed. He was picked up almost immediately after Patrick (the other Euro) backed out. I had been seeing rumblings from Gonzaga and UCLA fans that this was a bad pickup so I was fairly worried, but I think his 1 season of stats at Loyola Marymount from 2 years ago is what got Drew to take him.

Sorry if this seemed harsh but, these guys frankly are being paid well enough for this level of criticism and they are actually only ranked higher than TEN NCAA D1 teams at the moment, so I think it is very fair to be this disappointed. If Drew does survive this season he has to sit down and think about all of this and how to avoid it again.

Sure there is plenty of blame to go around, but ultimately the onus is on Drew to have the players in a position to succeed. I see the guys struggling, but I also see them lacking direction and disorganized. It's hard to have emotion when you're not sure what you're supposed to be doing. We also know Drew can be pretty adversarial with his players, and that's not necessarily a good thing -- and if the team quits on you, who's fault it that? Pretty much every player except Miles, and arguably Chuck, is struggling, which hints at a systemic problem rather than all of these highly-touted players all forgetting how to play at the same time.

More to that point -- it's Drew that sets the lineups. He doesn't need to keep giving run to the guys that are allegedly dogging it, but for some reason he does. In fact, Drew's lineups and substitutions baffle me constantly -- he seems to care more about playing time as carrot/stick than "this group is working well together, let's let it ride for a while" or "these are good matchups for us". He also doesn't need to play a deep bench, especially when so many guys don't look ready, but he does.

Let's talk about Justin Moore -- like you said, he looked like a different guy in the preseason, so what happened? I strongly suspect he's having some setbacks with his knee injury. He doesn't seem able to keep up with his guy on defense or fight through screens at all, and shows no burst or lift on offense. And yet, he's leading the team in minutes by a decent margin, and kinda killing us in the process -- why not at least scale back his minutes, to keep his knee fresh if nothing else, and try to give Dotson more run at point? He hasn't played well either, but he at least looks healthy out there. Instead, in Acrisure Drew kept Justin out there and just had him dribble out the shot clock to rest, I guess, which just resulted in several turnovers. I think Drew just decided that Moore is "his guy" and is determined to run him into the ground?

Finally -- this has been a pattern for Drew, even in the last two "good" years. Remember losing to UIC? And last year, everyone blamed the disaster in Hawaii on injuries, but we weren't really playing well when we were healthy, we just played a bunch of cupcakes, many of whom we actually struggled against. In fact, the injuries might have helped in the long run, because it forced Drew into a short bench and the unconventional lineup of Houinsou/Dawson/Edwards/Watson/Rubin, which turned out to be one of the top on-floor groups in the country.

I have no inside knowledge of any contract language, but I wonder if Drew and the players agreed to some type of guaranteed playing time? Hypothetically, a SEC school offers Player A $500k. Sounds great but all these guys can read the depth chart so they know they'll probably never leave the bench. Loyola offers Player A $400k and a guarantee he gets 20 mpg or that he starts. Some players might leave that $100k on the table for a guaranteed spot in the rotation. It also might be the reason why Drew keeps trotting the same guys out there.

I’m not running with an assumption based on no evidence that somewhat bails Drew out. Even if that was the case there would be exceptions based on performance. Drew seems to be sticking with his same old process instead of adapting to his new players. He’s clearly struggling and he’s going to lose the locker room in the process (may already have). He’s already blamed the players to the media, that didn’t go well for him in the past (2024 season w/ Marquise Kennedy, Saint Thomas).

A lot of good points posted.

Two quick points and I will "re-post" something I posted a few topics ago.

1. First time Division 1 Head Coaches fail quite a bit. It took Porter a couple of stops before he came into his own as a head coach. Drew was a baby when we hired him. He was young with no head coach experience. His hire seemed to be fueled by the fact that Porter created a culture here and he left the cupboard well stocked when he left. None of the players followed him to OK as they wanted to win here. The players seemed to want Drew to be the head coach and we jumped in and gave them "their" coach and tried to continue the culture. With that said, we were all hoping Drew would grow into the job and while he has had some good years here, he's also has some bad years and this is shaping up, so far, as being the worst of them.

2. This is a poorly constructed roster. This is the first time in quite a while we did not bring in a bona fide low post scorer and it is killing us. Drew is a good recruiter, but he needs to get better at recruiting players that will fit what he wants to do.

My previous post, sorry if it is redundant for those who may have read it when it was originally posted.

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When Porter was here he had a "player profile" he recruited to. Porter knew at the time he was not gonna get a 4 star player. What he did was look for was a player that had certain characteristics. These included players with high motors who had had won championships whether at the high school or JC level (transfer portal wasn't all the rage it is now). He wanted guys who knew how to win and who possessed that drive and work ethic. He also recruited to scheme. Knowing you couldn't get 4 star players he looked for skill sets. Could you play defense, could you shoot it, were you coachable. He then took those guys and he coached them hard. He was demanding and meticulous. He preached and demanded loyalty to the culture and the Culture Wall. He got the whole to play better than the parts.

In Drew, who walked into good situation and now with NIL money and the transfer portal, the array of possible talent has expanded for Loyola. We have resources to compete to go out and get a 4 star like Love and to be in the mix for players who are arguably more athletic and more skilled. This is all great, but (there's always a but) in order to capitalize on the increased resources and recent history of the program you need to be self aware as a coach. You need to know what your coaching profile is, what is your system and vision of how you want to run your program. Once you know that you have to be able to figure out what your player profile is that you want to recruit that will fit what you want to do. I think Drew, as a young coach has not completely figured this out yet. He is trying to reshape the program by becoming more up tempo and shooting more threes. I assume Drew thinks this appeals more to today's players. Which is fine, but you still need guys on the roster that can play defense, rebound, score in the paint. This current roster does not seem right now to be constructed very well. We have no true low post scorer on the roster. We do not have enough rebounders. Maybe a healthy Kymany and Amos would help that, but Amos is not a true low post scorer like Knight, Krut, Adelequen (I know I butchered his name) were.

We offer a ridiculous amount of guys every year and it's hard to figure out exactly who Drew is really targeting. Are we ending up with players who are not Drew's 1st, 2nd, or 3rd choice to fit his coach and system profile but we we just need bodies? If so, maybe we need to do a better job of recruiting by going after less "names" in the portal and at the HS level and more after guys that fit Drew's coach's profile and player profile.

Shifting gears, it's a brave world with the NIL money. College basketball has become a business and these players are not amateurs. They are paid professionals. As such it creates some unique pressures. First, if you are a coach and your school entrusts you to spend $20.5 million on players and you can't put a championship caliber team on the floor that get's into the NCAA tournament, you are gonna be on the hot seat. Schools do not like throwing money away and with basketball becoming a business, coaches are not gonna be given a massive amount of leash to fail. Second, if you are a player and you are receiving NIL money, fact is you are going to have to produce. Again, its business. Schools are not going to want to throw valuable resources away on players who are not returning on that investment. It stinks to talk about in these terms, but the players pushed for NIL and they should understand the consequences. It will be interesting to see how many transfers end up leaving more established programs due to lack of production and having to drop down to try to get, what you presume to be, lesser NIL money to keep playing. When the portal was coming vogue and players were jumping into it a vast majority were not getting takers and were out of their original programs. Schools were probably glad some of these scholarship guys left and that was before the crazy NIL money! Now, I can see schools just not reupping on the NIL money. Everyone is on a 1 year contract, coaches...may be a 2 year contract.

Lastly, I am not pleased with the start. We are far enough into the year that the newness of the players can not be used as an excuse in my mind, especially since we seem to be regressing a bit. The only thing stopping me from completely giving up on this year is not having seen Kyanmy healthy (a little bird told me he will be like this all year health wise) and Amos healthy. I will always be a 'Blers fan, but I will withhold final judgment until we get into conference play.

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It doesn't bail him out; in fact, it makes it even more his fault. The difference is just shifts it from his failure in November to his failure in April. He's the one who's doing the evaluating, recruiting the portal, and putting together the roster.