Saturday, December 3, 2016 3:00 p.m.
Gentile Arena, Chicago, Ill.
San Diego State visits Loyola Saturday for the first-ever matchup between the two teams, part of the Missouri Valley/Mountain West Challenge. Loyola lost last year’s MVC/MWC matchup at New Mexico. Fortunately or unfortunately for the Ramblers, San Diego State is the class of the Mountain West in men’s basketball. Since the beginning of the 2005-06 season the Aztecs are 290-99 (.756), with seven trips to the NCAA tournament, six regular season conference championships, and riding an 11-season streak of 20 or more wins. This season the Aztecs were picked to finish first in the Mountain West men’s basketball preseason poll for the fourth consecutive year.
Illinois native and Illinois State alumnus Steve Fisher took over the San Diego State program in 1999, just as the school joined the Mountain West Conference. Fisher famously won the 1989 National Championship as he took over at the end of the regular season that year at Michigan– his first six games as a D1 head coach were all NCAA Tournament wins. He then went on to preside over the Michigan program during the Fab Five era. Fisher has achieved similar success at SDSU. Fisher is 371-196 at SDSU, and has won 556 games as a head coach at the Division I level.
The Aztecs are off to a respectable start on the season, at 4-1. They had a pedestrian 10-point win at home in their season opener over San Diego. They were then smacked around in their only road game thus far, a 21-point loss at #14 Gonzaga. They beat up on a non-D1 team, eased past Cal in a neutral site game, and beat up on Savannah State in their last outing, 100-67.
Starting for SDSU are 6’3” sophomore guard Jeremy Hemsley, 6’4” junior guard Trey Kell, 6’9” sophomore forward Zylan Cheatham, 6’5” senior guard Dakarai Allen, and 6’10 junior forward Malik Pope.
Hemsley and Kell are a solid backcourt tandem. Hemsley leads the team with 18.2 points and 4.2 assists. He’s the team’s most prolific and accurate three point shooter, having made 12 of his 23 attempts (52.2%), and he takes very good care of the ball (21 assists to eight turnovers). Kell is also a great ball handler, with 17 assists against only six turnovers, and he does a lot of his scoring damage (15.2 ppg) from the line where he shoots 81% on freebies. Kell’s shooting isn’t anything to write home about– he makes only 25% of his threes and only 45% of his twos– but he’s a plus-plus defender leading the team in minutes and steals, and averaging 4.6 rebounds. Dakarai Allen is the third member of the backcourt, but plays like a small forward. He averages 6.8 points and 5.0 rebounds, co-leads the team in blocks and handles the ball well.
Zylan Cheatham plays a lot of minutes in the paint for the Aztecs, leads the team in rebounds, has quick hands and reflexes in traffic, and chips in 10.6 points. Malik Pope missed the first three games of the season, but jumped into the starting lineup against Cal– he averages 11.0 points and 5.0 boards playing 20.5 minutes per game in his first two contests. Another force in the frontcourt is Indiana transfer Max Hoetzel, another 6’9” sophomore forward who also missed the team’s first three games. Hoetzel is averaging 13.0 points and 7.5 rebounds off the bench in the two contests he’s played in this far. Other top bench players are 6’6” sophomore guard Montaque Gill-Caesar (a Canadian who transferred from Missouri), 6’6” senior forward Matt Shrigley, and 6’10” shot-blocking center Valentine Izundo.
The Ramblers will be without 6’6” guard/forward Donte Ingram, who tweaked his knee on Wednesday against Norfolk State and had been diagnosed with an MCL sprain. Loyola will likely start Milton Doyle, Clayton Custer, Ben Richardson, Aundre Jackson, and Maurice Kirby. A short bench without Ingram certainly hurts against a team with the kind of size SDSU presents. Loyola will need to get more minutes out of Kirby and 6’8” Vlatko Granic, and 6’4” Cameron Satterwhite may need to play more minutes in place of Custer or Richardson during four-guard rotations. Despite their size disadvantage, the Ramblers have managed to play competitively with NC State and Washington State. But not having Ingram available makes the margin for error all the more narrow.
Links
Ramblermania Message Board Discussion
Loyola game notes: http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/loy … 202aaa.pdf
San Diego State game notes: http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/sds … 201aaa.pdf
TV/Streaming video: http://www.espn.com/watchespn/index/_/i … -vs-loyola
Radio: WLUW 88.7 FM (get the app for your phone at the Google Play store—highly recommended)
Vegas odds: Aztecs by 5
