Saturday, December 31, 2022 3:00 p.m.
Gentile Arena, Chicago, Ill.
The A10 schedulers gave the Loyola Ramblers a break by slotting their very first A10 men's basketball game at home against the George Washington Colonials. Starting off with a home game against the squad picked near last in the league is a good way to start a new chapter on a high note-- as long as the team takes care of business. The Colonials are 221 in KenPom, and the Ramblers are currently 137.
The Colonials are one of the original A10 teams from the conference's debut season in 1976-77. Loyola has played GW five times-- all between 1937 and 1939-- and compiled with a 3-2 record. GW played many years in the Southern Conference (back in the 1940s and 1950s, when Washington DC was thought of as a Southern city). GW's last trip to the NCAA Tournament was in 2016, when they lost to Memphis in the first round as a 9 seed.
Yuta Watanabe, Yinka Dare, Tyler Cavanaugh, and Mike Brown all played basketball at GW before heading to the NBA. Actress Kerry Washington; FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover; First Lady Jackie Kennedy; Senators Harry Reid and Tammy Duckworth; reporter Kasie Hunt; and actor Alec Baldwin all graduated from GWU. The GWU campus is in a nice part of the District called Foggy Bottom, about halfway between the White House and Georgetown. Several years ago, George Washington had the distinction of having the highest undergraduate tuition in the country.
About four weeks ago, GW was 5-2 with a win over South Carolina (one of the better non-con wins for the league). But since then, they've gone 1-5 with a humbling home loss to local rival American, a road loss at Radford, and the 0-fer at the Diamond Head Classic in Hawaii (a two-point heartbreaker to Washington State, an 11-point loss to Pepperdine, and an 18-point "can we please just get back home already" loss to Seattle U).
First-year Head Coach Chris Caputo is from the Jim Larrañaga coaching tree-- Caputo was Associate Head Coach at Miami when Loyola beat the Hurricanes in the 2018 NCAA Tournament. His squad is powered by three high-scoring guards-- 6'2" senior James Bishop (20.5 ppg and 4.8 apg, both tops on the team), 6'4" senior Brendan Adams (16.8 ppg, 4.5 rpg, 2.5 apg), and 6'5" freshman Maximus Edwards (10 ppg, 5.7 rpg). Bishop comes from LSU, Adams is a UConn transfer, and Edwards first signed with (but did not play at) Kansas State.
The frontcourt starts 6'8" senior forward Ricky Lindo (9.5 ppg, and his 6.8 rpg lead the team). Lindo is a Maryland transfer who played for the Terrapins against the Ramblers in 2018-19 as a highly-touted freshman. The other forward is 6'10" senior Hunter Dean (7.7 ppg, 5.1 rpg), a Southern Miss transfer.
The bench features 5'11" senior point guard E.J Clark (Alabama State transfer), 6'11" center Keegan Harvey (College of Charleston transfer), 6'5" grad student guard Amir Harris (Nebraska transfer), and 6'8" senior forward Qwanzi Samuels (Florida Gulf Coast transfer). As far as I can tell, 6'11" junior center Noel Brown is the only player who gets significant minutes who started his career with the Colonials.
With all these upperclassmen transfers, it's no surprise that George Washington ranks 88th according to KenPom in experience, and their mostly tallish guards and five front court players between 6'8" and 6'11" ranks GW well above average in height. In the game I watched them play (the loss to Pepperdine), they showed a lot of the same problems Loyola had in the early going-- unforced turnovers, tentative (or very little) movement off the ball, and a general lack of cohesiveness and rhythm. When they do get going in stretches, they look like they could be really good. They've got some great athletes—three-, four-, and five-star recruits-- and they've already defeated an SEC team. However, the three increasingly bad losses to increasingly worse teams in Hawaii seems like a red flag. It's good that Loyola is playing these guys at home, because on one of their good nights they look like they have the ability to knock off any top A-10 team having a bad night.
Loyola game notes: https://loyolaramblers.com/documents/20 ... Notes1.pdfGeorge Washington game notes: https://gwsports.com/news/2022/12/30/me ... urday.aspxTV/Streaming video: NBC Sports Chicago / ESPN +
https://www.espn.com/watch/player/_/id/ ... d19b1b700cRadio/Streaming audio: https://loyolaramblers.com/watch/?Live=131&type=LiveLive stats: http://stats.statbroadcast.com/broadcast/?id=426263Vegas odds: Loyola by 7.5