Wednesday, February 14, 2024 7:00 p.m.
Gentile Arena, Chicago, Ill.

The Road Dogs of Loyola return to Chicago after a sweep of George Mason and George Washington on their five-day trip to DC. They will face St. Joseph’s on Wednesday night (yes, Valentine’s Day) at Gentile Arena.

The astounding Ramblers are 9-2 in the A-10, 17-7 overall. They’ve done it by clamping down on defense, especially near the basket, improving their free-throw shooting, and reducing their turnovers. Loyola is the second-best team in the nation in defending against two-point shots, as measured by opponent’s field goal percentage. The ‘Blers averaged 6.0 turnovers per game on their trip to Mason and they’ve averaged 10.3 turnovers over the past 7 games, well below the 13.6 they averaged over the first nine games of the year. At the free-throw line, “The Breakfast Club” morning free-throw shooting practice has improved the Ramblers’ free-throw shooting from 67.4% in their first 18 games to 75.9% in the last six.
In conference play, the Ramblers have dramatically improved their offense from the early going, moving from the bottom three in KenPom’s offensive efficiency to 7th after the trip to DC. On the defensive side, Loyola slid from 3rd to 4th in defensive efficiency (mostly due to VCU’s recent wins).

Wednesday’s opponent Saint Joseph’s is 6-5 in conference play, but they’re 6-2 since the Ramblers beat them 78-75 Jan. 13 in Philly. Coach Billy Lange has been dealing with some player injuries, moving bench players in and out of the lineup to try to find more effective matchups against each team. Last time out, he started his top bench player (and one of the top freshmen in the conference) Xayvier Brown. He delivered with 27 points in a back-and-forth 87-86 win over Saint Louis on Saturday.

The Hawks will most probably start 6’2” junior guard Erik Reynolds, 6’2” junior Lynn Greer, 6’6” senior Cameron Brown, 6’9” sophomore forward Rasheer Fleming, and 7’0” freshman center Christ Essandoko. However, Essandoko missed the last game with his recurring toe injury. Without the 7-footer, Lange plugged in 6’6” freshman Anthony Finkley and kept Greer in reserve on the bench.

Reynolds averages 17.1 ppg and shoots 40.9% from behind the arc. Greer averages 11.7 ppg and leads the team in assists with 4.0 per game while also collecting 5.2 rebounds. In the four games against Loyola since the Ramblers joined the A-10, Greer and Reyolds have combined for 141 points with one or the other racking up 20+ points four times in the last three games.

The rest of the starters have impressive numbers, too. Fleming averages 11.3 points, a team-leading 7.2 rebounds, and a team-leading 1.5 blocks. Cameron Brown chips in 11.4 points and 4.1 rebounds. And the Parisian rookie Essandoko averages 8.6 points and 6.6 rebounds to go with 1.3 blocks per game.

The top two guys off the bench are experienced 6’8” junior forward Kacper Klaczek (4.0 ppg, 2.8 rpg), and 6’2” freshman phenom Xzayvier Brown, who averages 12.1 ppg while shooting threes at 44.3%. Six-six freshman forward Anthony Finkley also gets some playing time, averaging 2.8 ppg.

In this game, the Ramblers are attempting their second sweep of home/road teams on the year. Loyola has already defeated Saint Louis at home and on the road, and they’re on track to win all of their home/road series this year, with wins over Saint Joseph’s in Plilly, George Mason in Fairfax, and Davidson at home. That would be really something after Loyola went 1-8 in home/road (and tournament games) against their rivals last year.


Loyola game notes: https://loyolaramblers.com/documents/20 ... _-_SJU.pdf

Saint Joseph’s game notes: https://sjuhawks.com/news/2024/2/13/men ... esday.aspx

TV/Streaming video: ESPN+ https://www.espn.com/watch/player/_/eve ... %3Aresults

Radio/Streaming audio: https://loyolaramblers.com/watch/?Live=175&type=Live

Live stats: https://stats.statbroadcast.com/broadcast/?id=482158

Vegas odds: Loyola by 3.5

The 2nd half of the season is different than the first. The second time you play a team is different than the first. No guarantees tonight. Revenge plus the finality of the season putting teams in a " this is our tournament game, gotta win" kind of mentality. Some teams like St. Joes have had time to get more players involved...get the feel of their team. We are going to have to play well tonight. Hope we are not over confident and Coach has them ready to play.

Joe's has been playing some better basketball as of late. Although they did just BARELY survive a home scare vs last place SLU.

They have a lot of guard talent, as we well know. Need to continue to defend home court down the stretch. Ticket availability on the official ticketing website is still listed as "Good", which isn't ideal. So grab your significant other or a random friend or two, and go enjoy Valentine's Day watching the red hot Ramblers. They need our support after a fantastic road trip.

This post was at 4:37 pm!!

Turnovers are back. Blew two separate big leads and Joe's guards are killing us from deep. Disgusting.

Alston, Mwamba and Welch should all be on the banned list from shooting 3s. Essentially a turnover every time they shalt.

Pretty bad game vs a shorthanded Joe's team. But we won, and that's all that matters.

And Richmond lost. So we find ourselves in a 3-way tie for 1st....

It was ugly, but it was a win. You have to admire their tenacity to figure out ways to win when a lot of things aren't working. Shaping up to be a really fun next couple of weeks.

Good teams find ways to grind out wins, even when not playing their best. Tonight is a good example in my humble opinion.

Gritty Win. We move into a tie with Dayton for 1st Place in A10. Thoughts:

1. Ugly: TOs were back in full force tonight. We had at least 3 on ill advised attempts to float the pass into the post on lobs and we had at least 3 shot clock violations in the game, at least two last 4 minutes of the game. TO’s almost cost us this game. The referees could not make up their minds if they were let the teams play or if they wanted to call fouls.

2. Bad: We cam out smoking, moving and passing and then last 10 minutes of the first half we stopped scoring and had a long drought. We also jumped up in 2nd half and then we tried to slow the game down and run clock and we almost lost the game. We also fell into the trap of dribbling a bit too much and we are not a good team when dribble too much. We also came out of a Time Out and were not ready when St. Joe’s jumped into full Court pressure one time. The Freshman X Brown…he’s gonna be a problem moving forward for the A10.

3. Good: We held SJU to 32.8% (19-58) from the floor, and 24.1% (7-29) from the arc. SJU averages 10 makes a game from the arc and a couple were tough 3s. We were fortunate that SJU did not attack the rim more once they got into the bonus because they shot 93.3% (14-15). As far as LUC goes, we shot 42.3% (22-52) from the floor, 35 % from the arc (7-20). At the half, SJU had 5 made 3’s to our 2. We caught them in the second half. Our FT shooting started a bit slow but rallied to finish at 81.3% (13-16). Some big FTs late by Braden and Dez. We out rebounded SJU 42-26, despite two occasions where SJU got some long rebounds and had 3 cracks at it. We had 19 assists on 22 made baskets. SJU got more shots up, but did not capitialize due to our defense holding them to 32.8%. Gritty win when we were not playing our best. This was a trap game coming home for one game before head out on the road. Edwards and Dez hit big 3’s in the 2nd half. Great minutes from Patrick despite a late turnover after a good stop late. He chipped in 6 points, on 2-2 from the floor, 2-2 from the line, 4 rebounds, 2 assists and 3 steals in 14 minutes. This was a trap game and we survived! This is what good teams do.

4. Misc: Dawson has struggled shooting since he got back. He was wearing a brace on his ankle and he still needs to work back. He might be an X factor down the stretch and in the A10 Tourney. Rotation was tighter tonight. Dolan did not get a lot of minutes and neither did Quinn. Drew did a nice job recognizing that Patrick was giving some of the smaller SJU guards trouble with his length. Drew, another good job on a night when the team struggled in a lot of areas.

Should be wild last 6 games. We start to ping pong a little alternating Away/Home games. RI (5-6 in A10) next on the road. We got to get the TOs under control. Key for our team.

Gritty, Not Pretty! Let’s go win a Championship #1 this year!