Ramblermania

Tuesday, December 20, 2016, 6:00 p.m.
Savage Arena, Toledo, Ohio

After the 2009-10 season, Coach Tod Kowalczyk suddenly left Green Bay, where he’d had admirable success, just having led them to two 20+ win seasons and two CBI bids. He was off for a complete rebuilding job at Toledo in the Mid-American Conference. At the time, the move seemed puzzling. The Horizon League had one of its members in the NCAA National Championship game and was ranked 12th among college hoops conferences, while the MAC was ranked 17th. Four years later, however, Butler and Loyola were out of the Horizon and replaced by Oakland and Northern Kentucky, the MAC and Horizon had changed places in the college hoops conference rankings, and Toledo was 27-7 and headed to the NIT. Whether the curious move at the time was a contract negotiation ploy or the escape plan from a man who saw the writing on the wall, it certainly worked out well for Coach Kowalczyk and Toledo. The Rockets are 103-71 under Kowalczyk if you throw out his first year rebuild season. They were picked to finish fourth in the MAC West division this year.Toledo is in a transition year, waiting for some of their young frontcourt recruits to blossom. The Rockets stand at 5-6 coming into Tuesday night’s game, including a 3-1 record against the current Horizon League members. Toledo’s only home loss this season has come at the hands of Kowalczyk’s former team, Green Bay, by one point in overtime. The Ramblers are fresh off a three-game sweep of current HL teams.

The Rockets starters are likely to be 6’3” senior guard Jonathan Williams, 6’9” senior forward Steve Taylor, Jr., 6’4” sophomore guard Jaelan Sanford, 6’5” guard Jordan Lauf, and 6’10” senior center Zach Garber. However, Steve Taylor, Jr. did not play in the Rockets’ last game against Southeastern Louisiana on Saturday, and was replaced in the starting lineup by 6’8” sophomore forward Nate Navigato. I did a brief investigation and the rumor is Taylor was sitting out of the game on Saturday in sweats behind the bench because of concussion. He may or may not be available according to the safety protocol.

Williams leads the team in points (19.5 ppg) and three pointers made (31 made threes at 39.7%). He is a better than average rebounder (4.3 rpg, with a good chunk of them coming on the offensive glass). He also has more turnovers (32) than assists (29), which may be an opportunity for the Ramblers to exploit. Sanford and Lauf are two solid guards with some height who score 12.8 and 7.5 ppg respectively. Sanford is most effective from the outside, where he shoots 33.9% and takes the second most three point shots on the team. Lauf doesn’t shoot a lot, but he’s a better inside scorer, where he’s connected on 16 of his 19 two-point field goal attempts. Lauf is a great rebounder (5.9 rpg) and the team’s best defender (12 steals); he likes to get to the line where he’s a 78.4% free throw shooter and has scored more than 35% of his points on the season.

In the frontcourt, Zach Garber is a serviceable center who averages 4.1 points and 4.6 rebounds per contest. But most of that was when he was playing alongside Steve Taylor, Jr. with Navigato coming off the bench. In the last game (without Taylor), Garber scored six points to go with nine rebounds in 21 minutes, all well above his normal output. Garber commits a lot of fouls, and has fouled out of three of Toledo’s 11 games despite averaging less than 17 minutes playing time. Navigato averages 7.3 points per game coming off the bench, but in his start on Wednesday, he scored 10. Despite his size, Navigato likes to play the perimeter, where he shoots only 27.1% on the third most three point attempts on the team. His size and length is probably a factor in the Rockets’ excellent three-point field goal defense, where they allow only 30.4% success from behind the arc.

The availability of Taylor to play against Loyola will probably decide the game. He is a talented and experience player, a transfer from Marquette out of Chicago’s Simeon who will be a huge factor against the undersized Ramblers. At 6’9”, athletic and mobile, he’s going to cause Loyola some serious problems on both ends of the court. He averages 16.8 points and 11.8 rebounds, and he shoots 63.5% on his two-point field goal attempts. About his only weakness is at the free throw line, where he’s at 49%.

Toledo has a shallow bench, with only eight players appearing in more than seven of their games this season and only seven players averaging more than 8 minutes per game. Their three guards— Williams, Sanford, and Lauf—each average between 31.2 and 36.5 minutes per game, and there’s no one really to come in and play in high leverage situations. Six-foot-eleven redshirt freshman center Luke Knapne is being groomed for a starter’s role next year and averages 6.2 points and 3.7 boards in less than 20 minutes per game. Taylor Adway is a 6’9” sophomore forward out of Hazel Crest who plays about eight minutes per game, averaging 3.1 points.

If Steve Taylor, Jr. is available to play, the Ramblers need to deny interior passes and force the Rockets to take contested threes, especially Navigato and Sanford. Keeping Toledo off the line is one of the best strategies to beat them—they’re 5-3 in games where they have more free throw attempts than their opponents, but 0-3 when opponents get more trips to the line. Take care of the ball, and try to keep the rebounding margin respectable. Getting the Rocket guards into foul trouble should seriously cripple their ability to maneuver with such a short bench. In the three games where Williams has picked up four or more fouls, the Rockets are 0-3. And lastly, stay cool under pressure….. Toledo has gone to overtime in five of their 11 games this year, and two of the other six games were decided by four points or less.

Saturday, December 17, 2016 7:00 p.m.
UIC Pavilion, Chicago, Ill.

Six minutes into their game against DePaul on Wednesday, UIC lost their leading scorer and best player to a tweak of his left knee. It looks like it might be pretty serious, probably requiring a few missed starts (including against Loyola on Saturday). Yet somehow, UIC managed to come back from an eight-point halftime deficit and get their first road win since Feb. 25, 2015. It’s a testament to the turnaround and level of young talent put together by second year head coach Steve McClain.

UIC’s injured player is Dikembe Dixson, and he’s pretty much a stud. The 6’7” sophomore forward from strife-steeped Matewan, W.Va. plays with a lot of determination, and felt so bad about having to miss the majority of the game Wednesday against DePaul he was wiping tears as he sat icing his knee during the second half. Dixson had never missed a game in his 1 1/3 season college career. In fact, he’s never played fewer than 25 minutes in any game since his first college game, when he played 23 minutes. He’s only fouled out once– in the final minute of a game where he’d played every second until his 5th foul. In other words, he’s a gamer who wants the ball.

Going into that game against DePaul, Dixson was certainly the focal point of the game plan. He was working on a streak of 28 consecutive games in double figures, averaging 22.2 points, and on pace to finish his sophomore season with nearly 1300 career points. He led the Flames in rebounding (6.7 rpg) and steals, and was the largest part of an offense that entered the game leading college basketball in free throw attempts. Yet despite not having his gaudy numbers, tenacity, and desire to take the ball, the Flames eked out an upset against a Big East team on the road. Go figure.

Without Dixson, UIC’s top player is 6’9” junior forward/center Tai Odiase, a shot-blocker and inside scorer who averages 11.0 ppg to go with 5.8 rebounds. He’s brought his field goal percentage up to nearly 60% by taking fewer but better shots this season, and he’s reduced his turnovers. Free throw attempts and free throw shooting is a bright spot for UIC—they’re in the top 20 nationally in free throw attempts and have scored 58 more points from the line than their opponents. Odiase is their only real liability from the line, where he shoots just 50%. Yet he clinched the win at DePaul with two late freebies.

Without Dixson in the lineup, the Flames will likely start 6’8” juco forward/center Kyle Guice, who played 20 minutes (twice his average) and scored 14 points against DePaul. Guice is not much of a defender and takes quite a lot of shots from the perimeter, where he’s a 50% three point shooter.

Three freshman guards have been mixed and matched for two starting guard spots for the Flames. Marcus Ottey is a 6’2” Canadian who started six games and averages 11.7 points—he’s been coming off the bench the past few games, but he has played a lot of minutes. He grabbed six crucial rebounds and scored 11 against DePaul. Six-foot-four Tarkus Ferguson has started all the Flames’ games; he scores 8.5 per game and adds 3.4 boards. And 5’11” three-point specialist Godwin Boahen just cracked the starting lineup two games ago against Grand Canyon. Boahen averages 8.0 ppg with almost all his shots coming from behind the arc. He handles the ball and passes with accuracy. All three of UIC’s freshmen guards are very good free throw shooters– the worst of them shoots 69%.

The final spot in the starting five will likely either go to 6’8” forward/center Clint Robinson or redshirt 6’2” freshman guard Dominique Matthews. Robinson had a fantastic game against DePaul, and averages 5.8 points and 4.6 rebounds. Matthews averages 5.9 points, and has some wingspan to go with speed. Six-five sophomore guard Michael Kolawole also gets considerable time off the bench, chipping in 3.8 ppg, and he hit some key baskets against DePaul.

UIC is one of the youngest teams in the nation, without a single scholarship senior, which makes their win at DePaul on Wednesday all the more impressive. They have a lot of young and exuberant talent that sometimes has trouble maintaining focus, leading to a lot of turnovers. They like to run, they like to drive the lane, and they have surprising depth—10 players scored and eight players put in double digit minutes against DePaul despite Dixson’s injury. But here’s another theory—maybe Dixson’s offensive and defensive dominance was in a way discouraging others from playing needed roles. Perhaps UIC is actually better with Dixson as a lesser focal point.

The Ramblers are playing well even without the services of two important frontcourt players, Donte Ingram (MCL) and Matt Chastain (season-ending ACL). Loyola’s makeshift starting lineup of Milton Doyle, Clayton Custer, Ben Richardson, Aundre Jackson and Bruno Skokna is 2-0, with convincing double-digit wins over Wright State and Milwaukee. The Ramblers have embraced the adversity and played with a lot of focus and intensity since Chastain was lost for the season, and especially since Ingram was sidelined. The injuries to both teams, the history between the programs, and the intra-city rivalry between the schools will all likely play a big role, again, as Loyola and UIC meet for the 54th time.

LINKS

Loyola game notes

UIC game notes: Pending

TV/streaming video: ESPN 3

Vegas odds: Pending

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