A-10 Schedule Parings Give Loyola a Rough Road

Posted on July 12, 2023 | By: John C. Thomas | Comments Off on A-10 Schedule Parings Give Loyola a Rough Road

The A-10 schedule pairings for the 2023-24 men’s college basketball season are out, and the Ramblers again have one of their most attractive home schedules in a long, long time.  Dayton, St. Louis, UMass, Richmond, Davidson and St. Joseph’s are all coming to Gentile Arena for A-10 league play, plus cross-town rival UIC and probably the best program in the Ivy League, Harvard.  They’re not going to all be Top 100 programs this year, all of these programs have a solid pedigree and top 100 potential.

Dayton, UMass, George Mason, and LaSalle have all been in the Final Four; St. Joe’s and Davidson have both been in the Elite Eight within the past 20 years.  When was the last time Loyola had so many teams on their home schedule with high-level tournament experience?  You’d have to go back a few decades to find a home schedule with so many venerable opponents.

With neutral site games against Florida Atlantic (currently ranked #21 in Bart Torvik’s pre-season rankings), and two games against either Creighton (ranked #5 by BartTorvik.com), Colorado State (#60) and Boston College (#99), the non-con offers three very good chances to face Top 100 opponents on neutral courts.  There are several more games yet to be scheduled, so one or two more Top-100 contests are a possibility.

That’s the good news.  On the other hand, Loyola’s road schedule in the A-10 is a real beast.  The Ramblers will be playing at VCU, Fordham, Davidson, George Mason, St. Bonaventure, St. Joe’s, St. Louis, URI, and George Washington.  Those teams combined for a home conference winning percentage of .549 last year, which hands Loyola the second-toughest road schedule in the A-10.

Above Strength of Schedule analysis by Michael Bergman at A-10 Talk.

St. Bonaventure– isolated in a rural part of Western New York– is a really tough place to play, I’ve been told. Over the past 8 years, the Bonnies are 57-14 in conference play at home—that’s an 80.2% winning percentage.

VCU was 7-2 at home in league play last season, and Saint Louis was 8-1.  Those two teams were 2nd and 3rd in home attendance, with URI, St. Bonaventure and George Mason coming in 5th, 6th, and 7th in home attendance.  URI was a pretty bad team last year, rivalling Loyola for the basement.  But the Rams still managed to go 4-5 at home in conference play and knock off two of the better teams in the league, Dayton and Fordham.

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Santa Cruz, California is Beautiful

Posted on December 21, 2022 | By: John C. Thomas | Comments Off on Santa Cruz, California is Beautiful

Loyola plays Stanford in Santa Cruz on Thursday night. I used to live not far from Stanford when I started high school (my great uncle went to Stanford, and my dad went to San Jose State). I went to Santa Cruz many times as a kid, and recently I drove through and took some pictures….

Street scene not far from the beach showing the train bridge and Victorian houses.
The Pier at Santa Cruz. There are many restaurants and tourist shops on the pier.
Elephant seals sunning themselves on a boat deck on the pier.
The arcade at the Santa Cruz boardwalk as seen from the pier. There is an amusement park with rides, a game arcade, a steam train ride, roller coaster, etc. A scene from the movie “Harold and Maude” was shot in the arcade.

There is a small forest of redwood trees in Santa Cruz, not far from the coastline. Going north along the coastline is some pristine California coastal areas that are nearly untouched. Slightly south of Santa Cruz is the beautiful coastal town of Capitola.

Capitola, Calif., just south of Santa Cruz.
The coastline at Capitola, viewing Monterey Bay.

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Was the Clemson Game a Turning Point?

Posted on December 12, 2022 | By: John C. Thomas | Comments Off on Was the Clemson Game a Turning Point?
Coach Valentine makes a decision in Loyola’s 76-58 win over Clemson on Dec. 10, 2022.

In the past six years, Loyola has shown a proclivity for beating P5 programs from the South:  Florida, Miami, Tennessee, Vanderbilt (x2), Georgia Tech, and now Clemson.  Against P5 programs from elsewhere (Michigan, Boston College, Michigan State, Maryland, Oregon State, Ohio State, Texas A&M)? Mmm… not quite so much.  So was Loyola’s 76-58 win over Clemson on Saturday in Atlanta a turning point from the record-setting bad start to the 2022-23 season?

While the team still commits a lot of turnovers (anything under 18 is an improvement from the first five games),  maybe the biggest headline from the Clemson game is the three-point shooting defense.  Clemson came into the game 6th in all of college basketball in three-point shooting at 42% as a team.  Loyola held them to 3-for-21 behind the arc, droping the Tigers from 6th to 22nd  on the young season at 39.6%.  The Ramblers had two very bad games on three point defense against Central Arkansas on Nov. 30 (allowing 44.8%) and DePaul on Dec. 3 (45.8%).  But since the DePaul game, Loyola locked down on three-point shooting against UWGB on Dec. 6 (16.0%) and Clemson (14.3%) on Dec. 10.

Another turnaround for the Ramblers came after the first five games (Fairleigh Dickinson, UIC, and the Myrtle Beach Tournament).  In the first five, the Ramblers averaged 23.8 fouls issued per game; since then Loyola averages 17 fouls per game, giving opponents fewer trips to the line and cutting down on turnovers from offensive fouls.

Finally, shooting percentages on two-point shots were excellent in the early going, one of the few things that was working right for the Ramblers.  The team has managed to continue that great shooting inside (they’ve moved up from 12th in the country on two-point shooting percentage to 10th) while dramatically improving three-point shooting in recent games.  And the team is playing at a pace where they look comfortable, while not allowing the other team to dictate the pace of the game.

So maybe the Clemson game wasn’t really the turning point for this team.  You might mark it at the end of the DePaul game, when the sting of losing a 17-point lead at home to an arch rival may have focused the team resolve.  Either way, team progress has been strong and significant since returning from Myrtle Beach.

Up Next:

Loyola faces Albany at home on Sunday, December 18 before finishing up the non-conference season with another chance to get a quality OOC win against Stanford in Santa Cruz on Thursday, December 22. 

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