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 Knapke 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.
Loyola game notes:
http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/loy ... 219aaa.pdf Toledo game notes:
http://utrockets.com/news/2016/12/19/me ... ath=mbball TV/Streaming video:
http://www.espn.com/watchespn/index/_/i ... -vs-toledo Vegas odds: Toledo by 1.5
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