Sunday, January 10, 2021 5:30 p.m.
Knapp Center, Des Moines, Iowa

There's a whole lot at stake when Loyola faces Drake this weekend in a back-to-back road series in Des Moines. Largely because of the chaos of Covid scheduling, ranking measures have Drake and the Ramblers vying for the top two spots in the MVC with some wild swings (KenPom.com: Loyola 45, Drake 58; BartTorvik: Loyola 45, Drake 51; Sagarin: Drake 67, Loyola 79; .NET: Drake 13, Loyola 57).

Loyola was unable to play Bradley in Peoria last weekend, but hastily added a game against North Texas. The Ramblers are 7-2 overall, 2-0 in the MVC, and 1-2 against Top 100 KenPom teams. Drake-- at 13-0 overall and 4-0 in the MVC-- has yet to play a team ranked better than 148 on KenPom. Loyola has also had the misfortune of having to play back-to-back games on the road at three of their top four KenPom ranked opponents: Drake (58), Bradley (107), and Missouri State (130).

Coach Darian DeVries has worked wonders with Drake in his 2+ seasons, earning a tie (with the Ramblers) for the Regular Season championship in 2018-19, and notching a 20-win season in their injury-plagued 2019-20 season. Each year, DeVries and the Bulldogs have had a new set of challenges-- injuries, transfers, a late start on his first recruiting class, a pandemic-- but each time they've met the test. With their record-setting 13-0 start to 2020-21, DeVries is 57-24 (.708) at Drake.

The Bulldogs start two guards, two forwards, and a center. They typically go nine players deep. Three of their starters are transfers, and their sixth man was a former walk-on. Eight of the players on their roster come from Chicago's South or Southwest suburbs and nearby Northern Indiana-- blue-collar places in the shadow of more glamorous basketball environs-- where a lot of people work hard and are often overlooked. You can see it on the court. They play very hard as a unit, they communicate, and share their minutes well. Some key guys have a gym-rat sensibility and a competitive chip on their shoulders-- really focused leadership and teamwork.

Roman Penn, a 6'0" senior transfer from Sienna, is the league's best point guard. A native of Calumet City, he averages 12.1 points and 5.8 assists per game. Penn was terrific last year and named to all conference 2nd team in the preseason poll, but he has improved his shot selection. Penn shoots 59.2% from the field and 44.4% from distance; as floor general, his playmaking has helped rank Drake sixth in all of college basketball in field goal percentage and fourth in three point field goal percentage.

Six-two junior shooting guard DJ Wilkins has nailed 35 of his 66 three-point attempts on the season, and if you take out his first two games, 34 of last 56 (60.7%). He averages 11.3 points per game, 2.7 rebounds, and 2.3 assists. He's hit four or more threes in five of his last 11 games.

In the frontcourt is 6'6" senior forward ShanQuan Hemphill, a product of Michigan City High School and a native of Gary, Indiana. The long and lanky transfer from Green Bay has been one of the most impactful additions to the roster, leading the team with 14.2 points and adding 5.2 rebounds. Joining him at the forward position is 6'6" redshirt senior Tremell Murphy, from Griffith, Ind., who missed all but five games last season. Murphy averages 7.8 points and 4.8 rebounds per game, and shoots well from distance (35.5%).

Another big (literally) acquisition is Seton Hall transfer Darnell Brodie. At 6'10" and 275, the big center has capably filled the hole left by 7-footer Liam Robbins, who ditched Drake for Minnesota at the end of last season. Brodie hasn't completely replaced Robbins' average of 14.1 points, 7.1 rebounds, and 2.9 blocks per game, but he's shown enough to be one of the top five big men in the league. He averages 6.5 points, 6.5 rebounds, and finishes well near the basket.

The top two players off the bench are dynamic 6'3"guard Garret Sturtz, and 6'0 sophomore guard Joseph Yesufu, who both infuse a ton of energy and scoring when they enter the game. The Bolingbrook, Illinois native Yesufu averages 8.8 points and 2.2 assists per game despite playing less than 17 minutes per game on average. Sturtz, a junior who arrived at Drake as a preferred walk-on, is one of the peskiest players in the league, averaging 8.5 points and an astounding 4.9 rebounds while playing only 21.8 minutes per game. Six-foot-three senior guard Jonah Jackson from Merrillville, Ind. and 6'8" freshman forward Nate Ferguson out of Lemont, Ill. are the other key bench players. The solidly-built Jackson averages 4.5 points per game and ranks 2nd on the team in made threes while shooting 42.9% from distance; all but one of his 43 attempted field goals on the year have come from behind the arc. Ferguson averages 3.3 points and 1.9 boards while playing 13 minutes a game as a breather for Brodie.

Loyola, winners of their last four games overall and 1-1 on the road for the year, put up a hard-fought 57-49 victory over North Texas last time out. Drake will present a totally different style of play for the Ramblers to cope with on Sunday. The Bulldogs are a very offensive-minded team that likes to play a slightly faster tempo than the Ramblers. But Drake's defense is no pushover, either. The Bulldogs are ranked 86th nationally in defensive efficiency by KenPom, and they've limited their conference opponents to 41.5% field goal shooting in their first four games. Few teams share court minutes as well as Drake-- their nine key players each average between 13 and 25 minutes per game, six players have taken between 68 and 103 field goal attempts, and five different players have taken at least 27 shots behind the arc. Six Bulldogs have scored between 101 and 184 points-- they spread the scoring.

There's a big buzz developing around this fun-to-watch Drake team. They beat a P5 team to start off the year (Kansas State), all but one of their wins have come by double digits, they're one of only six teams who've played three games or more to remain undefeated, and they're getting votes in the AP Top 25 Poll.

Drake was picked to finish seventh in the 2020-21 MVC Preseason poll. When Drake started off 9-0 in non-con play against a mostly weak schedule, it was still possible to doubt if the Bulldogs were for real. Their four convincing conference wins (by an average of 18 points per game) eliminated most of that doubt. The Ramblers are a genuine test, even if Drake is playing them at home, back-to-back, with a small crowd allowed in attendance. Conversely, Loyola also has a lot to prove after losing both of their two high profile non-con matchups against Wisconsin and Richmond. Partly because of the back-to-back, uneven home-road schedule, neither team will get a bigger challenge to show their tournament worth.


Loyola game notes: https://loyolaramblers.com/documents/20 ... 10_21_.pdf

Drake game notes: https://godrakebulldogs.com/documents/2 ... Loyola.pdf

TV/Streaming video: ESPN2 https://www.espn.com/watch/player?id=94 ... 517e49b0fe

Internet audio feed: https://loyolaramblers.com/watch/?Live=47&type=Live

Live stats: https://godrakebulldogs.com/sidearmstats/mbball/summary

Vegas odds: Pending

Great preview!

Interested to see Nate Ferguson from Lemont High play. He sat out last year with an injury. We offered him and I saw him and Tom Welch play as high school seniors in a Christmas Tournament in 2018. Welch was more polished but Ferguson was bouncier and I thought might have a higher upside.

I admit my scouting eye isn't the greatest though.

this team scares me....im not as quick as I used to be........but I am counting on the fact that this may be the first team to frustrate them on offense.

Whelp. This isn't happening

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Cigarboy sucks!

Welp, this sucks. Was really looking forward to it.

At least we quickly grabbed a replacement series vs ISUb.

New preview!!!

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MBB Scholarship Chart

As Chico Marx would say: "I guessa the Sycamores are a Sick-a-less thana the Drake."

I'm going to leave this one up for a while. It took me 3 hours to write and research (besides the hours spent watching most of the Drake-SIU games last Sunday/Monday).

Is every team going to keep cancelling against us because they've got Covid, and we're going to have to keep re-jiggering our schedule over and over again, trashing our game prep, playing in a different city on short notice, and still playing on the road against the toughest teams whenever they get around to it or can manage to keep healthy? They let people into the games at Drake. They let people into the games at Missouri State.

Drake ought to play at Loyola, or a nearby neutral site. Or Bradley ought to play at Loyola or a nearby neutral site. The schedule was lop-sided against us to begin with, and now we're not only expected to play against the best opposition in back-to-back-to-back-to-back games on the road, we have to do it whenever they feel like they're ready. Thanks to cancelling just before Loyola was scheduled to play there, Bradley has got a key player back from injury. Drake and Bradley will now have more time to scout against us while we're scrambling to draw up a game plan for a road game in a different state in the next 40 hours.

Screw this. I think I can honestly say if we bailed out on a crucial series less than 48 hours before, I would be conciliatory about moving what would be a home series to a neutral site to make up for the inconvenience to the other team. Also, this is the second time this has happened to Loyola this year-- the Bradley series was cancelled four days before tip-off.

The reason this preview took me so long to write is because I had to keep stopping myself from getting deep into complaints about the handling of postponements, scheduling, and other precautions. I really sense a growing league consensus of dislike for Loyola... the indifference and novelty of when we first got into the league has vanished. Most fans of the teams in this league really loathe us, more than perhaps any other team.

Let me know if you're also picking up on this, or if you think I'm wrong. Here are a few things that make me wonder:

1. Why were we picked 2nd this year? UNI lost their best defensive player and two veteran shooting guards.
2. Why were we picked 4th last year? We were coming off a league title.
3. Schedule really hurt us this year.
4. Pushback on any Loyola-positive talk (and even self-deprecating jokes) on the MVC fans site.
5. Less friendliness/more belligerence toward Loyola fans at league events like Arch Madness.
6. We will not get any credit for having the toughest schedule in the league, having to re-adjust our travel, game-prep and scouting, short-term turnarounds, etc. If we lose, it's an L.

Maybe it's just my imagination. But I don't want us to get to the point where we get pushed around and taken advantage of like we were in the Horizon League.

I don’t know that the Loyola sentiment is getting that bad. With that being said, I’ve never been to arch madness in-person. we don’t have a large representation on MVC board from what I’ve seen.

On the rescheduling - it’s super frustrating, but in these unprecedented times, I don’t think the league can do much better than they have. It sucks that we get penalized for Drake getting COVID, but I don’t think you’d want to punish Drake for getting it (and more importantly, reporting it). If you take home games away from teams and punish them for positive tests reported, you run the risk of them not reporting properly and playing a game to avoid it. That could have a snowball effect.

I think it’s acceptable to be frustrated me, but not mad, per se. We got screwed the second worst in the Valley by COVID next to Missouri State. Our non conference schedule to build a resume for an AT-LARGE was shattered. Had we been healthy the whole time I think we would have best Cincy and picked up up 1 or 2 quality wins to build a resume. Instead, we got saddled with Chicago State, St. Francis, and Lewis. Also, I honestly think we could have played Wisconsin tight and win if we had a week to prepare and were at full strength.

No matter what happens, I’m just glad we are playing. Ultimately, I still think we have to win Arch Madness to go to the tournament - and that’s our real goal. The season is there to get us ready to go on a run in March. If we struggle with a tougher schedule, long-term, maybe it makes us stronger for Saint Louis.

JCT does an amazing job with the previews. I’m glad that he will get a little break in a few weeks and can just do a copy, paste, and edit a bit for the next series with Drake.

Yeah, I'm mostly frustrated. But we have to stick up for ourselves so we don't get pushed around. The last time our league's scheduling practices changed so dramatically, it was the HL changing the conference tournament structure after Loyola made it to the final. Then a year after Loyola left the league they changed it back. That's what happens when you aren't aggressive about your interests.