Saturday, March 6, 2021 12:05 pm
The Enterprise Center, St. Louis, Mo.


The #20 Loyola Ramblers reached the Arch Madness semifinals with a convincing 73-49 win over the undermanned SIU Salukis on Friday. The Salukis, without leading scorer Lance Jones, were held under 40% shooting from the field and were Loyola's 16th consecutive opponent to be held to 58 points or fewer. Unfortunately for the Ramblers, the last team to score more than 58 against Loyola was Indiana State, in a 76-71 Sycamore victory on Jan. 10.

The Trees had their senior scoring leader Tyreke Key back in the lineup after two games sitting out with a shoulder injury to end the season. Key powered the 4th-seeded Sycamores to a 53-43 win over 5 seed Evansville with 19 points and 9 rebounds. ISU clamped down on defense in the last 10 minutes, outscoring the Aces 13-4.

Loyola's win featured 14 Ramblers getting time on the court and 10 of them racking up points. Most impressive was leading scorer **checks notes** Jacob Hutson, who came off the bench to score 13 points in 15 minutes on 5-of-7 shooting from the field. Yes, a preferred walk-on freshman, a big man newcomer, led the Ramblers in scoring in a conference tournament win. The 13 points from Hutson were part of 28 points from the bench as three Rambler starters logged between 25-29 minutes and nobody else played more than 21 minutes. Braden Norris tied his season high of nine assists while notching 11 points and five rebounds in his 29 minutes.

Indiana State will likely start their starting five: 6'3" senior Key, 6'9" sophomore forward Jake Laravia, 6'4" junior guard Cooper Neese, 6'7" sophomore center Tre Williams, and 6'3" freshman point guard Julian Larry. ISU also gets significant production from 6'2" senior Randy Miller (he started in place of Neese on Friday), 6'3" junior Cam Bacote, 6'2" senior guard Tobias Howard, and 6'6" sophomore Cobie Barnes. In their Friday game, Evansville kept the score close enough that ISU starters Williams, Laravia, and Key each played 34 minutes or more.

But besides the Rambler starters and Indiana State's bench, do you know who's even more rested? That's right, the Drake Bulldogs, who received a bye directly into the Semifinals because of a positive Covid test from a UNI player that ended their season. Here is a Tweet announcement explaining more about the circumstances: https://twitter.com/ValleyHoops/status/ ... 9502946304

In the eight years Loyola has been in the league, this is easily the biggest failing on the part of the league office. Besides this enormous gaffe-- granted, under extraordinary circumstances-- I can't remember any really obvious or glaring failures or missteps by the conference office. But this is a pretty big one-- effectively ending UNI's season, giving Drake a double bye straight into the Semifinals (hmmm, that phrase sounds familiar), and potentially putting a giant asterisk next to the last Arch Madness under Doug Elgin's watch.

So let's go on *carefully* and get this tournament finished, with everyone healthy and masked up. Hopefully the Ramblers can handle Indiana State on Saturday and hoist a trophy this Sunday-- healthy and ready to celebrate a great seeding announcement next Sunday.


Loyola Game Notes: https://loyolaramblers.com/documents/20 ... 3_5_21.pdf

Indiana State Game Notes: https://gosycamores.com/news/2021/3/5/b ... ville.aspx

TV/Streaming Video: CBS Sports Net https://www.cbssports.com/cbs-sports-network/

Radio/Steaming Audio: https://loyolaramblers.com/watch/?Live=75&type=Live

Live Stats: http://stats.statbroadcast.com/broadcas ... confid=mvc

Vegas Odds: Loyola by 10

There were a lot of “Standing for Lansing” shirts in Indiana St’s section today. They also chanted “Keep Lansing” as the game was ending.

Thanks for that item, Pupil. This game could be Lansing's last.

Thanks for the quick post JCT. Indiana State can be scary, but I wasn't overly impressed with them yesterday. Let's hope for a win, and that we can achieve it without our starters each playing 30+ minutes.

Key scares me. Need Lucas/Aher to lock him down.

My concerns about the offense have really gone away the last two games

Fantastic start. Maybe the best start we've had to any game this year. 17 points in less than 6 minutes....Blocks on defense, hitting the threes...

I think the offense looks a little better than it did the last few games of the regular season. Just my opinion.

Indiana State is really going hard on defense. We're making our shots which is helping, but we've been in a couple spots where I thought we might turn it over. We can't get too relaxed on offense.

Maybe our problem all year was the shooting background at Gentile