Friday, December 10, 2021 7:00 p.m.
Memorial Gymnasium, Nashville, Tennessee

Loyola makes its first-ever trip to historic Memorial Gymnasium in Nashville to face the Vanderbilt Commodores on Friday night. The venerable building was opened in 1952, and with a 14,000+ capacity, resonant acoustics, deep shooting backgrounds, and a quirky raised floor above the benches, Memorial Gym has been a powerful home court advantage for Vanderbilt. VU has won 78% of their home games there, and despite several historic links between Loyola and Vandy, the Ramblers have never played there.

One of the top links between the schools is the fact that both Loyola and Vandy were leaders in college basketball desegregation, and both teams are linked through players coming from Pearl High School in Nashville. Vic Rouse and Les Hunter from Loyola's 1963 National Championship team both played there before coming to Loyola. Vanderbilt enlisted a 1966 Pearl High School grad, Perry Wallace, to become the first African American player in the SEC. In between Loyola's recruiting Rouse and Hunter from Pearl High and Vanderbilt's recruiting of Wallace was the "Game of Change" between Loyola and the SEC's Champion, Mississippi State.

Three of the previous meetings between Vandy and Loyola were in Chicago (pre-WWII), and the last one-- a 78-70 win on December 18, 2019 at the Basketball Hall of Fame Showcase in Phoenix-- were all won by Loyola.

The Commodores were picked to finish 13th among the 14 teams in the SEC in the preseason poll, but most preseason rankings had VU in the top 100 teams nationally. At 5-3 and ranked 84th in KenPom coming into Friday's contest, Vandy is performing about as well as expected. Their top wins are a road win at Pitt, and double-digit home wins over respectable mid-majors Texas State and Winthrop. But their last two games were losses-- at home in OT against Temple, and at SMU. Maybe the most comparable game to Vandy hosting Loyola was a game at Memorial Gymnasium where VCU held the Commodores to less than 40 points in a 48-37 festival of turnovers (43 combined).

Coach Jerry Stackhouse features a starting lineup of 6'3" junior guard Scotty Pippen Jr., 6'6" junior guard/forward Jordan Wright, 6'7" sophomore forward Myles Stute, 6'4" sophomore guard Tyrin Lawrence, and 6'10" senior forward Quentin Millora-Brown.

Pippen leads the team with 16.8 ppg, but it comes on nearly 14 field goal attempts per game, shooting only 42.2% from the field. Wright also makes a lot of field goal attempts-- 11.4 per game-- but shoots 45% from the field and gets a lot of his points from the free throw line (81.3% behind the stripe). Wright and Pippen combined account for 44.7% of Vandy's points, so it makes sense to concentrate defensive schemes on those two. They also combine for 38.7% of all the Commodore turnovers.

The 6'10" forward Millora-Brown and 6'6" Gardner-Webb transfer Jamaine Mann (wow..... great name ......) are the only two players who make more than they miss from the field, so good idea to keep it out of their hands.

Although the Commodores have two players who shoot somewhat freely and often (Pippen and Wright), they're a team that hangs their hat on defense. Thus far though the season, Vanderbilt has limited opponents to the 11th fewest made field goals, and held opponents to a 37.5% field goal average (22nd in all of D-I). Vandy has held their opponents to 28.6% on three point attempts, which ranks 53rd in D-I.

The question Friday night will be: Is Loyola's new, up-tempo offense resilient enough to win against a good defensive team on the road? And secondarily: Can Loyola play tight defense on the road without sending a very good free-throw shooting team to the line?


Loyola game notes: https://loyolaramblers.com/documents/20 ... _10_21.pdf

Vanderbilt game notes: https://vucommodores.com/vandy-prepared ... th-loyola/

TV/Streaming video: SEC Network+ https://www.espn.com/watch/player?id=fb ... 1fb144311b

Radio/Streaming audio: https://loyolaramblers.com/watch/?Live=91&type=Live

Live stats: http://stats.statbroadcast.com/statmonitr/?id=370900

Vegas odds: Loyola by 4.5

JCT - just read your pre-game preview and was thinking how lucky we are on this forum for your insights into all this "stuff". Wasn't aware of a lot of the things you wrote about. Thanks for educating. Go Ramblers.

Really hope we have Braden & Uguak today.

-4.5 on the road in a place that is usually tough to play

That's a lot of respect.

Really hope they reign in the turnover problem starting tonight. Yes they are playing at a higher tempo, but a lot of the turnovers have not really been tempo-related. It's been Braden not being able to handle pressure at the top of the key (wasn't a problem for him last year) and Hutty post-ups.

I feel like it may be the team reverting to what worked last year with Krut -- they could toss it to Krut in the high post to relieve on-ball pressure. Defenses had to respect his post-up game, and Krut was strong enough with the ball and as a passer that you could leave him on an island. Hutty isn't there yet, and has different skills (not really fair to expect him to be Krut). The guards need to stay in Hutty's eyesight for bailout passes. I see them instead kind of abandoning him to go cutting and spotting up, as if it was still Krut there throwing dimes against double-teams and help defenders. Need to keep someone there as an outlet though, because if Hutty's first move doesn't work, he's getting swallowed.

Would be great if Hutty develops some Krut-lite skills, but I also think he's just a different kind of player. Not sure I would keep trying to force the issue.

For what it's worth, per Kenpom metrics, our turnover rate this year is 18% (rank 122). That's better than last year's 18.3% (137th), and better than any year in Kenpom data (which goes back to 1997) save for the 2017 team.

Norris's turnover rate is just 16% which is extremely good for a guard. He was 20.6% last year.

I think the turnovers have seemed more damaging because they have tended to come in bunches and they've directly led to points.

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MBB Scholarship Chart

Thanks for the stats, eases my concern a bit. I'm probably succumbing to recency bias from the Depaul game.

I do think you have a point regarding Hutty post ups. I don't have stats for proof, but just based off of the eye test it seems that a lot of our lost possessions come from forcing the ball inside. Hutty has shown some potential as a post player, but is too mechanical right now and just doesn't have the lift to make it a high quality shot often. Knight on the other hand has had some decent success as a post option. I just think that too often early in games/halves we force post touches to Hutty, which then leads to him feeling like he needs to put up a shot. I'm definitely nitpicking, but I think if we just let the offense flow more early in halves and get the ball to Hutty off of dump-offs and P&R opportunities, that would make a better use of his skills and clean up some possessions.

Loyola posted a video of the team warming up on social media. Both Braden and Aher in uniform.