Friday, March 4, 2022 2:30 p.m.
Enterprise Center, St. Louis, Missouri


Despite holding the second-best KenPom ranking of any MVC team in the past five years, the 2021-22 Loyola Ramblers arrive at their last Arch Madness having backed their way into maybe the worst possible position any top MVC team has ever experienced at the yearly tournament in St. Louis. The Ramblers dropped four key games to the top three teams during the conference season, and then they lost a bid for the regular seasons title by losing in Cedar Falls on Saturday. That dropped Loyola to the four seed at Arch Madness, with all the fans of all the top teams assembled there to boo and cat-call Loyola out of the league.

Loyola's first opponent will be Bradley, the team most interested in applying physicality to any opponent they think they can intimidate. That strategy works a lot in Peoria with the home crowd cheering them on, and sometimes it works when the referees think they need to just let the two teams play, gore and broken bones be damned. That's how it was in 2019, when Bradley brass knuckled their way to a 53-51 win over the Ramblers in the Arch Madness semis.

Against the top opposing teams in the MVC (Northern Iowa-Missouri State-Drake), Loyola has been called for an average of 21.6 fouls. In their games against all the other teams they've played this year, inside the conference and out, the average has been 15.9. At a certain point, the fouls really begin to rack up the free-throw attempts. The 32 fouls called against Loyola in the overtime game that determined the regular season title was the most fouls called against the Ramblers in a decade and a half, going back to the Horizon League. It was four more than the most fouls ever called against Loyola as an MVC team... in their last regular season game in the conference... just coincidentally... purely coincidentally.... and the 42 UNI free throw attempts is also a crazy, out-of-any previous realm of sanity number.

The same statistical implausibilities are true for individual players as well: Number of times Lucas Williamson got four fouls in a conference game in the previous two seasons combined (2019-20 and 2020-21): 2 (one win, one loss). Number of times Williamson called for four fouls in a conference game this season: 4 (all losses, against MSU, Drake, Bradley, and UNI). But I digress...

So here we go for a third time against Bradley this season, with the Braves playing especially well against the Ramblers. Bradley jumped out to a huge lead over Loyola at Gentile-- by 16 points in the 2nd half-- before Loyola forced OT and eventually won 78-71. A month later, Bradley handed the Ramblers a 68-61 loss in Peoria that knocked Loyola out of first place. The Braves have always played very hard and very competitively against Loyola.

Bradley is likely to start 6'3" junior guard Terry Roberts, 6'9" junior forward Malevy Leons, 6'9" sophomore forward Rienk Mast, 6'7" sophomore guard/forward Jayson Kent, and 6'3" freshman guard Connor Hickman. Tops off the bench are 6'4" junior guard Ville Tahvanainen, 6'3" UC San Diego grad transfer Mikey Howell, 7'1" senior forward Ari Boya and 6'6" freshman forward Zek Montgomery. Second-leading scorer 6'6" senior forward Ja'Shon Henry has not played since mid-December.

Roberts, a transfer from Florida SouthWestern State, is one of the top newcomers in the league. He averages 15.4 points, 4.5 assists, and 1.6 steals per game to lead the team in each category. He shoots the three moderately well (36.7%), and has He also chips in 5.2 rebounds per game. The other juco transfer is Malevy Leons, who averages 10.6 points and creates matchup problems on great shooting inside and from range (38.8%). A Dutch transfer from Mineral Area College, Leons has an impressive wingspan which helps him tally 6.1 rebounds and 1.2 blocks per game.

Mast has dramatically improved over the course of the season. He leads the league in rebounds with 8.2 per game and adds 11.3 points in his sophomore season. Fellow sophomore Kent is averaging 8.0 points and 3.1 rebounds. Freshman Connor Hickman is a gym-rat freshman from Bloomington, Ind. with a high basketball IQ.

If the Ramblers can get to the Arch Madness final, like Drake did last season (with a KenPom in the 50s and a lower NET than Loyola has), the Ramblers are very likely to get an at large bid. It's not so sure with a loss before that.

Loyola game notes: https://loyolaramblers.com/documents/20 ... 3_4_22.pdf

Bradley game notes: https://bradleybraves.com/documents/202 ... Loyola.pdf

TV/Streaming video: NBC Sports Chicago https://www.espn.com/watch/player?id=3c ... inal-US-EN

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

Live stats: https://stats.statbroadcast.com/mobile/?id=383711

Vegas odds: Loyola by 5.5

LIMIT TURNOVERS. LIMIT SECOND CHANCE POINTS.

Those are the keys to this one. Unfortunately, Bradley plays a physical style of play that causes turnovers. And they have a fantastic rebounder in Mast that we have a lot of trouble matching downlow. Nothing more demoralizing than playing 25 seconds of hard defense, forcing a bad shot, only for Mast to grab a board and kick it back out to start again. That happened a few times in Peoria. Led to defense breaking down and tired legs.

Their size, even outside of Mast, is a concern too.

I think we match up better with UNI than Bradley...so let's survive and advance tomorrow. Going to be a hostile environment. Embrace it!

Great preview JCT. Hope you get the chance to write a few more.

Random thoughts: Really interested to see if Marquise starts today. The school page posted a video last night and he was dunking in it so thats a great sign. Tate Hall has been great in the games he's started, hopefully he can continue his streak of great play whether that be starting or coming off the bench. I think the biggest benefactor of Marquise coming back will be Braden. He's had to bring the ball up almost every possession which I'm sure has been exhausting for him. Really hoping we get a few buckets early to get the confidence up.

Glad you mentioned that Lucas has had foul trouble in all of our conference losses except for the Drake home game (where we had plenty of other problems). Can we defend (and rebound) without fouling? Will we value the basketball? If we do those things and make some shots, we'll be fine.

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Bradley is 1-3 on neutral courts and 4-8 away.

That line started at 6.5, dropped to 5 and is back at 6 so it looks like the market believes in the Ramblers.

I like the Ramblers today

Win or lose today, the Valley era will always be an awesome highlight in the history of our great university. With that said, lets get this win!

Good posts by everyone, especially that Bradley neutral and away stats. Vegas, and most prognosticators are picking us; let’s hope that rings true. Protect the ball, crash the boards, play solid defense without fouling and we got this. Not sure if anyone watched the games yesterday, looks like they are allowing pretty physical play and not calling a ton of fouls, should be an interesting day. Go Ramblers!

I am trusting in our DEFENSE to get us by a decent BRADLEY team by maybe nine points

GO RAMBLERS !!!

Is it just me or does Knight miss a lot of layups?