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PostPosted: Fri Dec 30, 2022 8:27 pm 
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Saturday, December 31, 2022 3:00 p.m.
Gentile Arena, Chicago, Ill.


The A10 schedulers gave the Loyola Ramblers a break by slotting their very first A10 men's basketball game at home against the George Washington Colonials. Starting off with a home game against the squad picked near last in the league is a good way to start a new chapter on a high note-- as long as the team takes care of business. The Colonials are 221 in KenPom, and the Ramblers are currently 137.

The Colonials are one of the original A10 teams from the conference's debut season in 1976-77. Loyola has played GW five times-- all between 1937 and 1939-- and compiled with a 3-2 record. GW played many years in the Southern Conference (back in the 1940s and 1950s, when Washington DC was thought of as a Southern city). GW's last trip to the NCAA Tournament was in 2016, when they lost to Memphis in the first round as a 9 seed.

Yuta Watanabe, Yinka Dare, Tyler Cavanaugh, and Mike Brown all played basketball at GW before heading to the NBA. Actress Kerry Washington; FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover; First Lady Jackie Kennedy; Senators Harry Reid and Tammy Duckworth; reporter Kasie Hunt; and actor Alec Baldwin all graduated from GWU. The GWU campus is in a nice part of the District called Foggy Bottom, about halfway between the White House and Georgetown. Several years ago, George Washington had the distinction of having the highest undergraduate tuition in the country.

About four weeks ago, GW was 5-2 with a win over South Carolina (one of the better non-con wins for the league). But since then, they've gone 1-5 with a humbling home loss to local rival American, a road loss at Radford, and the 0-fer at the Diamond Head Classic in Hawaii (a two-point heartbreaker to Washington State, an 11-point loss to Pepperdine, and an 18-point "can we please just get back home already" loss to Seattle U).

First-year Head Coach Chris Caputo is from the Jim Larrañaga coaching tree-- Caputo was Associate Head Coach at Miami when Loyola beat the Hurricanes in the 2018 NCAA Tournament. His squad is powered by three high-scoring guards-- 6'2" senior James Bishop (20.5 ppg and 4.8 apg, both tops on the team), 6'4" senior Brendan Adams (16.8 ppg, 4.5 rpg, 2.5 apg), and 6'5" freshman Maximus Edwards (10 ppg, 5.7 rpg). Bishop comes from LSU, Adams is a UConn transfer, and Edwards first signed with (but did not play at) Kansas State.

The frontcourt starts 6'8" senior forward Ricky Lindo (9.5 ppg, and his 6.8 rpg lead the team). Lindo is a Maryland transfer who played for the Terrapins against the Ramblers in 2018-19 as a highly-touted freshman. The other forward is 6'10" senior Hunter Dean (7.7 ppg, 5.1 rpg), a Southern Miss transfer.

The bench features 5'11" senior point guard E.J Clark (Alabama State transfer), 6'11" center Keegan Harvey (College of Charleston transfer), 6'5" grad student guard Amir Harris (Nebraska transfer), and 6'8" senior forward Qwanzi Samuels (Florida Gulf Coast transfer). As far as I can tell, 6'11" junior center Noel Brown is the only player who gets significant minutes who started his career with the Colonials.

With all these upperclassmen transfers, it's no surprise that George Washington ranks 88th according to KenPom in experience, and their mostly tallish guards and five front court players between 6'8" and 6'11" ranks GW well above average in height. In the game I watched them play (the loss to Pepperdine), they showed a lot of the same problems Loyola had in the early going-- unforced turnovers, tentative (or very little) movement off the ball, and a general lack of cohesiveness and rhythm. When they do get going in stretches, they look like they could be really good. They've got some great athletes—three-, four-, and five-star recruits-- and they've already defeated an SEC team. However, the three increasingly bad losses to increasingly worse teams in Hawaii seems like a red flag. It's good that Loyola is playing these guys at home, because on one of their good nights they look like they have the ability to knock off any top A-10 team having a bad night.


Loyola game notes: https://loyolaramblers.com/documents/20 ... Notes1.pdf

George Washington game notes: https://gwsports.com/news/2022/12/30/me ... urday.aspx

TV/Streaming video: NBC Sports Chicago / ESPN + https://www.espn.com/watch/player/_/id/ ... d19b1b700c

Radio/Streaming audio: https://loyolaramblers.com/watch/?Live=131&type=Live

Live stats: http://stats.statbroadcast.com/broadcast/?id=426263

Vegas odds: Loyola by 7.5


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 31, 2022 2:22 pm 
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Location: West Town, Chicago, IL
FYI, there's a water pipe break along the semi-circle to the garage. Both sides are blocked off so make you own decision going around the barricade (exit one easiest to go around)


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 31, 2022 4:14 pm 
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Think we are a Tuesday night pillow fight team.


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 31, 2022 4:49 pm 
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#exposed.

Staff is lost, players seem lethargic. Ugly end to 2022.


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 31, 2022 5:04 pm 
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Giving up 97 points at home. Should be a lot of disappointment, shame and questions in that locker room. That is not who Loyola is.


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 31, 2022 5:25 pm 
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Just for perspective, the last time Loyola had 90+ points put up on them in a regulation game (remember - not counting last year’s overtime. 102 97 loss in a rigged season finale), was our game against the University of Detroit, which was a 69-90 loss on the road. 12 years since we’ve given up this ridiculous number in regulation on defense.


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 31, 2022 6:08 pm 
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Pretty rare for a team to drop 24 points in KenPom after one game this late in the season, but that's where we are. This game was so bad, KenPom's conference finish prediction for us went from 9-9 to 7-11.

The level of athletic talent in this league is far ahead of the MVC. Opponents are taller, longer, stronger, and leap higher than the MVC. And we got pushed around, manhandled, shown up, and embarrassed at home. GW sent a message right off the bat-- with a lot of physicality and smack talk that they backed up with shots. If you are tentative and don't know what you're doing, you don't get calls, you can't find a rhythm, and mistakes on one end of the court show up on the other end, too.

There was no intensity (students out for break didn't help). There didn't appear to be a game plan. Defense was helpless, and the zone we tried looked clumsy. We let a team shooting .312 on threes (307th in D1) shoot 58% (at one point it was 63%), and we put them on the line for 25 free throws (they hit 23 of the freebies, and got an offensive rebound and two more points on one of the misses). GW only played 7 players for the game, controlled the pace, smack talked, and hit crazy shots they haven't hit all year. Of course, the reckoning after their disastrous MTE performance just before Christmas probably led to a fire being lit under their asses for the past week, and we got the brunt of it.

Things don't get easier: at Davidson, at George Mason, VCU at home are coming up. This one was supposed to be a relatively easy win. An 0-4 start to life in the A10 is looking somewhat likely.


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 31, 2022 6:33 pm 
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Regarding Kenpom, it feels like we've been buoyed by our preseason ratings. NET feels more accurate, to be honest. We're a bottom 100 team.

Friend texted early as we fell behind saying, "We can beat this team." I said if we don't beat them we're not going to win six games.

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PostPosted: Sat Dec 31, 2022 7:10 pm 
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Tough loss. Really impressed by the shot making of their guards, some really nice step backs. Defense has to be better. The size difference with the MVC is crazy.

Missing the front of consecutive 1 and 1s was brutal. That basically killed the comeback.

Still think this team has a chance. Marquise, Ben, and Bryce had solid games. Alston had a solid 15 minutes. Norris was his usual self, a couple bad misses and turnovers. So many minutes.


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 31, 2022 8:13 pm 
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If you would have told me we would score 87 points and only commit 10 turnovers before this game …. I would have presumed a 20+ point win…


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