Saturday, February 11, 2023 3:00 p.m.
Robins Center, Richmond, Va.


The Ramblers (8-15, 2-9) travel to Richmond, Virginia to face the University of Richmond (12-13, 5-7)for the first time as A-10 rivals. Loyola has recently split two games with Richmond at neutral sites—a Loyola win at the Ft. Myers MTE in 2018, and a Richmond win at the Fairgrounds in Indianapolis in 2020.

Loyola has now reached the indisputable bottom of the A-10. After losing at home to St. Joseph’s on Wednesday, Loyola sank 15 spots in KenPom to their lowest level of the year, 249. Meanwhile, the previous A-10 cellar-dweller in KenPom, La Salle, has won three in a row to climb above Richmond, George Mason, and Davidson in the A-10 standings and rank 230th in KenPom.

The last two times Richmond faced Loyola—two-plus and four-plus years ago—they had a group of players that were together for an exceedingly long time. Grant Golden (older brother of Loyola’s Bryce Golden) started at Richmond in 2016, and finished his career in the 2022 NCAA Tournament after playing 161 games at U of R. Point guard Jacob Gilyard came along in 2017 and played 154 games with the Spiders, during which time he became the NCAA Division I career steals leader with 466. Add Nathan Cayo and Nich Sherod, who played 155 and 141 games respectively over 5 or 6 years, and the Spiders lost some of the most experience in all of college hoops.

Much like Loyola, many folks thought the backup upperclassmen (Tom Welch, Jacob Hutson, and Saint Thomas for Loyola – Andre Gustavson, Matt Grace, and Diji Bailey for Richmond) could step right in knowing the system, integrate with transfers (Golden and Sheldon Edwards for Loyola, Neal Quinn and Isaiah Bigelow for Richmond) and not miss a beat. I count myself as someone who guessed way, way, wrong on that, along with most others. Turns out that there’s more than just skills gaps when players graduate from playing 5-10 minutes to 28 minutes: there’s chemistry gaps, crunch-time experience gaps, conditioning gaps, foul management issues, and more.

Richmond is expected to start 6’5” senior shooting guard Andre Gustavson, 6’9” senior forward Matt Grace, 6’7” senior forward Tyler Burton, 6’5” junior Diji Bailey, and 7’0” senior center Neal Quinn. Burton is averaging 18.9 points and 7.6 rebounds per game; he’s the leading scorer and rebounder this season and last season, leading the team in minutes (by far) and steals. Quinn, a transfer from Lafayette, is a great passing big man who actually leads the team in assists with 2.7 per game. Grace and Quinn each average 8.8 points; despite their height, they do not dominate the boards. Bailey was injured for part of the season and just joined the starting lineup in place of Jason Nelson, presumably to close the gap on height and length at the start of games, similar to how Jalen Quinn recently began starting for Loyola.

Top bench players are 6’7” senior Isaiah Bigelow (U of R’s second leading scorer at 9.0 ppg), 6’5” sophomore Jason Roche (6.7 ppg, 40% behind the arc), 5’10” freshman Jason Nelson (8.5 ppg, 2.1 apg), and 6’5” sophomore Marcus Randolph.

I think this is a team where Loyola matches up well in terms of personnel. Loyola beat Clemson by 18, Richmond lost to Clemson by 28—both at neutral sites. But for a miracle shot at the buzzer to force overtime, Loyola should have lost to Fairleigh Dickinson; Richmond beat FDU by 29. Richmond isn't a fast team, but they're smart and cool under pressure. Loyola has better shooters and superior speed in this matchup. One of the things missing from Richmond is a killer defensive player on steals (now that Gilyard is gone), and the offense from defense aspect of Richmond's game is way down.

Richmond is coming off a 2 OT loss at George Washington, where several players logged over 45 minutes, and Loyola is coming off a dispiriting home loss to St. Joe’s. How is it possible to look so uninterested in the last three minutes of a tie game-- which happens to be the Jesuit Jam-- while the other team is trash-talking at you, and you know there won’t be any easier shots at a win the rest of the year? How do you do that? Can you tell I’m still ticked off?

Being an away game, where Richmond is 10-3 this season and Loyola is 1-7, gives the Spiders eight legs up in this one.


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

Richmond game notes: https://richmondspiders.com/documents/2 ... hicago.pdf

TV/Streaming video: ESPNU https://www.espn.com/college-sports/

Radio/Streaming audio: https://loyolaramblers.com/watch/?Live=142&type=Live

Live stats: https://stats.statbroadcast.com/broadcast/?id=427682

Vegas odds: Spiders by 7.5

The Spiders are eight legs up on the Ramblers? Oh JCT, you spin a web of arachnid humor.

_________________
Let's go Braden!

Sheldon Edwards appearance. Interesting.

Wow. Some 1st Half thoughts:

1. Our defense is TERRIBLE. 7 pt possession? Are you kidding me?

2. I watch a decent amount of A10 basketball and it can get physical. However, in our games if we breathe on a guy, we get called for a foul. With that said, Alston, Golden and Welch have to be smarter. We can't have all three in foul trouble.

Yeah, the defensive effort is pitiful. Richmond has not been a good offensive team this year. But they are scoring with ease on us. Lucas and Aher and Tate and Ben are weeping somewhere.

I don't know what to say about officiating.

Very first play of the game, Alston gets punched in the face by the guy closing out on him. No call, shot misses, their ball.

OK, that's how the game is going to be called? OK, we can mix it up... We can push and shove and elbow.... let's go, refs are letting us play!!!

What? Only they can punch in the face and elbow, and we're going to get called for offensive fouls for sticking out an arm on a drive where the defender trips, or brushing an arm ... Wait on that whistle to see if the shot goes, if not, Loyola fouled...

And it's not home cooking, because we got the same on Wednesday at Gentile.

Quinn has to drive to the basket more. He was doing it in non con, missed a bunch, and they told him to stop I guess.

Wow. We get beat back door a lot.

Quise's injury must be nagging. Played just a couple minutes in the 1st half. Quinn has really stepped up though.

Everytime we get it to 3, it flares up to 8 almost instantly.

Alston not having a great game (although his most recent offensive foul was a pathetic flop).

Edit: it's also infuriating how much Richmond players jaw at the refs without a T.

Schwieger and Quinn are going to be incredible building blocks for this program’s future