He’s everything that’s wrong with the “old school” color commentator. “I don’t know what a quad 1 win is”, “ North Carolina should be in because they’re North Carolina”, “Only call a foul when there’s not an advantage”, “I can’t do math so my wife pays all the bills”.

So out of touch with everything.

Held them to 1 field goal the last 6+ minutes of the game. Lost because we couldn't make back-to-back buckets during that run, and we made stupid ticky-tacky fouls late in the shot clock. Had our opportunities. The difference in the game is we need a guy or two who we can just hand the ball to and say make something happen. They had that, and either got a good look or got fouled as they were driving to the basket.

Also, after they were 8-14 from 3, they ended 10-30. We made the needed adjustments defensively to win.

Later tonight the Athletic Department is having the kickoff celebration-- at the end of the 1st day's games.

If I hadn't cancelled my trip and hotel reservations (that I got in October) a few weeks ago, my plane would have touched down when we had the 4-1 lead, I would have gotten the bags in the hotel midway through the 2nd half, and MAYBE made it to the arena for the missed attempts to tie in the under 4.

Instead of being in Brooklyn, I'm at the urgent care in Edgewater for a case of pink eye. Used the ticket refund to get a ticket to Arizona in April, where I intend to hike in the desert and absorb some of the lessons from this tough year.

A couple key moments I noticed -- 1) when St. Joe's switched to zone and we completely fell apart, 2) late second half, we made a run, St. Joe's calls a timeout and runs a great play for a wide open bucket, then completely shuts us down on defense. That was pretty much it. Oh, and we were still going for quick twos at the end of the game much later than it made any sense to. We almost lucked out with Norris almost getting the and-one, instead he went 1/2 from the line.

Not to belabor the point, but it feels like this year we were always on our back foot when it comes to in-game X's and O's.

I think we would have beaten any of the other four pillow fight teams (UMass, Richmond, URI, LaSalle). Especially UMass, who looked like an absolute corpse of a team today.

Unfortunately, SJU just kinda owns us this year. Clean 3-game sweep. All three games, we just had no answers for Greer and Reynolds, they destroyed us and didnt hesitate to remind us of it all game. Didn't help that Braden and Sheldon shot a combined 4-16 from deep today. Simply need better shooting from deep from Norris, especially when we are taking wide open shots.

Free throw shooting was better today at 14-16. Of course, one of those two misses was a big one by Braden to cut it to two late.

I do give props to the guys for continuing to fight all season. Would have been easy to give up numerous times (see UMass). The combination of mass amount of turnovers and defensive inefficiency were too much to overcome.

Next few months will be interesting. Without saying names, there are definitely guys due to return who, in my opinion, cannot be big minute guys on a top tier A10 team. Need to play the transfer portal right. And I really think the coaching staff needs a shakeup. We were outcoached in many games this season and took way too long to make critical adjustments.

I saw this stat on Twitter today and it pretty much sums up how painful this season was.

Loyola had the biggest negative difference between preseason Kenpom ranking and end of season ranking of ANY team in Division 1 (-202 spots). Absolutely brutal.

Flush 2023 and get to work on fundamentals.

Tough season but will always love the Ramblers.

We have maybe one guy who could start for > 1/2 of the A-10 teams; therefore I find it hard to blame the coaches for anything other than recruiting. Get our talent equivalent to the decent A10 teams' levels, have a season like this one, and then it's the coaches. Would Porter have done much better with this team? We'll never know. Add just one of the following: Reynolds III, Ace Baldwin II, Burton, Collins, Kamara, Greer II so he's not able to play against us, Polite II, Bishop IV or any guy with Roman numerals, and we're probably that close to being .500 in the A10. I'm not arguing the coaches were perfect, but LU's biggest issue was talent-debt in my opinion.

Tough year, tough to watch. Glad it's over.

Few thoughts:

1. This game was typical of season. Fall behind in the second half big, charge back in the game but finish just short.

2. Our defense is awful. In the second half as we allowed them to get the basket for easy twos in some critical situations. The idea of "tough 2s" is a foreign concept to this team.

3. We need better talent. This team was not talented enough to win without complete buy in and attention to details on defense and offense. This team just never bought in and committed to playing the game right. We need some athletes who are fast, athletic and who can flat out SCORE.

4. Coaching staff needs a face-lift.

5. It will be an interesting end to the year banquet

Sorry for the disjointed comments, but this team wore me out. They just never corrected glaring and obvious faults all year.