Ben had a broken hand. (UMKC game)

Boise was our 4th game in eight days, traveling from NC.

And we were 7-0 heading into that game.

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MBB Scholarship Chart

Yeah, but that final 4 team beat Florida, ranked 5 at the time in, I think, their 5th game of the year. Creighton will be our 5th game of the year... Just saying... Lol

I liked TY, but I don't agree that he would be an upgrade over Dolan. Before the Creighton game, he will emerge as the catalyst for the offense and the main reason that Loyola has amazingly few turnovers.

TY went for 30+ twice last year. I like Dolan but I don't see a comparison between the two at all. I'm with the other lamenters here. It's disappointing he transferred and I'd love to know the story behind it.

Just not sure of this. But one thing's for certain - the Big West is quite possibly the least-known and maybe worst basketball conference in all of America. Johnson dropping 30+ a few times against California league commuter schools is a great story tho. Wonder why there? And if there were any others fishing for his services. Yeah, we'll be okay.

One of those 30 point games was against horizon league runner up UW Milwaukee on their home court. Do you think we would have anyone scoring 30 plus in that environment last year?
(He also had 8 steals in that game)

Edit: his other 30 point game was against long beach state whose kenpom rank was 167 last year, or 83 places higher than ours! I get that the competition is not awe inspiring but 1) it's not that bad and 2) our offense looked truly decrepit last year (and for good stretches of this year too). If the problem was minutes, then why did we give so many of them to Saint!? I'd be hitting the transfer portal too if that's who was starting over me.

Marquise Kennedy was 8 for 8 from the charity strip and 1 for 1 from the floor in the closing minutes against his alma mater to ice the game and give UIC the W. Good to see him back on the floor. Way to go Marquise!

Updates below:

- Jacob Hutson (UNI) - UNI beat non-D1 by 40 and then lost to (future LU opponent) South Florida by 9. Against Loras, Hutty played only 15 minutes and put up 8 points on 4-5 shooting. Shot a gross 0-5 from the line. No 3PT attempts. In their loss to USF, Hutty led all Panthers with 14 points and played 32 minutes. He shot 5-8 from the field and grabbed 6 boards. Notably, he had SIX turnovers, so he still has some Rambler left in him! Also find it interesting that he hasn't attempted a 3PT shot this year. We saw him get hot a few times from deep last year (well, maybe once vs ASU). He seems to be a key part of UNI's squad.

-TY Johnson (UC Davis) - UC Davis lost to an always solid mid-major team in Montana and then beat North Dakota St. Against Montana, Johnson only played 23 minutes and put up 8 points on 3-8 shooting. Despite playing only 23 minutes, TY led the Aggies with four TOs (again, he's still got the Rambler spirit!). Against the Bison, Johnson lost his starting position but played 25 minutes off the bench. Only had 8 points again on 3-6 shooting. And again, he led his team with three TOs. TY is struggling from the FT line, shooting 10-20 (only 50%).

-Saint Thomas (Northern Colorado) - After a 2-0 start vs non-D1 teams, the Bears returned to earth, losing by 19 to Colorado St. and by 5 to a down-in-the-dumps New Mexico St. program. Against CSU, Saint led all Bears with a whopping 36 minutes. He only put up 11 points on 5-13 shooting (0-6 from 3PT...). However, he grabbed 15(!) boards, leading all players. Against NMSU, Saint played a hefty 35 minutes. Shot a little better, putting up 15 points on 4-11 shooting (3-7 from deep). He again led all players by a wide margin with 13 rebounds. Saint seems to still be getting up his shots, but he is also playing a lot more in the paint and doing well with it. Against NMSU, he led both teams with SIX TOs.

-Paxson Wojcik (North Carolina) - Paxson has started all three games for the Tar Heels. He hasn't been playing huge minutes though. In a 22 point blowout over Lehigh, Paxson played 12 minutes and only got up two shot attempts (scored 2 points from FTs). In a 25 point blowout over UC-Riverside, Paxson played 19 minutes. He had an identical scoring line as the Lehigh game (2 points, 0-2 FG, 0-1 3PT, 2-2 FT). He did grab 2 boards, had 2 assists and 2 steals.

-Marquise Kennedy (UIC) - Not going to talk about his game vs us as we all saw that. Quise played 15 minutes in UIC's next game vs non-D1 Aurora University. Only scored 4 points on 1-2 3PT and 1-2 FT. He did have 4 assists. Hope Quise continues to get healthy and has a great season in the Valley.

I chuckled out loud at this. Thanks for the update, very interesting. Hoping I can catch a couple of these guy’s games soon, especially intrigued to see a more physical Saint as opposed to the giant shooting guard he was playing here.

Happy to do it. I really find it interesting to see how these guys fit in different systems and against different competition. All are "downward" transfers, other than Paxson (who doesn't really count because he went "downward" to Brown first). So it is interesting that we haven't really been poached by any big dogs, despite our success in the past 5-6 years.