and kiddos to whoever in the Athletic Department has kept the stands filled while the students are on vacay........Gym was loud yesterday.....and I won two bucks at half time betting the under at 10 during the grade school game.

ESPN says Gentile was at only slightly more than 1/2 capacity. Free tickets?

I think you need to give credit to the coaches for making adjustments. Rubin had two fouls and sat out most of the first half. He was in foul trouble the whole game.

Nice win for The Loyola University Ramblers. Congratulations. Duquesne is/was a floating around the Ken Pom Top 100 coming into the game. They are no cupcake. This is exactly the type of performance the Ramblers need. Conference wins are frequently grind-it-out type affairs (think of games against Valpo, Missouri State, Bradley the last few years; rarely pretty, but important to find ways to win). This afternoon was an example. If The Ramblers are going to be in the top half of the standings, they'll need to grind out these types of wins even when not playing their A game. The turnovers were frustrating. How many times did one of our guys step on the sideline? Des with two needless inbound turnovers. I could go on. As concerning to me is a pattern this season where the Ramblers fail to convert on 3 v 1, 4 v 1, 1 v 0 breakouts. These are devastating because they are almost always followed by an immediate basket going the other way on the counterattack. Therefore, they are immediate four and five-point swings. There was a lot of good today. Overcoming Rubin's foul trouble. Overcoming 21 TOs, overcoming a poor first half, mediocre three-point shooting, yet still prevailing and finishing strong.

From my view directly down the sideline, at least one less than the refs called!

Also the travel on Mwamba was questionable at best... especially compared to what #5 DUQ did in the second half.

But you make a great point about conference games. This was a very good win regardless of how we played. I was going to look up how many times an MVC foe was top 100. It wasn't that many.

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Great win. It’s only 1 game - but feels sooooo much better to be 2-0 vs 1-1. Fantastic atmosphere at the Joe considering the students are still not back.

At the risk of being another killjoy, there are some pretty fundamental things we need to get better at or we won’t be winning these scrum type of games.

1) Turnovers. Obviously. It’s not just that we lost 21 possessions to turnovers. It’s that so many were unforced. Silly silly turnovers. Relax. Slow down. And keep your feet in between the lines!
2). Free throws. Been a struggle for us for a few years. We are not awful - just not real good.
3). Box outs. We are better this year than last - but still too many instances where we just don’t put a body on anyone….effectively anyway.

We are good enough….and play hard enough…that there are going to be a lot of very close conference games. Getting better in these 3 areas is going to be critical.