OK, Ramblin' Ray, I'll take a shot at talking you off the ledge. You do have a point. Loyola's tournament drought is one of the longest (around the 15th longest, last I checked) among teams that have been to the tournament before. Of course, a lot of teams haven't been to the tournament ever, like Northwestern, and a couple dozen of the newer teams in D1. But yeah, it's damn frustrating, and every once in a while even the most eternally optimistic among us let out some frantic or pained expression of exasperation, or need to take a break and walk away for a month or eight or twenty.
The one time that we came close to making it to the tournament (I assume Ray's referring to 2002), we were picked dead last in the preseason poll. We broke a 25-game road losing streak (at St. Mary's) early in the non-con season. That year we started out looking unexpectedly good in the conference season, even gaining sole possession of first place five games into conference play. But as we got into the middle of the league schedule we faded badly, and looked like we weren't going to do much in the league tournament. That year's team came within a basket in regulation, and a point in overtime, and a last shot at the buzzer from going to the tournament. I can't figure out if Ray is saying that the majority of fans shouldn't have followed the team that year at all, or if they should have given up when the team got a couple of conference losses into the season, or what.
Following that year, the HL changed the rules to help to keep something like that from happening again. Nevertheless, we came within a missed basket in 2007 from knocking Butler out of the conference tournament and going to the HL tournament title game. Had we sunk that basket and beaten Butler in that game-- even if we'd gone on to lose in the final-- we quite likely would have made the NIT, since we had 20+ wins, a winning conference record, an RPI in the top 100, and were on the NIT bubble.
Right now it looks likely that we're not going to do as well in overall or league won-loss record as we did last season, which was pretty lousy. But we are in a better run, more esteemed, more competitive conference, and one in which the conference tournament is not nearly as stilted to favor elites-- which opens wider the possibility of a tournament run if we can get our act together. Many encouraging building blocks are in place-- in terms of recruiting better athletic talent, institutional commitment to athletics (both financial and administrative), facilities, and getting a little more attention in a crowded sports marketplace. We haven't really yet seen what these new factors can do in terms of making us a more attractive program for recruits, for fans, and for better out of conference scheduling. We also haven't yet been in a position where a better league might make the difference for a post-season tournament bubble like we had in 2007-- last year, Northern Iowa and Evansville reached the CIT semifinals; Bradley made the CIT quarterfinals; Indiana State made the first round of the NIT; and Creighton and Wichita State both got single-digit seeds in the NCAA, making 6 out of 10 MVC teams postseason participants. Sure, the CIT and NIT aren't the big time, but Wichita State helped build their program to its current level with some deep runs in non-NCAA postseason tournaments. So Ray, I'll put it to you that there ARE some tangible things that really ARE much better than where we were last year, and the building blocks for very near-term advancement ARE falling in place, even if improvement seems unlikely in this year's won-loss columns. But part of erasing the last generation of sub-mediocrity is having passionate fans like you on board to help usher in a new era, keeping the administration's committments to achieving these goals, and helping nurse other frustrated longtime fans through the rough spots on the way.
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