Saturday, March 1, 2014 3:00 p.m.
Gentile Arena, Chicago, IL

Loyola wraps up the regular season on Saturday against Evansville already locked in 10th place in conference. But a win against the Purple Aces would allow the Ramblers to avoid finishing the year alone in the league basement (Evansville would still hold the tiebreaker for 9th place by virtue of their superior non-conference strength of schedule), and give Loyola some confidence headed into Arch Madness on Thursday.

In Loyola’s previous matchup with the Aces in Evansville on January 18, the Ramblers made a game of it by successfully holding the nation’s 9th leading scorer (D.J. Balentine, averaging 22.2 ppg) to well below his average. The prolific scorer had only 14 points with the score tied and less than two minutes remaining, but he hit a jumper and was fouled intentionally leading to four points that provided nearly all of the winning margin for the Aces.

Evansville just nabbed a convincing come-from-behind home win Tuesday on senior night against Drake (which doomed the Ramblers to 10th), their only win in their last four games. The Aces’ only win on the road in conference happened way back on January 11 at Southern Illinois, before the Salukis rallied strongly to move from last place to escape Arch Madness Thursday. Yet the Aces can be a Jekyll and Hyde team on the road—they played Illinois State, Missouri State, and Indiana State into nail-biters, but got blown out at Drake, Bradley, and Northern Iowa.

The Evansville formula is essentially the same as it was in their previous matchup with the Ramblers. D.J. Balentine is a fierce scorer and adept passer from the perimeter, Blake Simmons handles a good deal of the inside scoring, and Egidiju Mockevicius takes good care of the glass and makes a lot of put-backs. Guards Adam Wing and Duane Gibson chip in six or seven points per game, and Jaylon Moore and Jaylon Brown play well defensively and see considerable time off the bench.

Since November 30, Evansville has played 9 games where Balentine hasn’t been the leading scorer OR where Mockevicius hasn’t been the leading rebounder, and they’re 2-7 in those games. Their only two wins in those games were against Grambling and Loyola at home; many of the seven losses were blowouts. Additionally, when Balentine scores fewer than 20 points on the season, the Aces are 1-8, with the only win coming against Loyola. Yet the win against Loyola was a home game, and the Aces’ third lowest scoring output on the season.

There are two ways to go in handling Evansville, it seems. Let Balentine go off wildly and smother the other players (risky, in my opinion, but done successfully by Wichita State and Northern Iowa), or hold Balentine well below 20 and make the other players beat you. The latter strategy is what Loyola used in their previous matchup, and it was nearly successful— the game was deadlocked with less than two minutes left to play, despite Loyola’s season-long road difficulties.


Vegas opening line: Loyola by 2

Loyola game notes: http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/loy ... 228aaa.pdf

Evansville game notes: http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/loy ... a_evan.pdf

Video: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/Loyola-Ramblers-Athletics

Loyola audio: http://client.stretchinternet.com/client/luc.portal#

Evansville message board: http://www.purpleacesfans.com/

63 ....Do you know how they kept Ballantene down? And do we know if Nick O is playing tomorrow?

I have no idea about Osborne's availability for tomorrow.

As for Balentine, he can be streaky. In his 43-point game against UNI, he took 38% of his team's FG shots, and 66% of his team's FT shots. In his 38-point OT win game against ISU, he took 28% of the FG shots and 25 of his team's 56 FT shots. When he scored only 2 points against SIU two games ago, he was 1 of 8 from the field, 0 of 5 from behind the arc, with 3 turnovers in 38 minutes. His worst games offensively seem to happen when he makes a lot of turnovers. In games where he's made four or more turnovers, UE is 2-7, and he's averaging 17.1 ppg. In games where he commits fewer than four turnovers, he averaged 24.4 ppg. So my guess is his confidence can be shaken when he fails to take care of the ball. Keep him off the line, because he loves to rack up points there-- more than 30% of his points on the season have come at the foul line.

Five against ONE ??? We should win by all accounts. Now then that is if Osborne plays !! If not--TROUBLE--with a Capital T as Harold sang !!!

Go RAMBLERS !! Get tenth win---(Horrible, isn't it ?? )

Osborne is on the court in uniform, warming up

Thanks for the update, BigJoe. That's good to hear.

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MBB Scholarship Chart

Clark and Nixon getting the start on senior day.

Playing like the season can't end quick enough.

Who was the genius who made us the favorite in this game?!

OK !! We cannot even get the Sream right ?? I have LUC women on--????????

But then who would watch anyway ??
I am curious though , what is wrong with the stream???


The game ?? Well, that was a goner two weeks ago--A complete and utter collapse by our team !! Various theories abound--but what is the correct one, I wonder .