Enjoying This Moment
Posted: Sun Feb 28, 2021 2:03 am
I was mostly just looking forward to the next stage in the season until I saw the video of Krutwig hugging Moser for an extended period after the game. Ouch!! What an emotional gut punch.
My favorite player from the 2018 Final Four team was Done Ingram. He was my favorite because he WANTED to go to Loyola as a pretty good downstate high school sophomore who had a cousin who played at Loyola. He engineered things so he could go to Simeon, and became the very effective sixth man there. That's the story I've created in my head, and the myth that makes me feel great.
Sometime in the late summer/early fall of 2017 when I was living downstate, I came up to Chicago for something or another and stopped for an hour or two to walk around Rogers Park. I went on campus and saw Cameron Krutwig for the first time, walking next to me about eight feet away. That was the first time I thought big things could actually happen for us-- I mean BIG things-- like conference championships and NCAA appearances, and maybe even a first round win in the tournament if everything went our way.
Later that year, I was up in Chicago for a doctor's appointment, and stopped by the Loyola soccer park on September 1, 2017 for a game between Loyola and Valparaiso. It was a contentious game, and Valpo won with a goal late in regulation. It might have been the first MVC game in any sport that Valpo won in their first year in the conference. All the Loyola fans were pretty salty about the Valpo players' trash talk and post game celebration vibes. Most of the men's basketball team was in attendance, and Donate Ingram came down from the bleachers and stood next to me as we watched Valpo celebrate their victory. I turned to Donate and said, "We have to teach them a lesson on the basketball court this year."
Ingram kept his gaze on the Valpo players, celebrating after a mouthy trash-talky win, and said "Don't worry about that....". Custer and Townes and Jackson and (I think) Williamson were all there at that game... Can't remember if Krutwig was among the 8 or 10 men's basketball players who all showed up with Moser. But that was memorable in the long, slow scheme of building a great program. A little over six months later, the same guy who stopped at the railing of the soccer bleachers to talk to me was hitting a three-pointer that became one of the defining moments of the 2018 NCAA Tournament.
We have a bunch of great guys... they come in as kids, and leave as men with great values and winning attitudes and decision-making skills and teamwork and achieving at a high level. I love winning basketball games for our school. But seeing a class of students-- who also happen to play basketball-- pull together to make a team that rivals others with NBA bodies, superior recruiting pedigrees, bigger budgets, and multi million dollar coaches.... That makes me very, very proud.
My favorite player from the 2018 Final Four team was Done Ingram. He was my favorite because he WANTED to go to Loyola as a pretty good downstate high school sophomore who had a cousin who played at Loyola. He engineered things so he could go to Simeon, and became the very effective sixth man there. That's the story I've created in my head, and the myth that makes me feel great.
Sometime in the late summer/early fall of 2017 when I was living downstate, I came up to Chicago for something or another and stopped for an hour or two to walk around Rogers Park. I went on campus and saw Cameron Krutwig for the first time, walking next to me about eight feet away. That was the first time I thought big things could actually happen for us-- I mean BIG things-- like conference championships and NCAA appearances, and maybe even a first round win in the tournament if everything went our way.
Later that year, I was up in Chicago for a doctor's appointment, and stopped by the Loyola soccer park on September 1, 2017 for a game between Loyola and Valparaiso. It was a contentious game, and Valpo won with a goal late in regulation. It might have been the first MVC game in any sport that Valpo won in their first year in the conference. All the Loyola fans were pretty salty about the Valpo players' trash talk and post game celebration vibes. Most of the men's basketball team was in attendance, and Donate Ingram came down from the bleachers and stood next to me as we watched Valpo celebrate their victory. I turned to Donate and said, "We have to teach them a lesson on the basketball court this year."
Ingram kept his gaze on the Valpo players, celebrating after a mouthy trash-talky win, and said "Don't worry about that....". Custer and Townes and Jackson and (I think) Williamson were all there at that game... Can't remember if Krutwig was among the 8 or 10 men's basketball players who all showed up with Moser. But that was memorable in the long, slow scheme of building a great program. A little over six months later, the same guy who stopped at the railing of the soccer bleachers to talk to me was hitting a three-pointer that became one of the defining moments of the 2018 NCAA Tournament.
We have a bunch of great guys... they come in as kids, and leave as men with great values and winning attitudes and decision-making skills and teamwork and achieving at a high level. I love winning basketball games for our school. But seeing a class of students-- who also happen to play basketball-- pull together to make a team that rivals others with NBA bodies, superior recruiting pedigrees, bigger budgets, and multi million dollar coaches.... That makes me very, very proud.