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LU Disassembled by Detroit

1/16/03
by John C. Thomas
With the chance to position themselves for a run at one of the top spots in the Horizon League tournament seeding, Loyola played arguably their worst game of the year in an embarrassing 72-54 loss at Detroit Thursday night. Poor shot selection, casual rebounding, lackluster defense and graceless ball handling combined with cold shooting to drop LU to 7-11 on the year, 3-3 in conference.

For the third game in a row, Loyola got off to a horrible start. The Ramblers hit on only one of their first 12 shots from the field and trailed 10-2 with 14:10 left in the first half. Terrance Whiters entered the game to give LU a lift with three three-pointers to give the Ramblers a 24-20 lead with 5:37 left in the first half. But it was all downhill from there.

Detroit outscored Loyola 11-2 over the last 4:10 of the first half and Willie Green shot the lights out. Green had 14 of his 27 points in the first half to give the Titans a 37-29 lead at the break. Only 11 of Loyola's 29 first half points came from inside the arc, and three of them were from free throws when Whiters was fouled on a three-point attempt.

The Ramblers made an attempt to adjust in the second half, pounding the ball inside in the early minutes of the second half. The Ramblers closed to within 39-34 with 18:08 left in the game on some solid offense in the post from Demetrius Williams. But the Titans soon shut down the Rambler offense as the outside shooting went cold and Detroit ruled the backboards.

Loyola trailed 60-49 with 7:50 left to play, but scored exactly five points in the rest of the game, and three of those points came on a DaJuan Gouard three-pointer with :18 left to play.

David Bailey had the worst game of his college career, scoring only three points on 1-for-14 shooting, including 0-for-9 inside the arc. Bailey entered the game having scored in double figures in 44 of his last 46 games, and one of those two games involved an injury in the first four minutes of the game. Bailey didn't get to the line at all, the first time that's happened (except for the game where he incurred the injury) since the game against Notre Dame on November 22, 2000. Paul McMillan, Loyola's second leading scorer, also had a horrible shooting game with six points on 2-of-10 shooting from the field.

Loyola shot reasonably well from three-point range (41%), but inexplicably could not get a basket from inside the arc. The Ramblers were 12-of-35 (34%) inside the three point line.

Demetrius Williams led the Ramblers with 16 points, and Whiters added 14. No other Rambler had more than six points in the game. Detroit crushed the Ramblers on the boards by a 39-26 advantage while outshooting Loyola 45-37% from the field and forcing 18 turnovers to their own 12. The Ramblers had zero steals, while the Titans had 11.

A lot of people would cite the Belmont game as being the worst outing of the year, an 18-point loss against a sub-mediocre team to start a six-game road trip. But coming off two consecutive road overtime games against Butler and UW-Green Bay, with positioning in the conference at stake and a chance to give Detroit a serious setback, the uninspired and disorganized 18-point loss tonight was especially disheartening.

It seems like just about every time the Ramblers get a good win or a respectable performance, their heads swell with delusions of invulnerability. Shot selection goes awry, working hard and following coaching principles goes out the window in favor of a wide-open "feeling-it" flow in which any shot is OK, frustration fouls compound errors of judgment, and easy lay-ups are made at the other end while players are jogging next to the refs complaining about fouls that weren't called.

There is a massive amount of physical talent on this team-maybe the most since the 1980s-- but it's painful to see it squandered. After the game at Michigan State, I remarked to someone that Loyola had more speed, athleticism and pure scoring ability than MSU at every position on the court. They looked at me like I was crazy. But it's true. The considerable difference between the performance of this Loyola team and Michigan State this year has nothing to do with athleticism or pure scoring ability. The breakthroughs that we saw last year in coaching, discipline and motivation have all but completely disappeared.

If Loyola played at Michigan State this year as well as they played at Illinois last year, LU would have had a realistic chance to knock off the Spartans. Hell, Toledo beat MSU in East Lansing two weeks after Loyola's game there. I'll bet Toledo didn't give up 12-18 points on easy lay-ups when they didn't get back on defense. And Toledo has lost this year to Northern Illinois (at home) and Youngstown State.

There's more than enough talent on this team to win the Horizon League. There's just not enough will, discipline, direction, or mental toughness to absorb and apply those lessons like there is at Michigan State. And now that Pat Kennedy is out of the Chicago area, the waste of talent seems even more profligate.