rlh04d wrote:GoRamblers wrote:The thing to remember about us is that we were one of the youngest teams in the country last year. In spite of that, we played decent ball. Our record would look a lot better if we hadn't lost 7 of our games by a total of 12 points.
I think those are the keys for you guys. I'd be very surprised if you guys don't end up on Thursday night in St. Louis, but I'm not convinced you'll finish in the last two.
The real trick will be how you deal with better competition, though. I've looked at the numbers before, and Loyola's RPI against teams with an RPI better than 193 is terrible, and the record against teams with an RPI over 193 was amazing. I'm looking forward to seeing your nonconference schedule ... coming off the fifth worst noncon SOS in the D1 last season, I'm not sure what your gameplan will be. The conference as a whole really needs Loyola, Miss St, and SIU to schedule better. But at least Loyola beat the bad teams they played in the noncon.
We've come a long way over the past 10 years as far as scheduling. I know it doesn't look that way, but really, we have. Perhaps it won't reflect it this year (coming up) but we are making an effort to schedule better. We are finishing up some of our "bad" contracts.
This year, we have the following for sure: @ Fordham, @ Tenn Tech, @ Mississippi St., @ Kent St. and Northern Illinois at home. I believe we have 4 spots open for sure (we are owed a return game from Creighton from a bracketbuster 3 years ago and I believe a game from Bradley). At the moment, LU is in the process of putting together an MTE tournament. No teams have been finalized.
Like I said...not great but we have to finish up the contracts we signed. Both Tenn Tech and Mississippi St. were scheduled to commemorate the 50th anniversary of our National Championship (We played Tenn Tech in the tournament and have the largest margin of victory of any team and Mississippi St. was the Game of Change).
One final note: In some of our terrible years, we played Butler very, very close. In fact, in their first National Championship appearance year, we took them to the last possession and lost by 1 point. I think you'll find that, for better or worse, we play to our opponents. Additional references would be the Michigan St. game from this year (it was FAR closer than the score indicated) and the Kansas St. game from 2010-2011.
