All the little things that can trip up Loyola`s basketball team, even when it plays well, tripped up the Ramblers when they played well Thursday night.
The Ramblers lost their sixth straight game and the ninth of their last 11, 74-72 to Dayton, and saw their record sink to 9-11 overall and 0-5 in the Midwestern Collegiate Conference.
Coach Will Rey would have said ”you`re nuts” before the game if you told him his Ramblers would lose even though they 1) would have five men score in double figures, 2) would outrebound the taller Flyers 34-32 and 3) would have 6-foot-6-inch center Kerman Ali play so well defensively that he`d hold Dayton`s leading scorer Makor Shayok to three points.
But that`s exactly what did happen, and Loyola lost because of the following ”little” things:
– Loyola isn`t big enough. When 6-8, 230-pound Shayok got into foul trouble, Flyer coach Jim O`Brien called on 7-foot, 233-pound Wes Coffee, who muscled around the smaller Ramblers.
– Loyola had nobody to match up with 6-10, 245-pound freshman Chip Hare. Hare hit 11 of his team`s first 16 points (he totaled 18), matched Ali`s 11 rebounds, and went 3 for 3 from three-point range.
– Keir Rogers, Loyola`s 19-point leading scorer, took only seven shots and made just 11 points. ”He`s got to cut harder, screen more, work harder to get his shots,” said Rey. But Rogers has a bad ankle that restricts his play.
– Don Sobczak, the Ramblers` gritty 5-9 point guard, stepped up and drilled 5 of 7 three-pointers. He led the team with 16 points and eight assists. But he was frequently matched up with 6-4 Sean Scrutchins, who shot over Sobczak for some of his 20 points.
In spite of all these drawbacks, the Ramblers battled back from being down 73-68 with 52 seconds to play, and had chances to send it into overtime when rookie guard Russell Wilson took and missed a jumper and a follow in the final five seconds.
”You can`t look at only the final seconds when we`re fouling and hoping they miss free throws,” said Rey. ”Earlier things contributed to beat us. Like Hare causing matchup problems and scoring those points at the start. He was a real force, probably the difference in the game. And their going 8-0 at the start of the second half really hurt us.”
Wilson, the Minneapolis sophomore, is playing on a surgically reconstructed knee. He gave the Ramblers a lift near the finish when he scored 12 points in 12 minutes of play.
Rey said he will consider starting the 6-foot guard. But if Wilson starts, the small lineup gets even smaller.
”We`re going to break out sometime soon,” said Rey. ”We`re coming so close. It`s incredible. We`re kind of groping for a win.”
Rogers, a fifth-year graduate student, missed all last season with an ankle injury. He said he`s able to play but hasn`t recovered 100 percent of his cutting or jumping ability.
”Keir is a marked man,” said Rey. ”Tapes are out. He`s got to do more without the ball.”
Seven different players took field-goal attempts for Loyola. Each one shot six, seven, or eight times. This contributed to tightly-packed scoring:
Sobczak had 16 points, Ali 13, Wilson 12, Grant Moehring and Rogers 11 each.
Dayton had three in doubles: Scrutchins with 20, Hare 18, and former Marshall High School star Alex Robertson 14.
