Battle For The Missouri Valley Conference Going Down This Weekend. Drake vs. Loyola Chicago.

Sports Illustrated - Best-of-seven series: Final Four team vs. this year’s team. Who wins?

Clayton Custer has a unique perspective on the topic. Three years ago, at this time, Custer was putting the finishing touches on a Missouri Valley Player of the Year campaign, unaware of how much his life would change in the next six weeks.

As the starting point guard, Custer helped lead Loyola on an unthinkable run to the Final Four that made him and his teammates budding celebrities on the shores of Lake Michigan. Now, Custer wears a polo shirt and slacks on game days, getting his start in coaching as the Director of Player Development for the same program he once starred at. What’s his take?

“This year’s team has a higher upside,” Custer says. “I don’t want to make any of my teammates mad from a couple of years ago, but I think the team this year has an incredible upside.”

Three years after Loyola Chicago introduced itself to the college basketball world with a run for the ages, the Ramblers have built another team capable of taking March by storm. The numbers back up what Williamson and Custer believe: This year’s Ramblers are even better than the Final Four iteration.

Big news in Chicago this week as the AP finally got their heads out of their asses and ranked Loyola Chicago. #22. Better late than never I suppose. 

But perhaps even bigger news, is the brain trust at Redline Radio finally dignifying the only basketball program in the state of Illinois to ever win a National Championship, with 5 minutes of air time. 

And this weekend, the Ramblers will be front and center as they take on media darling Drake tomorrow morning at 11am and Sunday at 2pm in Des Moines, IA. Both games can be seen on ESPN2.

This is going to be an awesome pair of matchups not just because both teams boast impressive records, but because they are two of the deepest teams in the country.

Moser loves to talk about having “seven starters” and rotates 9 main guys regularly each game. Drake also goes seven deep each game.

The scales tip in Loyola's favor, not just because I'm a homer, but for a couple of reasons. 

1- Drake's second best player, Hemphill, got injured this week and was in a walking boot. Even if he plays there's no way he's 100%

Williamson is arguably the Valley’s best on defense. One of the best in the nation in fact. 

If Moser chooses to use Williamson in this way, then Uguak, another great defender, would contend with Hemphill. That means 6’1 Braden Norris and 6’3 Keith Clemons get matched up with 6’12 DJ Wilkins and 6’6 Tremell Murphy.

Under regular circumstances, this wouldn't bode well matchup wise for Loyola. But with Hemphill being injured it helps the Ramblers.

Because Braden Norris is a fuckin stud. 

Guy shoots the lights out. He leads the country in career active 3% percentage. Don't believe me? Look it up. So Moser and the boys have to key on him.

2- Dandy Cam Krutwig is only getting better every game. He ranks in the top 10 in the MVC’s scoring, rebounding, assists and steals categories. I wasn't sold on the kid coming into this year (he's still awful from the free throw line) but that's changed. Kid just keeps getting better. The work he's done on his footwork is incredible. He plays like an old school big man in the post which is so refreshing to see.

People can argue its between him and Penn for MVC player of the year but I think after this weekend that argument gets put to bed. Look for Krutwig to continue to dominate.

Busting Brackets- This will be an intriguing clash of differing styles – and it, truthfully, could go either way.  In MVC play, there is not a better defensive team than the Ramblers, who rank first in 3P% defense (30.3%) and 2P% defense (44.2%), as well as defensive efficiency – all the while their defense forces a turnover on 23.5% of opponents’ possessions, the best mark in the MVC.  On top of that, on the offensive end, Loyola-Chicago maintains the most efficient offense – while draining a league-best 61.8% of their two-pointers.

Loyola is the best in the league at turnover percentage which makes for an even more interesting matchup as Drake is best in the MVC at taking care of the ball.

So that the Ryder's don't kill me for making this an all Loyola blog, to Drake's credit they are monsters on the boards. They lead the conference in rebounding on both the offensive (32.3%) and defensive end (21%). 

Back to Loyola.

How have the Ramblers managed to revive their success from the team of 3 years ago? 

Glad you asked. 

Besides having a lot of veteran leadership, they also have one of the best cultures around. Something all alum's can take pride in knowing.

SI- How have the Ramblers ensured that the Final Four run wasn’t a fluke? Two words: culture and continuity. The warm-up shirts the Ramblers wore throughout their Final Four run in 2018 featured the words Created by Culture across the front, and that phrase perfectly describes the importance of this program’s culture to its growth. It takes more than just recruiting talented players to go from a 1–17 record in the Horizon League 10 years ago to a Final Four and perennial contention at the top of the Missouri Valley.

Culture is on the walls of the Loyola program … literally. One wall of the team’s locker room is known as the “culture wall” and has dozens of phrases that embody the program written on it.

“Culture carryover is all about the upperclassmen. It’s what you want in a program, and that’s how you sustain it. When the Final Four seniors were freshmen, they were part of a CBI championship team,” Loyola coach Porter Moser recently told SI’s Pat Forde. “Now we have seniors Cameron Krutwig and Lucas Williamson, who were freshmen on the Final Four team, and they’re protecting that culture. That’s what’s fun as a coach, is seeing the older players fighting to protect that culture.”

There's also the fact that Pres has been a big supporter and attends every home game.

There's also a whole lot of unselfishness on this team.

SI - “There’s not one guy upset about his numbers on our team,” Moser says.

That selflessness was also a defining characteristic of the Final Four team. A different player led the Ramblers in scoring in each game of their run through the NCAA tournament.

“It's really difficult to get a group of guys that play basketball to be about something bigger than yourself,” Williamson said of the 2017–18 team. “We wanted to win for the sake of the team, but you also wanted to win because you wanted your brothers to experience that winning with you. That’s something I’ll never forget.”

The senior class of this year’s team represents the final remaining players from that group. They also represent a group that believed in Moser and his vision for Loyola before the program took off. They joined a team that hadn’t finished above .500 in conference play in 10 years and hadn’t made the NCAA tournament in 30 years. The year before they arrived, the Ramblers were last in the MVC in attendance by far, and were largely irrelevant in the Chicago sports scene. Regardless, they believed.

I have no problem harping on the fact that those that know, knew this team would be special before the season began. So seeing it unfold has been awesome. 

Drake will be lucky to split this weekend. 

Either way, I finagled a dinner at Peter Luger's with the full Rico experience so I win.

p.s. - Gameday with Sr. Jean tomorrow bright and early