Loyola Marymount Has Foes on Run : Pressure Produces 15-Game Win Streak and Scoring Lead
Loyola Marymount’s basketball emergence could very well be called a transfer-mation.
For Coach Paul Westhead, it’s the perfect blend of the right talent and a relentless fast break.
Whatever explanation is apt--a combination of both is probably close--nobody is spending much time at Loyola analyzing it. The Lions are just happy to be 18-3 and on a 15-game win streak.
After road games against the University of San Francisco and Santa Clara last weekend, Loyola ran its West Coast Athletic Conference record to 8-0 and maintain its national scoring lead at 108.4 points per game.
In the last week, the Lions have been featured in Sports Illustrated and USA Today. Westhead has been interviewed on ESPN. Games at Loyola and on the road are selling out. And at every stop, Westhead has to explain his approach to disbelieving viewers.
The numbers: In a conference known for moderate scoring and defense-minded coaches, Loyola is allowing opponents to score 91 points per game and shoot 52%. Yet the Lions are winning by an average margin of 16.7 points.
Their full-court press, which Westhead uses most of the game, is forcing numerous turnovers, which speeds up the pace even more. Loyola puts most of its pressure on the in-bounds pass, so opponents who get behind the press often score easily.
In essence, Loyola’s approach is to speed up the opponents and make them shoot quickly, because the Lions will outgun them, or outlast them. Against Portland a week ago, Loyola got off more than 100 shots. Despite shooting a lower percentage than opponents (the Lions are shooting 50.1%), Loyola has 88 more field goals and has taken 200 more shots.
“Our goal is to get the ball downcourt and score in seven or eight seconds,” Westhead said after Saturday’s 94-93 victory at Santa Clara, a team that usually scores in the mid-60s.
Loyola was down 15 points midway through the second half and was still losing by double figures with about six minutes left. But Mike Yoest, who won the game on a free throw with two seconds left, said, “You could see them getting tired.”
After Friday’s 128-111 victory at USF, team scoring leader Hank Gathers told San Francisco sportswriters: “Our practices aren’t fun. We run for two hours, with two one-minute breaks. We really work hard. The games are the fun. We know we can run 40 minutes. The 45-second clock doesn’t even enter into our game.”
As expected, Loyola’s key players have been four-year starting forwards Mike Yoest and Mark Armstrong, and transfers Corey Gaines, the senior point guard who left UCLA, and sophomores Gathers and Bo Kimble, who came from USC.
Gaines, perhaps the key player in the offense because the point guard handles the ball almost exclusively in Westhead’s attack, has had a fine season, averaging 18.9 points, shooting 54% and ranking among national leaders in assists (8.3 per game) and three-point shooting (54%).
Gathers, who plays center at 6 feet 7 inches, leads the WCAC in scoring with a 22.6-point average and is shooting 57%. He has high games of 39 and 34 points. Kimble, a 6-5 guard with no conscience, may have been the missing piece in the puzzle. Kimble was nursing a knee injury and didn’t play in the first six games, and the Lions were 3-3. Since his return, they haven’t lost.
Westhead put him in the starting lineup six games ago, and Kimble has responded with a scoring barrage. He’s averaging 19.7 points overall and has averaged 27 points in the last four games including a career-high 30 against Santa Clara.
Yoest has been the steady senior, scoring 17 points per game and leading the team in shooting (60%) and rebounding (8.4). After he cooly sank his game-winning free throw against Santa Clara, Westhead said: “Yoest delivered his experience and his effort of four years in one shot.” Westhead has referred to Yoest as being “reliable as the sunrise.”
Unlike past seasons, however, when Loyola depended on one or two principal scorers--Yoest was the fifth straight Lion to lead the WCAC in scoring last season--this team is tougher to defense. Two of the team’s best shooters, guards Jeff Fryer and Enoch Simmons, play off the bench. Each is capable of a 20-point game, and Fryer was the key scorer with a 20-point second half Friday against USF, including five three-pointers.
Even Armstrong, who rarely looks to shoot, is capable of scoring. Averaging 7.3 points, he had season bests of 18 points and 19 rebounds against USF.
Westhead also plays 6-10 junior John Veargason regularly in his rotation, giving him perhaps the deepest bench and best group of athletes Loyola has ever had. “We have an advantage against all teams,” Kimble said last week. “Teams that try to run, we’ll wear ‘em down.”
That has allowed Westhead to institute the fierce press, for which he didn’t have the manpower in past seasons. “Over the summer we were looking for ways to speed up the offense even more,” Westhead said. The answer was a man-to-man press on virtually every inbounds pass, and a complicated system of jump-switch pressure upcourt. “Before, I didn’t want to press because I wanted to expend all our energy on the offense.”
The decision to press has proved correct. The press forced Santa Clara into 28 turnovers, USF into 25 and Portland more than 30.
“The defense ignites our offense,” Westhead says. “Among coaches they say it’s impossible. Proponents of full-court pressure say you can’t do both. They (players) have to agree to play that hard.”
Westhead said that leading the country in scoring is more a product of the system than a priority. “It means our fast-break system is working. This is what we do. This is what we teach. This is what I’ve been running since I coached high school. I’ve been running it a long time--but we never defended before. Our defense is as pressure (oriented) as the offense.”