Loyola Runs Into Trouble but Slips Past Portland

Nobody said it would be easy. But most people thought it would.

Instead, Loyola Marymount sputtered, misfired and played fitfully in a 110-104 victory over Portland in the opening round of the West Coast Athletic Conference tournament Saturday. The Lions will play Pepperdine at 7 tonight in a semifinal game.

Tied, 73-73, and in trouble from the start, the Lions scored nine straight points in 31 seconds.

Portland came back with six in a row, but Loyola put together a 20-4 run and appeared to be coasting with a 102-83 lead and only 4:23 left.

Then Portland made another run and never gave up, pulling within 106-102 with 37 seconds left, at which point Loyola hit four free throws to hold off the determined Pilots.

“There’s no question, if I could’ve drawn out a plan for the game, it would be exactly as it was going,” first-year Portland Coach Larry Steele said. “They made it get away from us in that four- to five-minute stretch. I wouldn’t say Loyola played one of its better games. I like to think we had something to do with that.”

The victory was the 22nd straight for Loyola (25-3). Portland, the WCAC’s last-place team, finished at 6-22.

But not before the Pilots nearly beat the tournament’s top-seeded team.

Lion Coach Paul Westhead found one bright spot: “We got our average,” he said with a grin.

More good news for Loyola--sophomore center Hank Gathers hit 13 of 18 shots, many of them off his 7 offensive rebounds, on the way to 33 points--21 in the first half--and 18 rebounds, both records for the two-year-old tournament.

Loyola point guard Corey Gaines, playing on a sore ankle, also had his best game in several weeks, finishing with 20 points and 8 assists.

Loyola’s outside shooting was missing for most of the first half. The Lions shot 42%, and designated bombers Bo Kimble and Jeff Fryer were a combined 2 for 15.

The key statistic for Loyola was the 28 turnovers the Lions forced, many of them on in-bounds passes.

Portland, scoring easy baskets by throwing long passes behind Loyola’s press, had leads that reached five points and led as late as five minutes into the second half, 64-63. The Lions led at halftime, 50-48.

Kimble, who said he felt sluggish coming off a bout of the flu, hit only 1 for 12 in the first half. He found his shooting touch midway through the second half, scoring six straight points to turn the one-point deficit into a 69-64 lead.

When Portland guard Adolphis Gaffney tied the game, 73-73, on a bank shot, Kimble sank a follow of his own miss, Gaines hit a three-pointer, Mark Armstrong scored a layup and Kimble made a steal and hit a bank shot from the lane. Later, as Loyola pulled away, Kimble hit two three-pointers. He finished with 23 points.

“The team never got a good spurt,” Kimble said. “We made it hard for ourselves. We just weren’t into it like we usually are. It was a bad win. Tomorrow, we won’t come out flat.

“Once we get that good spurt, that’s it. We go from there. Today I was starting to wonder. It came so late. They were more hungry than we were today.”

Gathers agreed: “I think we did come out and take ‘em for granted. I think that’s the reason we came out a little sluggish.”

Westhead said: “We were not going to play careful, we were not going to back off our press even though we were getting beat on it. Portland played pretty darn hard. They sure didn’t come in scared. We weren’t on the very top of our game, but that’s more of a compliment to Portland. There was no rest today.”

Loyola guard Enoch Simmons (7 points) missed much of the second half after twisting an ankle, and Fryer (10 points) bruised a knee late in the game. Both are expected to play tonight.

Portland was led by center Adam Simmons, who had 28 points and 18 rebounds. Gaffney added 23 points and 8 assists.

In the tournament opener, second-seeded St Mary’s opened the second half with a 12-0 burst and went on to beat the University of San Diego, 68-48.

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St. Mary’s (19-8) led, 23-11, late in the first half. But the Toreros, who finished 11-17, had a 12-0 run to tie it with two minutes left in the half. Gael forward Robert Haugen, who finished with a team-high 17 points, broke the streak with a layup and hit a three-pointer at the halftime buzzer, and St. Mary’s never looked back.

“I can’t think of a worse performance late in the season from any team I’ve ever coached,” San Diego Coach Hank Egan said.

The Gaels will play Santa Clara in a semifinal game today at 5 p.m.