Loyola Opens Year With Big Numbers

On the brink of Loyola Marymount’s season opener at Nevada-Las Vegas on Wednesday, some trivia about the basketball team:

* Coach Paul Westhead, entering his fifth season, is fourth in career coaching wins at Loyola with 79. He needs five victories to move ahead of Scotty McDonald into third and 28 to tie William Donovan for first at 107. John Arndt is second at 91. At 79-42, Westhead is head and shoulders above the rest in winning percentage at .653. Donovan is next closest at .514.

* Gersten Pavilion will be the site of the West Coast Conference Tournament, March 3-5. The first three tournaments have all been held in the San Francisco Bay area, with Loyola winning the last two. Home-court advantage? No home team has won the tournament yet.

* Under Westhead, Loyola’s offense has increased 64%, from 68.5 points per game the season before Westhead was hired to 112.5 last season, the NCAA record.

* Barring injury, Loyola’s high-scoring triumvirate of seniors, Hank Gathers, Bo Kimble and Jeff Fryer, should rewrite most of the school record book. Gathers, who has scored 1,969 points in his college career (including 233 as a freshman at USC), needs 325 points to supplant Forrest McKenzie (2,060 points) as the Loyola career scoring leader. Gathers already owns the two best single-season totals in school history--1,015 last season and 721 the year before. With 1,286 career points, Fryer, who has the third-best single season of 710, needs 13 to move into the career top 10 and 315 to move into the top five. Kimble, with 879 points despite missing 19 games in his Loyola career, needs 420 points to move into the top 10.

* Gathers, who led the nation in scoring and rebounding last season, needs 122 rebounds to move past Mark Armstrong into second place, and 458 to pass Jim Haderlein’s career mark of 1,161. Last season he got 426. Gathers needs 31 points and 296 rebounds to join a select group of collegians to get 2,000 points and 1,000 rebounds.

* More Gathers: The WCC’s most valuable player as a junior is trying to become the 10th player in conference history to repeat. He would join a distinguished list: Ken Sears of Santa Clara (1953, ‘55), Mike Farmer of USF (1957-58), Leroy Wright of Pacific (1957, ‘59) Steve Gray of St. Mary’s (1962-63), Ollie Johnson of USF (1964-65), Dennis Awtrey of Santa Clara (1969-70), Bill Cartwright of USF (1977-78-79), Quintin Dailey of USF (1981-82) and Dwayne Polee of Pepperdine (1985-86). (Note: in several years, players have shared the award). Notice a missing name? Bill Russell, who led USF to national titles in 1955 and ‘56, was beaten out by Sears for 1955 MVP honors before winning the award in 1956.

* Fryer has attempted (632) and made (242) more three-pointers in his career than two-pointers (405-179). Last season he led the nation in three-pointers made (128) and was third in the country in three-pointers per game (4.1 average).