Loyola Basketball Team Will Play Seven of First Nine Games at Home

The Loyola Marymount basketball team, which played what several scouts judged was the nation’s toughest preconference schedule last season, will play what appears to be a more representative schedule in 1991-92.

The Lions, who opened with 10 consecutive road games last season in Jay Hillock’s first season as coach, will play seven of their first nine games in Gersten Pavilion, starting with the Nov. 22 Los Angeles Classic.

The two-day tournament field will also include Washington State, Central Connecticut and Morgan State.

The Lions will play host to Loyola of Maryland on Nov. 25 and then travel to Reno to play Nevada on Nov. 29.

The Lions return home to play four games: Dec. 3 against Pacific; Dec. 7 against UC Santa Barbara; Dec. 13 against Westmont College and Dec. 16th against UC Irvine.

On Dec. 20th they travel to Pauley Pavilion to play UCLA, then take a break for Christmas before playing host to Lehigh on Dec. 30.

The new year begins with the only trip outside California. Loyola will play games at Marist in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., on Jan. 2 and DePaul in Chicago on Jan. 5.

Then the Lions play a West Coast Conference schedule the rest of the regular season with one exception--a Feb. 18 game at Cal State Northridge, competing in its second season as a Division I independent.

Although they failed to lead the country in scoring for the first time in four seasons, the Lions still averaged 103.6 points. Much of the team will return, including All-American guard candidate Terrell Lowery, all-conference center Richard Petruska and point guard Tony Walker, who was a starter on the 1989-90 team that reached the NCAA round of eight but sat out last season because of a wrist injury.