Loyola Counts on Odd Couple to Get Even

Loyola Marymount seniors Haywood Eaddy and Silvester Kainga are college roommates who couldn’t be more different.

Eaddy is 5 feet 4, one of two players that small in Division I basketball. Kainga (KANG-guh) is 6-11 and on pace to set the school record for blocked shots in a season. Eaddy is from Maryland; Kainga is from Kenya. Eaddy likes rap; Kainga’s a country man.

About the only thing they have in common is the team they play for. And that’s enough for second-year Coach Charles Bradley.

In his first season at Loyola Marymount, Bradley’s team won three West Coast Conference games and finished last in the conference. The Lions have four WCC victories this season and are in a tie for third place.

Tonight, they play perhaps the biggest game in Bradley’s tenure when they host second-place Pepperdine at 7:30 in the first of back-to-back games against the Waves. The second is Saturday at Pepperdine.

Loyola Marymount (9-11, 4-4 in the WCC) is three games behind the Waves (16-7, 7-1) with six remaining.

The two biggest reasons for the Lions’ improvement? Eaddy and Kainga.

Eaddy, a childhood friend of the nation’s other 5-4 Division I player, Shawnta Rogers of George Washington, started the season by scoring 27 points against Long Beach State. But in that game, Eaddy suffered an ankle injury, sat out six games and struggled through the rest of the nonconference games.

“When Haywood went down early on, we struggled after that,” Bradley said.

“We went a month and a half without our best player.”

But the shortest player in WCC history has scored at least 20 points in each of his last six games, over which the Lions are 4-2. His scoring average of 15.1 points is fifth in the WCC. His 5.4 assists a game lead the conference.

During Eaddy’s six-game absence, Kainga blocked 13 shots. And in the game Eaddy struggled most, scoring two points against Cal State Fullerton, Kainga blocked a school-record seven shots.

Bradley told Kainga long before Eaddy went down he would need to improve dramatically.

Kainga, who didn’t start playing organized basketball until his junior year in high school, responded. He leads the WCC in blocked shots with 42, 13 short of Richard Petruska’s school record set in 1990-91.

Tonight the Lions face Pepperdine, winner of six in a row. A Wave victory would essentially turn the WCC regular-season race into a two-team battle between the Pepperdine and Gonzaga, 8-0 in the conference.