Loyola Must Conquer the Pain of Januarys Past
In what could be a promising season for a developing Loyola Marymount team, the 8-4 Lions now must confront what has been their Waterloo.
January has been cruel to Lion teams in recent years. They haven’t had a winning record in the month since the 1998-99 season. As Loyola heads into tonight’s West Coast Conference home game against Portland, it must deal with these facts:
* In 1999-2000, the Lions were 1-8 en route to a program-worst 2-26 record in Charles Bradley’s final year as coach.
* In 2000-01, Coach Steve Aggers coaxed four nonconference wins out of a paper-thin roster before going 2-6 in January.
* In 2001-02, Loyola started 6-4 but lost six of nine after the new year and finished a 9-20 season with a 12-game losing streak.
* In 2002-03, the Lions won five of their first eight games before losing 11 of 13, including seven of eight in January.
Simply put, if the Lions are to contend in the WCC, they must conquer their past.
“We’re more experienced than last year,” junior guard Charles Brown said. “We have more team chemistry. Even though we lost a couple of games back to back, we still came back from that.”
There are signs that the Lions could buck their usual winter swoon. Three of their losses have been to Nevada Las Vegas, UCLA and Virginia. The other, a Dec. 23 defeat at Long Beach State, now doesn’t look as bad after the 49ers knocked off UC Santa Barbara and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
Loyola has yet to lose three games in a row, something it has done in each of the last seven seasons. The Lions also have prospered without sophomore Brandon Worthy. Their second-leading scorer last season hasn’t played because of a broken right hand.
“We’ve had a lot of close games and we fought through and found ways to win, and I think that’s going to help us in conference,” forward Sherman Gay said. “Conference is going to be tough and it’s a battle night in and night out.”
Said Aggers: “This is a much more mentally tough team. This group of guys never dies, never quits. You won’t see [a collapse] out of this team.”
Big West Conference
Among the reasons UC Santa Barbara was picked to win the Big West this season was its deep lineup. In shaking off a gut-wrenching loss at Long Beach State, the Gauchos showed just that Monday night against UC Irvine.
Santa Barbara got 46 points from its reserves in an 84-77 victory. The unit of guards Cecil Brown, Josh Davis and Joe See and forwards Cameron Goettsche and Bray Skultety is not much of a drop-off from the starting five of Nick Jones, Branduinn Fullove, Casey Cook, Jacoby Atako and Bryan Whitehead.
“It’s a challenge, but it’s a good challenge to have,” Coach Bob Williams said of sharing playing time. “Last year, it was pretty much Mark [Hull], Nick and Branduinn and those guys needed to score about 15 points each for us to compete. We don’t necessarily need that this year.”
Irvine has had mixed success. Although two of their five losses have been to Cal and fourth-ranked Stanford, the Anteaters are still trying to replace the leadership of Jordan Harris and Mike Hood, who were seniors last season.
“We’re coming, but we’re just not there yet,” Irvine Coach Pat Douglass said.
“We don’t have the game toughness to play for 40 minutes.”