Trying to Restore the Roar

As the Loyola Marymount team bus rolled away from San Diego State on Dec. 31, all the ingredients for a rotten new year were at hand.

The Lions had suffered their fifth consecutive loss, dropping to 3-11 as they struggled with first-year Coach Rodney Tention’s new system.

But a surprising thing happened once Loyola Marymount entered into West Coast Conference play.

Everything changed.

The Lions are 8-2 in conference games, two games behind No. 5-ranked Gonzaga, which they will play host to today before a regional television audience in a sold-out Gersten Pavilion.

It’s Loyola Marymount’s most anticipated game in years, but Lion players and coaches know it also must be kept in perspective.

“It’s important for us to remember this is just another league game,” said Lion center Chris Ayer, a senior averaging 11.2 points and 6.5 rebounds in conference play. “We have three more after this one. We can’t blow it out of proportion.

“It’s a great opportunity for us to earn respect. But coach’s biggest thing is for us to get better every time we practice and every time we play. And I think the guys have to keep that in mind as we go into the game.”

Holding onto second place is important because the top two teams in the WCC regular season move directly to the semifinal round of the conference’s postseason tournament, the winner of which earns an automatic berth into the NCAA tournament.

That the Lions are in position to consider such things seemed a distant dream less than two months ago.

Tention, formerly an assistant to Lute Olson at Arizona, transformed LMU from a walk-it-up, half-court team to one in constant motion. And he had tried to schedule in a way that would prepare the Lions to be competitive in the WCC season.

“We were everybody’s cupcake going into preseason; everybody wanted to play us at their home gym,” Tention said. “So after going through the preseason I told the guys, ‘We’re not that far away. ...’ ”

Since that five-game slide in December, LMU’s only losses are to Pepperdine and Gonzaga on the road. The Lions have three weekend sweeps in conference for the first time since the 1991-92 season. They also have equaled last season’s win total and have won six in a row at home, their longest such streak since 1990-91.

“There’s great excitement on the campus now, not only on the part of students but our fans as well,” LMU Athletic Director William Husak said. “And it’s something we haven’t seen in a while. We love it that people are calling for tickets and we have to say no.”

Gonzaga, which is 21-3 and has won 12 in a row since losing to No. 3 Memphis on Dec. 27, won’t be cowered by the Lions in Gersten Pavilion. The Bulldogs have the WCC’s top two scorers -- national player of the year candidate Adam Morrison, who is averaging 28.8 points, and J.P. Batista, who is averaging 20. And they’ve been beating WCC foes by an average of 11.8 points, the widest differential in the conference.

But Gonzaga doesn’t have anything to prove. Loyola Marymount does -- to those who suspect its 11-13 record is a better barometer than its conference record.