{"id":69121,"date":"2018-03-16T16:15:13","date_gmt":"2018-03-16T21:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=69121"},"modified":"2018-03-16T16:15:13","modified_gmt":"2018-03-16T21:15:13","slug":"loyola-earns-another-shot-at-a-high-major-team-after-tricky-scheduling-only-gave-it-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/loyola-earns-another-shot-at-a-high-major-team-after-tricky-scheduling-only-gave-it-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Loyola earns another shot at a high-major team after tricky scheduling only gave it one"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Patrick Engel<\/strong>
\nMedill Reports<\/i><\/p>\n

Aundre Jackson will finally play in his hometown on Thursday in Dallas in the NCAA tournament. If Loyola head coach Porter Moser had his way, though, Jackson\u2019s homecoming would have been much sooner.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe tried hard to get a game there, but we just couldn\u2019t,\u201d Moser said Sunday.<\/p>\n

Loyola\u2019s only the latest team to face this bind. It\u2019s the life of mid-majors once they prove they can play with high-major teams.<\/p>\n

Successful mid-majors are a lose-lose opponent for those power-conference teams \u2013 too much risk of a road loss, and not enough reward for a home win. The former can damage a r\u00e9sum\u00e9, and the latter isn\u2019t enough of a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 builder. This was N.C. State\u2019s feeling when it bought out a scheduled road game at Loyola this season. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Most \u201cMajor 7\u201d teams don\u2019t want those mid-major challenges unless they\u2019re sure it\u2019ll help them. Which won’t be often. Florida was the only Major 7 conference team to subject itself to Loyola this season. The meeting ended in a Gators home loss. It\u2019s hard to blame high-majors for avoiding any risk of such a result.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why Loyola – despite its 27-5 record (7-1 against the RPI top 100) and regular-season title, conference-tournament title and win at Florida \u2013 played a non-conference slate ranked No. 264 in strength of schedule.<\/p>\n

The Ramblers\u2019 low non-conference strength of schedule, plus their membership in a league that provides few chances for top-50 and top-100 wins, is why they would have been in the NIT had they not won the MVC\u2019s auto-bid. Three sub-100 losses hurt, too. Even with the auto-bid, they were seeded below all 36 at-large teams in this year\u2019s NCAA tournament field. This is the way the Missouri Valley, even as the No. 8 RPI conference this year, is trending in the post-Wichita State era.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s tough, but we obviously had it in the back our minds that we didn\u2019t want to leave it up to the committee,\u201d senior forward Donte Ingram said. \u201cSo we were going to take care of our business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Loyola\u2019s run to the MVC tournament title did just that. Now, the Ramblers want to take advantage of a Major 7 chance they rarely get. They\u2019d do so by beating No. 6 seed Miami in Jackson\u2019s long-awaited game in his hometown.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he wanted to get TCU,\u201d said Jackson, a senior forward from Kennedale, Texas, said of Moser\u2019s scheduling efforts. \u201cBut they didn\u2019t want to play us. So now we get to go to Dallas to beat Miami.\u201d<\/p>\n

It turns out N.C. State and TCU would have played a top-25 RPI team. Even though they couldn\u2019t predict the future, a loss to a top-25 team is no death sentence, and a win is a hell of a statement. Entering the NCAA tournament, Loyola is No. 22 in RPI, an unusually high number for a team in a one-bid league that didn\u2019t even send its second-place finisher to the NIT.<\/p>\n

Loyola\u2019s conference rival Illinois State can sympathize with scheduling trouble. The Redbirds lost the MVC title game to Wichita State last year and went to the NIT, despite a 27-6 Selection Sunday record and RPI of 33. The big reasons: few top-50 and top-100 wins, a couple of bad losses and the No. 157 non-conference strength of schedule. Their only notable non-conference game was at TCU, which they lost.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had a great season and I felt like they should have been in the tournament last year, but it\u2019s tough,\u201d Ingram said. \u201cThey\u2019re trying to schedule teams, but they don\u2019t accept it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Illinois State\u2019s exclusion provoked head coach Dan Muller into a Twitter rant bemoaning the difficulty of scheduling bigger schools. It famously worked, with Muller and Ole Miss agreeing to a home-and-home over tweets. <\/p>\n

Illinois State played the 13th non-conference strength of schedule this year. In addition to Ole Miss, the Redbirds played South Carolina, Tulsa and Boise State on neutral courts. They played Nevada on the road. Muller got perennially strong mid-majors Murray State and Florida Gulf Coast to agree to home-and-homes.<\/p>\n

The problem, though, is that Illinois State went 6-6 in its non-conference games this year, negating the purpose. That\u2019s where next year\u2019s Loyola team can differentiate itself, if it plays a similarly strong schedule. <\/p>\n

But first, there\u2019s an NCAA tournament to play this year.<\/p>\n

Photo at top: Amid celebration, Loyola’s Aundre Jackson looks down at his phone to call his mother about his team earning an NCAA tournament spot in his hometown of Dallas-Fort Worth (Patrick Engel\/MEDILL).<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Patrick Engel Medill Reports Aundre Jackson will finally play in his hometown on Thursday in Dallas in the NCAA tournament. If Loyola head coach Porter Moser had his way, though, Jackson\u2019s homecoming would have been much sooner. \u201cWe tried hard to get a game there, but we just couldn\u2019t,\u201d Moser said Sunday. Loyola\u2019s only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":458,"featured_media":69122,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,3987],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","category-winter-2018"],"yoast_head":"\nLoyola earns another shot at a high-major team after tricky scheduling only gave it one - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/loyola-earns-another-shot-at-a-high-major-team-after-tricky-scheduling-only-gave-it-one\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Loyola earns another shot at a high-major team after tricky scheduling only gave it one - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Patrick Engel Medill Reports Aundre Jackson will finally play in his hometown on Thursday in Dallas in the NCAA tournament. 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