Mason Visits a Hobbling Loyola Chicago

Your 16-1, 4-0, and alone in first place George Mason Patriots are taking on the 5-12 and 1-3 Loyola Chicago Ramblers. The Ramblers are having an unfathomably disappointing season, being considered a double-bye contender, and now struggling to stay out of sub-300 territory.

Loyola Chicago is coached by Drew Valentine, who is in his first stint as a head coach, being promoted after being the top assistant. He took over before their last season in the Missouri Valley Conference, where they made the tournament as a 10 seed, and finished ranked 29^th on KenPom. Valentine has an overall record of 88-63, and a 32-26 record in A10 play.

Drew Valentine was considered by some to be the coach-in-waiting for the Michigan State job, but you would have to think that he has put himself out of being remotely close to that designation.

Some people believe Valentine will get fired, but I have a hard time believing that, while also disagreeing with the decision. This is a guy who has made the tournament, albeit with a Porter Moser built team, and has had two very good, if not one great season in the conference. The problem is that they have been immensely disappointing in the other two A10 seasons. Going 4-14 in an incredibly bad 2023 A10 is not a good look.

Caveat, I cannot find anything on an extension. If his contract expires after the season, I would totally understand not retaining him. Firing him with guaranteed money in the books seems like a pretty bad idea; give him a chance to turn it around next season. Now if there are back-to-back terrible seasons, like another sub-200 finish, then it is over.

Injury reports are out,

Mason: BOC, Nick Ellington, Woodward, and Prosise out.

LoyChi: Justin Moore, Kayde Dotson, Dominick Harris, Alexander Richardson, Chuck Love, Xavier Amos out. Kymany Houinsou questionable.

Miles Rubin vs. the world.

— GMU Giant Killer (@GMUGiantKiller) January 13, 2026

Missing Moore and Dotson is going to be insanely bad for their offense. I’m going to keep the parts below that already mention some out players, but keep those absences in mind,

Chuck Love has not played since their December 20^th win against Santa Clara, which is one of the best non-conference wins in the A10. Could’ve played like that a bit earlier, guys.

Dominck Harris has not played since November 25th, but he was struggling to be in the rotation anyway. It sounds like this will be a medical redshirt, and I am not sure if he is still with the team, as the last mention of him on Twitter outside of the injury reports was that he was not on the Ramblers bench for their home game on January 3^rd.

Richardson missing time is a huge deal, as he is the backup center, and the third guy is freshman Brayden Young, who played a career-high ten minutes against GW. On the season, he commits 12.1 fouls per 40.

Loyola Chicago By The Numbers

Loyola Chicago is the 292^nd ranked team in the country on KenPom, with the 233^rd offense and 331^st defense. Through four conference games, they have the 14^th offense, which is last, and 7^th defense.

In LoyChi’s most recent game, they got blown out by GW to the tune of 101-66. They scored .86 points per possession, and gave up 1.32. Total and utter domination.

Valentine is playing at a slow-ish pace at 66.1 possessions per game, 271^st, with the slowness coming on the defensive end at 349^th. In conference play, this has changed, with them having the shortest defensive possessions in the league at 16.2 seconds.

Offense

The offense is pretty bad, with the Ramblers having a 49.5% eFG, 241^st, and a 19.9% turnover rate, 317^th. The eFG comes from only making 31.3% of threes, 269^th, and making an a slightly above average percentage of twos at 52%. The problem is that LoyChi takes 48.1% of their shots from deep, which is 29^th. You don’t want your volume to be that much higher than your make rate.

In conference play, the offense has gotten even worse. They’ve scored 94 points per 100 possessions, which is last. There’s a lot of last here. Turnover percentage, three-point percentage, free throw percentage, steal percentage, and non-steal turnover percentage. eFG%, free throw rate, and block rate are 12^th, 13^th, and 13^th. The only thing going for them is their offensive rebound rate, which is third, but that does not make up for being last in so many categories.

The Ramblers do a pretty good job of taking their twos close to the rim, with a two-point distance of 4.8 feet, 32^nd. The problem is that those shots are going in. It is good to take shots that are analytically efficient, but you still have to use the context of how contested they are. All of those shots at the rim and they are still just an average two-point team. There’s a lot of blue on the perimeter.

Kymany Houinsou, who is questionable, is likely the starting PG, as he has a 23.3% assist rate, albeit also having a 30.6% turnover rate, and is normally in the rotation. He averages 5.7 points, 4.2 rebounds, and 3 assists on 55.3% true shooting. A wing/guard who only shoots 4-11 from three all season is very low volume.

Caleb Reese is likely the backup PG, or starts if Houinsou is out, with a 27.2% assist rate and 37.5% turnover rate. Either way, it is looking pretty rough.

Reese, a former walk-on, was pretty much completely out of the rotation until the last two games, played 23 minutes in each of the last two games. He had 6 and 2 assists, but also 4 and 1 turnovers, with offensive ratings of 55 and 58. It isn’t fair for him to be forced to play a major role, but I am glad he now has a scholarship.

Deywilk Tavarez is probably the number one option this game, with so many guards out. He averages 9.2 points, 1.3 assists, and 2.4 rebounds on 49.7% true shooting, making 30.9% of threes and 42.9% of twos. When on the court, Tavarez takes 29.4% of shots. I imagine that might go up.

Miles Rubin averages 10.9 points, 6.9 rebounds, and 1.2 assists. A lot of his production comes from finishing plays, but they missing their advantage creators. I don’t know who sets the table for Rubin, or if it is going to be a post-heavy type of night for him. Either way, this really hurts him and the offense. You take 62.4% true shooting, but so much of it is catching lobs or chilling in the dunker spot.

Besides Tavarez, Joshua Ola-Joseph is their only real shooter available, and he only makes 29.5% of threes. The shooting guaranteed to be available tonight is 34-110 in Deywilk, 13-44 in Ola-Joseph, 7-25 in Nic Anderson, 2-7 from Daniil Glazkov, and 1-5 from Caleb Reese. Oh no. Oh dear.

Nobody available draws fouls. Houinsou is at 4.1 per 40, next is Rubin at 3.5, and then it’s Ola-Joseph at 3.3.

Defense

The defensive ranking swings over the years under Valentine are insane. Starting in his first year: 18, 262, 28, 97, 331. When your identity is defense, you have to defend. The defense was ranked second in the country in Moser’s last year. You have to be performing insanely well to be able to hold that high of a ranking in the MVC. If you look at the games, there’s a whole lot of 40s and 50s there. Drew Valentine has to get back to being in this sort of realm to get LoyChi nationally relevant again, and not just a “remember them” type of team.

The main problem is that the Ramblers aren’t forcing turnovers. A big part of the Loyola Chicago/Moser defense is pressuring the ball and forcing live-ball turnovers. Forcing turnovers on only 12.6% of possessions, 361^st, fifth to last, and getting steals (the most valuable type of turnover) only 5.9% of the time, also 361^st. This is the defensive equivalent of shooting a gazillion threes and making 27% of them.

LoyChi allows an eFG of 51.6%, 210^th, but the problem is that they give up so many shots. The aforementioned lack of turnovers forced, along with allowing 32.9% of offensive rebounds, 256^th. On the bright side, opponents only take 33.3 free throws per 100 shots, which is 126^th, pretty good.

The two-point defense is not the problem with the Ramblers, allowing only 48.3% of twos to go in, 76^th. The issue is that 37.1% of threes are going in, 327^th. And opponents are taking 44.7% of shots from deep, 5 percentage points above average. 38.4% of points allowed are threes, 11^th most, and 7.3 percentage points above average.

I assume this is something to do with guards not being able to stay in front of their man, and fouling rather than losing, but opponents make 79.4% of their free throws, which is second to most. We assume that is not random luck.

LoyChi has a high block rate of 12.6%, 51^st. That’s Rubin right there.

You can’t complain about the rim, pretty blue, and not a massive sample. You can definitely complain about the three-point line though. There are some massive red blobs that cannot be happening. The left corner is pretty insane. Their two-point distance is 6.1 feet, so .1 better than average. You take it with Rubin, since you assume those short twos will be pretty low quality.

Nobody who plays major minutes really gets in foul trouble, with Rubin at 2.6 per 40, and pretty much all the guards hovering between 3 and 4 per 40. In theory, having your perimeter guys take the fouls instead of having Rubin challenge a lot more, and collect more fouls, makes sense. That would work if forcing turnovers also worked.

Brayden Young could be playing major minutes if Alexander Richardson is out, and as I mentioned earlier, he averages 12.1 fouls per 40.

Rubin, of course, leads everyone in defensive playmaking stats, with a 10.7% block rate, 19^th in the country. He’s at 12.7% in conference play, which leads the A10.

Xavier Amos has a 4.5% block rate, Nic Anderson is at 2%, and Alexander Richardson is at 6.7%. Nobody really gets steals at a real rate on this team.

Loyola Chicago Scouting Report (Second Half vs. Rhode Island)

I used the first half of this game for the Rhode Island article.

Offense

Loyola Chicago’s offense was settling for a lot of ok threes. On the bright side, the guards crashed for boards, and got a decent bit of long rebounds.

Justin Moore tries some pretty daring stuff. He threw a lob to Richardson like he was Rubin and the backup had no chance. Moore is their version of Kory Mincy, albeit much less effective. He is also not playing in this game, so.

Rubin is still pretty raw offensively. Miles is fast with the ball in his hands, but that isn’t super impactful since you know he isn’t doing anything besides going to the rim. The biggest improvement I’ve seen is in his short-roll game. The best possessions are when Rubin gets the ball in the short roll and guys are moving off-ball. Someone ends up open because he has momentum towards the basket and there will be help.

Miles still has some bad moments, as he got a crazy moving screen up 6 with 30 seconds left, while Rhody was letting them run it down to 15.

The Ramblers ran the football spread offense inbound play where everyone starts out of bounds and runs routes. They also pass it to another inbounder. LoyChi struggled to inbound it up 4 with 2.3 seconds left. They had to call a timeout, then had it deflected. And now there are less guys with experience in crunch time playing.

It seems like all Tavarez does is take contested threes. Houinsou really doesn’t want to take threes. Polar opposites.

Defense

There was a lot of matchup zone, going over and under screens based on shooting/driving prowess.

Rubin still looks really good, I guess everybody else is so unbelievably bad. It seems like a lot of struggles relating to him are miscommunicated switches, where he is late to guard the new man. Miles will stay in the paint against non-shooting bigs.

Richardson is a massive step down defensively from Rubin, as you would expect when going from a past DPOY candidate to the backup. There’s an even bigger step down with Richardson being out.

The Ramblers really struggled with Tyler Cochran in the post, that could be a good sign for what Jahari Long can do there.

Pretty much, there are a lot of guys who can be good individual one-on-one defenders, but eventually there will be a breakdown of team defense and someone gets a great advantage. They can’t put a full possession together.

What Does This Mean for Mason?

The Patriots are coming off of a home victory against VCU, and have tended to come out clunky in the game following a big win, so this cannot be a trap game. It is hard to win on the road in conference play. With that being said, LoyChi is missing a ton of players.

I predict a 70-45 victory. This is the biggest margin of victory I have predicted all season, and I really do not think it is absurd. Loyola Chicago’s offense will have a very hard time scoring.

A victory would guarantee Mason stays in first place by themselves at 5-0.