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Loyola leads by 9 at the half 33-24. They have been pretty dominate on the defensive end an extremely efficient on offense. Krutwig is definitely winning the battle with Kofi as he has 8 points and 6 rebounds versus 7 and 4 for Kofi. Ayo has just 4 points and has been handled pretty by Loyola’s defense. The Illini also have committed 9 turnovers to Loyola’s 3.
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Loyola playing great defense against Illinois and leads 33-24 at halftime-
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Brad Underwood got totally out coached. Only way to describe what happen today.Comment
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Come on Loyola......MVC baby!
Sweet 16Comment
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WOW!Comment
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Other upsets-
Oral Roberts does it again. #15 ORU upsets #7 Florida to advance to the Sweet 16.
#11 Syracuse beats #3 West Virginia 75-72.
Possible upset- #12 Oregon State leads #4 Oklahoma State at halftime 44-30.
#13 North Texas wasn't as fortunate, they lost to #5 seed Villanova 84-61.
Sunday Results- https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/scoreboard
9 Big Ten teams were named to the NCAA Tournament, now only 3 remain- Iowa, Michigan, & Maryland
Losers- Rutgers, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio State, Purdue, Michigan StateComment
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One more major upset. Oregon State beats Oklahoma State 80-70. So the Midwest bracket features #8 Loyola against #12 Oregon State and #2 seed Houston against #11 Syracuse. Just can't imagine anyone, unless they did multiple brackets, that anyone had that as your Midwest Regional semis. Then is the South Regional semis you have #1 seed Baylor against #5 seed Villanova and #3 seed Arkansas against #15 seed Oral Roberts. I wonder what shockers we're in for tomorrow.Comment
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The Big Ten got 9 teams in the NCAA Tournament, and now they are down to 2. #2 seed Iowa was just beaten 95-80 by #7 seed Oregon, despite 36 points by Luka Garza.
Here are the games for Monday, 3/22-
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I see Kansas got clobbered by USC. I dont know how that happened. After all Bill Self has got the best team money can buyComment
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haha! Nice!Originally posted by bradleyfan124 View Post
Larry Bird
I've got a theory that if you give 100 percent all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end.Comment
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Well, speaking of the best team money can buy, USC is not innocent of that tag either. They have 2 terrific players who will both be NBA Lottery picks, and who are wreaking havoc on their opponents in the tournament--Originally posted by bradleyfan124 View Post
6'10" sophomore Isaiah Mobley and 7'0" freshman Evan Mobley-
Isaiah Mobley- https://usctrojans.com/sports/mens-b...h-mobley/11409
Evan Mobley- https://usctrojans.com/sports/mens-b...n-mobley/11421
Last night against Kansas, Isaiah Mobley had 17 points and 8 rebounds, and younger brother Evan Mobley had 10 points and 13 rebounds. Together, they helped USC dominate Kansas in a similar way to how they dominated Drake on Saturday. USC shot 57.1% overall, and 61.1% from three last night. Their perimeter players got a lot of open threes because the Kansas players were trying to contain the Mobley's inside game. They are a legitimate possibility to make it to the Final Four.
USC-Kansas box score- https://www.espn.com/mens-college-ba...meId=401310895
The Mobley brothers are extremely talented players. They are not just tall, but both are very skilled, can handle the ball, are very good passers, play defense, and score in multiple different ways. Either one of the brothers would immediately make most teams into top 20 teams, but both brothers playing together appear to make USC nearly unbeatable.
So how did USC end up with two of the best players in college basketball, and who were Top 5 recruits in both the 2019 and 2020 seasons?
Simple. In 2018, when USC fired assistant coach Tony Bland, who was exposed in the FBI "pay for play" corruption scandal for paying recruits to influence them to come to USC, Head Coach Andy Enfield then hired Eric Mobley, the father of the two highly ranked recruits in the classes of 2019 & 2020. Eric Mobley's only coaching experience was as an AAU coach and as the coach of the girls team at Rancho Christian HS in Temecula, California. It's hard to argue that he was qualified to be hired as a high-major assistant coach, other than the fact he could bring his two kids to USC.
So not only was USC caught red-handed in 2018 by the FBI for paying recruits to come to USC, they fired their "fall guy", assistant coach Tony Bland, and the head coach, who pleaded innocence (though I am not buying that), promptly hired a guy who had no business being an assistant coach at a Power 5 college, just because he could bring the young Mobley brothers to USC and turn them into contenders for a national championship.
USC was 16-17 and 8-10 in the Pac-12 in the 2018-19 season, the year before Isaiah Mobley, the first Mobley brother, arrived. Then in 2019-20, they improved to 22-9 with Isaiah Mobley, and this season (2020-21) with both Isaiah and Evan Mobley, they improved to 24-7, and now look unbeatable.
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I call that 'thinking outside the box'.Originally posted by Da Coach View Post
Shocked that something like that would happen in a squeaky clean Power Conference.Larry Bird
I've got a theory that if you give 100 percent all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end.Comment
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This kind of hiring technique is actually a lot more common than most fans have heard of. Oklahoma State landed Cade Cunningham last year, maybe the top freshman in the country and possibly the #1 NBA draft pick in the 2021 NBA Draft. They landed him by hiring his older brother as an assistant coach, despite the fact his coaching resume was rather minimal. Well, it worked, and Oklahoma State was transformed from a team with a losing Big 12 record in 2019-20, to a Top 15 team, and a trip to the NCAA Tournament this year.
Here is an interesting CBSSports.com article about this and a list of a bunch more instances where it's been used to land elite players that a school would not have had much of a chance at otherwise-
https://www.cbssports.com/college-ba...e-seen-before/
A similar hiring technique to land top recruits was employed very effectively for many years by coaches like Bill Self, Rick Pitino, John Calipari, and others.
But since they only had 3 allowable assistant coaching positions, they couldn't afford to use too many of them each year to land elite recruits.
So they invented sham staff positions such as "Special assistant to the head coach" or "Director of player attire" (that one was satire), or some position that required no expertise, and didn't even require they show up to work.
But finally, the NCAA caught on to their scheme and in 2017 implemented a new rule banning the hiring of family, coaches, or anyone close to a recruit for any non-coaching position. It was initially created for NCAA football, where this technique was widely abused, but then expanded to include basketball
https://www.hustlebelt.com/2017/4/14...signing-period
It's called bylaw 11.4-
https://www.sbnation.com/college-foo...ruit-camp-hire
Before the rule, you'd occasionally see articles like this one about Jim Harbaugh
https://bustedcoverage.com/2017/02/1...regon-instead/
And note the rumor mentioned in the above article that the NCAA believed the University of Alabama may have up to 97 coaches and staffers.
They can still do it, but the position the family member or AAU coach is hired for now has to be one of the 3 assistant coaching slots.Comment
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The Sweet 16 round games get underway Saturday (3/27). #8 seed Loyola vs. #12 seed Oregon State starts at 1:40 pm (Central). It is on CBS.
Loyola is a 7 point favorite
Games Saturday, 3/27-
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