Loyola basketball is the Final Four hero we need and deserve
Loyola basketball fever is sweeping the nation, thanks to a tough-as-nails team and an even tougher nun, and they’ve become the Final Four hero we all need.
When it comes to the 2018 NCAA Tournament, no one has captured the hearts and imagination of America quite like the Loyola basketball team (all due respect, UMBC, but your run was short-lived).
In a year that has seen the world of college basketball put through the wringer with FBI probes, coach firings, allegations of all sorts of nefarious activity and the death of an icon in the sport – Woody Durham – the sport needed a hero to pull it from the ashes much in the way Gotham city needed a savior.
But in the case of college hoops, particularly the NCAA Tournament, the sport got both the hero it needs and deserves in the Loyola Ramblers.
An 11-seed playing in the Final Four for only the fourth time in tournament history is just the icing on the cake for this band of hardwood brothers. This is a team who has beaten every odd at every turn and done the seemingly impossible en route to the first possible championship since 1963.
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Busting Brackets
Get out of the dreaded 5-11 first round matchup? Check.
Take down a Power-5 conference co-champion? Check.
Beat perhaps the most clutch team in the tournament? Check
Win against a team who everyone said was bigger, stronger and defensively superior? Check
The Ramblers have given America not only a true Cinderella to root for in this years championship weekend, but also a team to continue cheering for long after the confetti — whatever color it may end up being — has been swept up.
In a time when the x-rays of the biggest and most celebrated programs in the nation are revealing cancerous corruption and scandal, along comes a program from a small Catholic university in the Missouri Valley Conference to renew faith in the sport.
It’s about more than just Sister Jean. Yes, she’s given the nation someone to rally around, but she’s just a reflection of this Loyola basketball team and the way things are done.
No blue-chip players. No sneaker deals. No AAU stench. Just a team full of basketball players and a coach with a career record barely over the .500 mark. A team who despite their 28-5 record, are probably only in the tournament by virtue of their conference tournament championship.
Yet here they are. On the biggest stage there is for the sport, showing all of America that it can still be done the right way with results. There’s not a player on the Loyola roster who was ranked with more than three stars as a prospect, and few broke into the top 200 players in the nation. Even Marques Townes was more sought after as a linebacker than a point guard coming out of high school.
But that’s the way head coach Porter Moser wants it.
“I’ll be honest, I want to recruit top-100 players,” Moser said via USA Today. “But I think we’re getting very good players, but we’ve never been a team of recruiting a number because it’s rated this or that for your fan base. We’ve gotten guys that fit what we do. And we’re going to continue to recruit at a high level, but we believe there’s a certain way to do it. We’re going to obviously follow the rules and do it the right way.”
Next: Loyola-Michigan Final Four Preview
This is what everyone needs to see. This is what college basketball needs. This Loyola Ramblers team is the hero college basketball deserves…and needs.