Cinderella Loyola embraces March Madness
CHICAGO - After 33 years of being shut out of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, it took a bit for March Madness to properly set in here on the main campus at Loyola University, the home of this year’s Cinderella.
But Susana Gomez, a senior studying psychology, can personally attest that Rambler mania has spread through the university community.
Until earlier this month, she hadn’t even watched a Loyola basketball game. Gomez wasn’t alone; average attendance at the Joseph J. Gentile Arena hovered around 2,000 tickets a game (less than half capacity) despite the Ramblers winning the Missouri Valley Conference. Coach Porter Moser even passed out hot dogs and T-shirts at the student center to try to get students to games.
Gomez joked her insight of this year’s Loyola squad, which will take on Nevada on Thursday in the Sweet 16, was the vague knowledge that a couple of taller guys in her economics course were on the team.
Now she’s planning a student watch party. She was even among about 500 students who attended a welcome home rally for 11th-seeded Loyola after last-second upsets over Miami and Tennessee in the first two rounds of the tourney.
“It’s brought the whole campus together,” Gomez said. “We are now all taking on the motto, ‘We’re all Ramblers. Onward LU!’ ”
It’s been years since Loyola has been relevant, let alone a power, in college basketball.
They won a national title in 1963 with a team, led by coach George Ireland, that broke with the ugly, unwritten rules of the era by starting four black players. Colleges at the time would never put more than three black players on the floor at the same time.
The Ramblers last made the tournament in 1985 behind stars Alfredrick Hughes and Andre Battle before being stopped by Patrick Ewing-led Georgetown in the round of 16.
Then three decades of middling basketball ensued.
Until now.
“To see the outpouring of fans, alumni, even the locals in the neighborhood rooting for us, it’s been unbelievable,” said Bobby Rice, a Loyola senior who has attended all but a handful of Rambler home games during his time at the university and traveled to Dallas to cheer on the team in opening rounds of the tourney.
The university has seen a surge in alumni engagement. For the opening weekend in Dallas, Loyola was the only team to sellout its school-branded tournament gear at the venue.
Loyola has sold more than 700 tickets for the Sweet 16 in Atlanta to alumni and fans, said Laura Colon Baker, assistant director of alumni relations.
With the tournament, the university has also heard from many alumni who haven’t been in contact with the school in years. Most are inquiring about where they might be able to watch games with fellow alumni. The university has helped set up watch parties in New York, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere.
Loyola also is seeing some early signs of a tourney windfall, with alumni marking March Madness by writing a check to their alma mater.
“I’ve definitely noticed some new people stepping up,” Baker said. “We’ve had a usual set of donors — especially when it comes to athletics — but we’re definitely seeing a lot of new names.”
The Ramblers run also has been embraced by Chicagoans with no connection to the school.
Donte Ingram’s three-pointer at the buzzer against Miami and Clayton Custer getting a shooter’s bounce in the final seconds for the win over Tennessee has been the talk of local sports radio.
During the regular season, Loyola received little coverage from the Chicago newspapers and media outlets that focused more on Illinois, Northwestern and Notre Dame. But now Loyola is front-page news.
Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, the basketball team’s beloved 98-year-old chaplain who became an Internet and television sensation with her inspirational pre-game prayers with the men’s squad, said it made sense that Chicagoans are gravitating to Loyola.
The school has its main campus in the city’s Rogers Park neighborhood, a vibrant lakefront enclave whose residents boast is the city neighborhood that best demonstrates the Chicago’s diversity.
Certainly, Northwestern in nearby Evanston, Ill., was embraced by locals during last year’s tournament when the men’s team broke 78 years of futility to make its first March Madness appearance.
But Sister Jean argues that Chicagoans don’t have the same feeling of ownership with that other university on the lakefront.
“We belong to Chicago,” Schmidt said, as she prepared to travel to Atlanta for the Sweet 16. “Northwestern belongs to Evanston.”
Howard Fink, 83, a Loyola season ticketholder who is travelling to Atlanta for Loyola’s Sweet 16 matchup against Nevada, said Sister Jean is the living embodiment of what makes Loyola special.
Fink, a retired Chicago-area judge, attended Wisconsin, Nevada and Harvard Law for his schooling. But over the last few years, Fink has adopted Loyola and in the process become a rabid Rambler basketball fan.
It all started for Fink a few years ago when his granddaughter who moved out East for college became homesick and was pondering a transfer to Loyola.
Fink, who grew up near the school’s main campus, hadn’t thought much of the school that for decades had the reputation of being a commuter college — an image the university has largely shaken through a decade-long expansion project.
When Fink visited campus to check it out for his granddaughter, he said he quickly became impressed by the students he met. Invariably, he found the students thoughtful, and Fink said he has been inspired by how many Loyola undergraduates told him they wanted to focus their careers on public service and social justice.
“There is a difference in the type of students who come here,” Fink said. “The kids who come here want to do something in the world. I see it over and over.”
His granddaughter picked another school, but Fink continued to be drawn to the campus. Eventually, he met Sister Jean who helped him get a library card, so he could use the university’s library to work on a constitutional research project he’d been chipping away at in his retirement.
Fink said Sister Jean also has taught him quite a bit about basketball.
He recalled during the first half of a late-season conference game that a referee had been calling an inordinate amount of fouls against Loyola. In the second half, the referee hardly blew the whistle.
After the game, he asked the nun what happened. She responded that she prayed with the referees that God might help them call a “just” game. Sister Jean confirmed that Fink’s story about her working the refs had more than a grain of truth.
“I always talk to them about calling a fair game,” Sister Jean said with a grin. “You know they have a hard job. As they keep getting older and these kids keep getting faster, I tell them they might need another one of them out there. I’m happy to help them.”
That’s the Rambler way.