SISTER JEAN & THE MIRACLES
LOYOLA HAS FINAL FOUR IN ITS SIGHTS
ATLANTA — What people see is the finished product. In the case of Loyola Chicago and the remarkable run it already has had through this NCAA Tournament’s South Region, it means you can use words like “upstarts” and “underdogs” and “destiny” and nobody is going to question you.
“It’s been everything you’d think it would be,” Loyola Chicago coach Porter Moser said Friday. “We’ve enjoyed every step of the ride.”
But there is something else that goes along with that, too. Loyola Chicago will play Kansas State for the South title Saturday and a berth in next weekend’s Final Four in San Antonio, and for both teams it will be the culmination of 10 days of joyous, raucous, almost sublime competition.
Loyola Chicago, of course, brings a couple of other things along for the ride. Courtside there is Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, team chaplain and good-luck charm, whose angelic face has been every bit as much a part of this run as the precise back-door cuts the Ramblers run to perfection.
There is the school’s deep history, which includes not only an epic run to the 1963 NCAA championship, but also a moment early in that journey in which the president and coach of Mississippi State defied their lawmakers, snuck the basketball team to East Lansing, Mich., and played Loyola Chicago’s four black starters in an integrated opening-round game that, as exLoyola star Jerry Harkness termed it, “was the beginning of the end of segregation.”
“I love that this run is sparking the renewed conversation of what that team meant to our country and integration, and to hear the stories firsthand from them and to hear the brotherhood that they had, the black guys, the white guys, everyone together,” Moser said. “It was a brotherhood, it was a high character. They embraced the Loyola education.”
What Moser hopes is that what his players have accomplished hasn’t — and won’t — be totally absorbed by the feelgood nature of what they have done. For the Ramblers didn’t make it here by accident — they
31-5, after all — and are a result of a perfect storm of coaching, talent and long hours.
Moser was a disciple of Rick Majerus, and his locker room — even the temporary quarters at Philips Arena — is a testament to exhaustive preparation, posters of plays on all the walls, sharp discussions of strategy forever bouncing between them.
“With Coach Majerus, the attention to detail was off the rails, and I’ve taken that from him,” Moser said. “He was meticulous about teaching. He loved practice. And I’ve embraced that. Now, honest to God, head coaches, boosters, fans, players, assistant coaches love game day. Head coaches don’t love game day as much as them. We love practice. So I took that from him.”
And his players seem to have followed.
“We understand why people are rooting for us,” guard Clayton Custer said. “It’s why people love this tournament. They love rooting for teams that they don’t see all the time, and maybe they picked us in our bracket. But we know we belong here. We know we deserve to be here.”
And by the close of business Sunday, they hope to be saying the same thing — only subbing “San Antonio” for “Atlanta.”