Loyola-Chicago just what sport needed
With so much scrutiny on college hoops, Final Four Ramblers fit the bill
ATLANTA – Months before they started taking down giants and cutting down nets, the team that was about to put together a historic NCAA tournament run sat down to lunch with another team that already had done it.
The 1963 Loyola-Chicago Ramblers, forever remembered as the team that broke racial barriers while winning a national championship at the height of the Civil Rights movement, is not just some legend of faded pictures and campus nostalgia. There is a real-life connection between some of the players on that team and the ones who wear the Loyola uniforms now.
So after a preseason practice in October, some members of that team sat down to eat, watch film of the 1963 championship game against Cincinnati and talk about the statement they made by starting four black players against all-white Mississippi State in the second round, breaking an unwritten agreement that only two were supposed to be on the court at one time.
“They didn’t know much about the
racial part of it, but they knew about the game,” said Jerry Harkness, the AllAmerican star of that team. “They’d seen it before, but you know, it’s motivating.”
But how much does motivation mean in 2018 for a program that hadn’t accomplished much in the 55 years since? These days, college basketball is about Power Five television dollars, a few emperor-like coaches who hoard the majority of the five-star talent and a system that annually tells the mid-majors they should be happy with the scraps they get. Sure, a team such as Loyola technically has a chance to do what Harkness and his teammates did all those years ago. Realistically, it’s not supposed to.
But in the middle of a celebration on the floor of Philips Arena that could have lasted all night, it was easy to be a believer.
In this team of Ramblers, who took down Kansas State 78-62 on Saturday to reach the Final Four.
In the power of Sister Jean DoloresSchmidt, a national sensation at age 98 who has vivid memories of the 1963 title and has been the team’s chaplain since 1994.
In the value of good, easy-to-watch basketball based on pinpoint passing, equal-opportunity shooting and defensive intelligence.
And in the idea that for all of college basketball’s problems, a group of kids whose recruitment didn’t draw the interest of shoe companies and agents were good enough to bust the bracket and prove they belonged every step of the way.
“We’re winners,” said guard Ben Richardson, who took his turn this time as the hero with 23 points (6-for-7 from three-point range) against Kansas State. “We have a team full of winners. We know we can play with the best teams. It’s been a culmination of a lot of things.”
In this particular year, with so much scrutiny around the culture of college basketball, Loyola delivered exactly what the country needed.
It was clutch, beating Miami (Fla.) on a last-second three-pointer from Donte Ingram. It was tough, taking down a brawny Tennessee team that shared the Southeastern Conference regular-season title. It was precise, going 11 consecutive minutes against Nevada without missing a shot. And it was ruthless, simply brutalizing Kansas State on both ends of the floor, taking a
23-point lead midway through the second half.
“We just played a hell of a game,” center Cameron Krutwig said. “We kind of controlled our own destiny as far as, if we were solid, we were going to win.”
Suddenly, for the fourth No. 11 seed in tournament history to make a Final Four, the rules don’t seem to apply. This isn’t a red-hot shooting run fueling an underdog beyond its limitations. This isn’t a team playing above its head in any measurable way or getting lucky bounces the way long shots sometimes do in a single-elimination tournament.
This is a 32-5 team that consistently plays excellent basketball, turning its seed into a mockery as it shot 57% — starting the first half 8-for-10 and the second 9-for-10 — against Kansas State’s top-20 defense.
“Their toughness and their discipline is special,” Kansas State coach Bruce Weber said. “I was there. I was in the Missouri Valley. We got to the Sweet
16 (at Southern Illinois). You know, you get guys that will work at it and fight their butts off for you, a lot of things can happen.”
That’s the part of the sport all the dirty deals and AAU cesspools can never take away.
March will always give us a Porter Moser, who got fired at Illinois State in
2007 and didn’t make the NCAA tournament in his first six years at Loyola, suddenly becoming a coaching star. It will always give us a Clayton Custer, the Ramblers’ leading scorer and the Missouri Valley Conference player of the year who looked so unimposing that a guest in their hotel this weekend asked him to hold the camera while pictures were taken with other players, probably assuming Custer was a team manager or something. And it will always give us moments like Saturday night, when Marques Towns, who hit the clinching three-pointer against Nevada two nights earlier, locked the South Region championship trophy in his arms and wouldn’t let anyone else hold it until he made sure it was real.
“When I first came, I didn’t know what Loyola was,” he said. “I didn’t even know this was a school, honestly. But when I first came here they showed me so much love from the beginning. And it just means so much to the Loyola community and Chicago as a whole, and the world knows Loyola is no fluke and we belong here. I still can’t believe it. It’s such a surreal feeling. I don’t know when it’s going to hit me.”
Next Saturday, the Ramblers will be in San Antonio trying to make it happen one more time against Michigan. At this point, who’s to say it can’t?
Certainly not those who were part of the magic 55 years ago and are seeing something similar unfold.
“It’s beautiful that they went (to a Final Four) before I went in the hole in the ground,” Harkness said. “Fifty-five years. Oh my God. I really didn’t think (it would happen again). You keep waiting and looking for something to come about. And this team is blessed. They blessed us with this team.”