ok, some reasoning on csu.
first, this game has significant implications for the upcoming conference tournament. csu finishes the season with 2 games at home. loyola on wednesday night and milwaukee on saturday evening. if the vikings win both, they will secure themselves a home game for the first round of the tourney. if the vikings stumble this week, not only will they have played themselves out of hosting a 1st round game, but (and perhaps more importantly) they will have played themselves onto milwaukee's side of the bracket for the tourney. this game is very important to them because they cant afford to be going into the season finale needing to not only beat milwaukee but hope for some help elsewhere in the league. if that doesnt make any sense, it breaks down to this: csu cant afford to lose to loyola if they want any shot of making a run in the league tourney.
now for some more fundamental reasoning.
* loyola is playing well as of late, but this game is the final leg of a 3-game road trip all in the span of a week. ramblers played illinois-chicago in a big rivalry game, then to evansville for the bracket buster, and now travel to cleveland to close out the road trip. not a particularly ideal spot for them.
* the first meeting in chicago went to loyola, but raheem moss didnt play because of a bad ankle. vikings had a tough time replacing his overall scoring (12ppg) as well as his ability to knock down 3s (40% on the year)
* csu will be back to full strength after being shorthanded the last few games. westley sat out the entire 1st half of the detroit game, and moss only played 10 minutes against central michigan and took two shots before leaving the game due to illness (and the double digit lead csu had built evaportated)
* take this entirely for what its worth, but after listening to garland after the central michigan game, he 'sold me' on the likelihood of cleveland state bringing a solid effort this week against loyola. he felt that even wthout moss for the majority of the central michigan game that they still should have been able to pull it out. when he talked about the upcoming week, i was pretty impressed with how he wasnt saying 'we're gonna try to play better and win these games' but instead he emphatically said 'we will play better and we won't accept anything less and we expect to win'. again, this is purely subjective on my part. but i just liked how it wasnt the normal 'coachspeak' or the typical 'we're gonna try and regroup and give it our best shot'. it was 'we WILL play better this week. obviously garland isnt the one tossing up the shots, but at the same time, i liked what i heard.
if cleveland state stumbles here, they deserve what they get in the conference tourney. i just dont see loyola winning this game. i hope csu realizes that winning the next two (even with a saturday home date vs. milwaukee) isnt out of the question because they catch loyola on the final leg of a 3-gm road trip, and then milwaukee will be coming in not only having the conference long wrapped up, but with the panthers off a trip to hawaii a game ago. under normal circumstances, id say csu would get their ass handed to them by uwm, but these two games are there for the taking due to scheduling. and it obviously helps that the vikes will be back at full strength will moss and westley starting.
win or lose, im out for a week and a half or so after this one. but ill be damned if im going out with a loss.
