Loyola’s Santi Aldama is in the NBA. Touted transfer Andrej Jakimovski backed out of the portal and went back to Washington State late this summer. The Greyhounds are youthful at a lot of spots and have faced a harrowing schedule.

So what the heck are they doing on the upper rungs of the Patriot League and challenging to take the next step to a title and trip to the NCAA Tournament they just missed last season?

“We have a nice mix — our veterans, four guys playing a lot of minutes who have really stepped up in their leadership roles,” fourth-year coach Tavaras Hardy said. “And the young guys are growing. It gives us balance. They’re working and getting better, and their best basketball is definitely ahead of them.”

Hardy hopes there’s a lot of basketball ahead of his Greyhounds (12-9, 6-4 Patriot League), who have gone through an arduous stretch of nine games in 24 days, including a Jan. 24 loss at defending Patriot League champion Colgate. Prior, though, Loyola had won six of its previous seven games and currently stands tied for fourth in the league standings following a wild 82-80 loss at Bucknell Jan. 30. The Greyhounds were tabbed eighth in the Patriot League preseason poll.

Another tough stretch is pending. Loyola is playing three games in seven days, including key home dates Feb. 2 with Army and Feb. 5 with Navy, then on the road Feb. 9 at Holy Cross. Colgate is in town Feb. 12 for a rematch. Army and Navy are tied for first place and Colgate is next in the standings.

“Coach had a great talk with us after the [Colgate] game, saying that was out of character for us,” said senior Greyhounds guard Jaylin Andrews of the 65-52 setback on Jan. 24. “We play so together and when they went on a run we came apart. We know that’s not us, but it happens sometimes in a season when you’re playing so many games back-to-back-to-back.”

The fact that loss was at Colgate, site of last year’s championship game against the Raiders, was also a reminder of the bigger picture for Hardy’s boys.

“It has been motivation, being so close last year and sitting there and watching them bring the trophy out,” said Andrews, a native of Owings Mills, Md. “It has definitely been motivation to make us work harder. We’ve had a different focus and energy since last spring.”

Cam Spencer, a longtime teammate of Andrews dating back to their high school days at Boys’ Latin, felt the same way.

“As soon as we stepped foot on campus [this summer] we knew we were all motivated to win it,” Spencer said. “We don’t want that feeling of losing [after the PL title game] again. We all want to get back to the championship and win it and play in the [NCAA] Tournament this year.”

Spencer and Andrews, two of the veterans Hardy referenced, are doing everything they can. The Baltimore-based duo forms the top 1-2 scoring punch in the Patriot League. Spencer leads the league with 19.0 points per game, and Andrews is eighth at 14.6.

“That’s my guy,” Andrews said with a smile of their Patriot partnership. “We’ve been playing together for so long, eight or nine years since high school. We just love to win. We’re always talking on the court. He’s my brother. We talk about every play to see what we’re thinking, and we read each other pretty well, offensively and defensively.”

Andrews, a 6-foot-4 senior, remembered meeting Davidsonville, Md., dynamo Spencer at Boys’ Latin in Baltimore.

“I was playing with his older brother Pat,” he said. “[Pat] was a senior and I was a freshman. Cam was at the high school and said [hello] and he looked so much like Pat I knew who he was right away. From that moment he was like my little brother.”

Pat Spencer went on to be named the top lacrosse player in the land in 2019 at Loyola, winning the Tewaaraton Award, and then transferred to Northwestern to play basketball for the Wildcats. He’s currently one notch below the NBA at the Wizards’ G League affiliate, the Capital City Go-Go.

Cam, of course, grew up making the short trek to Loyola regularly to watch Pat play lacrosse and became familiar with the campus and what the school was all about.

“It had a great family aspect to it,” Cam said. “I got to watch my brother play lacrosse there for four years and I enjoyed going to all those games. Loyola was a great fit for him, and I got to experience those four years, too.”

The younger Spencer came to Loyola to play basketball, the only school to offer him a scholarship.

“To be honest, it was the only offer I needed,” he said. “It was a great fit for me, too. Close to home and I’ve enjoyed my time here.”

Fans have enjoyed it, too, though Spencer had to battle through a serious hip injury to get back onto the court. He led the Greyhounds in assists (3.1 per game) and chipped in 10.2 points a game as a freshman in 2019-20, good enough to land on the Patriot League All-Rookie team.

But a chronic problem with his hip forced him to the sideline for nine games and in the offseason he had to have surgery to fix his femur’s fit in his hip socket. He missed all but the final five games of the 2020-21 season recovering from the surgery, but fit right back in on his return, averaging 10 points and aiding the Greyhounds’ run to the Patriot League finals.

Andrews was another hero last year with 11.6 points and 4.9 rebounds per game, and he was on the Patriot All-Tournament Team, leading the charge with 20 points in the championship game. He has heeded Hardy’s recruiting pitch to join up and embrace his teammates, his community and become “a pillar” locally.

It’s part of Hardy’s holistic approach to team-building and in recruiting, as key as that tough-to-guard Princeton-styled attack and a sticky matchup zone.

“That’s the message we stress, that Loyola basketball is about the total package,” Hardy said. “They want to win, and they know Loyola is not just basketball. They want to be leaders and stewards on campus. They want to get good grades. I really believe maximizing their student-athlete experience will lead to success on the floor if they embrace that and are connected.”

Those tenets have translated so far with Hardy at the helm. The wins have ticked up as has teamwork. The Greyhounds’ 16.0 assists per game ranks among conference leaders, and in fact, Loyola has had more than 20 assists in a game 16 times since Hardy took over four years ago. Senior point guard Kenneth Jones, another of the team’s dependable veterans, leads the Patriot League with his 5.0 assists per game.

Keeping up with Jones is no easy task. He’s also third on the team in points (7.8) and is often scoring backdoor off high post feeds or simply getting the ball to the basket himself. Likewise, Spencer leads the conference in assist-to-turnover ratio at 3.3, a measure of how efficient he is with the ball. His 3.7 assists, perhaps owing to that great vision on the court and previously on a high school lacrosse field, is fifth. The fourth member of the veteran quartet the Greyhounds rely on is 6-foot-10 junior Golden Dike, who ranks sixth in the conference in rebounds (6.1).

Dike also averages 1.8 assists in the Princeton-principled offense. Meanwhile, Jones is third in assist-to-turnover ratio at 2.5, and another reason the ‘Hounds hit 45.2 percent from the field, tied for the league lead.

There’s a sharing mood on this team.

“We talk about growth as a team, really growing every day and every game, learning from our mistakes,” Spencer shared. “And by the end of the year, you hope to be playing your best basketball.”

That’s what the Greyhounds did last year, overcoming COVID stops and starts to get on a run at the right time. Can they recapture that magic?

Spencer struggled from the field at Bucknell Jan. 30 but was still one of four ‘Hounds in double figures as Loyola posted 80 points. He had six assists — the Loyola way — but Bucknell forced the ball out of his hands and Andrews came up big with 19 points. Serbian freshman big man Milos Ilic added 17.

Ilic (6.3 points, 3.7 rebounds) and his fellow freshman twin brother Veljko Ilic (6.0 points, 3.3 rebounds) have already made major contributions and continue to gain experience. They’re both versatile inside-out pieces offensively. Hardy’s rotation is legitimately 10 players deep, another edge coming down the stretch in the conference.

Hardy talked passionately about utilizing the recent break in the schedule to get better by practicing, something hard to do when the games are coming fast and furious.

“Our offensive numbers can be better across the board,” he said. “We’ve shot it pretty well in conference play, but we can hit the offensive boards harder. We can take care of the ball better. Defensively, there are opportunities to improve. We change defenses and we’re getting better at seeing the adjustments we need to make. Those are the things we can improve.”

Photo Credits: Larry French

Mike Ashley

See all posts by Mike Ashley. Follow Mike Ashley on Twitter at @lrgsptswrtr