Dayton, Loyola Chicago to meet for first time in 30 years

Sister Jean, the Loyola fan who found fame during the program’s Final Four run in 2018, was 73 then. She’s 103 now and still goes to games.

Loyola’s current coach, Drew Valentine, was 20 months old the last time Dayton and Loyola played. Dayton’s current coach, Anthony Grant, was 26 that winter and the head coach at Miami Central High School. He was about four months away from starting his college coaching career at Stetson.

Loyola and Dayton split two games in the 1992-93 season. They would share last place in the eight-team Midwestern Collegiate Conference with 3-11 marks.

Dayton moved to the Great Midwest Conference the following season. Loyola stayed in the MCC, which became the Horizon League in 2001, until 2013. Then after nine seasons in the Missouri Valley Conference, Loyola moved to the Atlantic 10 Conference this season.

That’s why the paths of Dayton and Loyola will once again cross at 9 p.m. Tuesday at UD Arena. It’s the first of two matchups this season. The Flyers play at Loyola’s Gentile Arena on Feb. 17.

“I think it’s great for the league,” Grant said Saturday after an 86-60 victory against Richmond at UD Arena. “I think they have a really really good program. Making the adjustment to the A-10, I’m sure they haven’t gotten off to the start that they wanted. I haven’t seen them play much. But the times I have seen them through scouting other teams, I’m impressed with their team. They’ve got a good team, and I think the thing that we all know and anybody who’s watched A-10 basketball for any amount of time knows is that on any night, anything can happen.”

Dayton (14-8, 6-3) enters the second half of the A-10 schedule in third place. Saint Louis (15-6, 7-1) and Virginia Commonwealth (16-6, 7-2), who play Friday in St. Louis, lead the league. Two surprising teams, Fordham (17-4, 5-3) and George Washington (11-10, 5-3), are tied for fourth.

Loyola (7-13, 1-7) has been in last place all season. It lost its first six A-10 games before beating St. Bonaventure 67-55 on Jan. 21 in Chicago. All seven of Loyola’s A-10 losses have been decided by 10 points or more.

“We look like a team that has no idea what they’re doing,” Valentine said after a 78-64 loss at home to VCU on Jan. 10. “It’s really frustrating and disappointing when that happens.”

Loyola does have one of the best non-conference victories for an A-10 team. It beat Clemson 76-58 on Dec. 10 in Atlanta. Clemson has won 10 of 11 games since then and climbed to No. 24 in the Associated Press top-25 poll last week.

Loyola beat Albany in its next game after beating Clemson but has since lost eight of nine games. It is on pace to finish with a losing record for the first time since the 2015-16 season (15-17).

Loyola finished 25-8 last season and played in the NCAA tournament for the third time in five seasons after a 33-year drought. It finished 32-6 in the 2017-18 season and beat Miami, Tennessee, Nevada and Kansas State en route to the Final Four, where it lost to Michigan.

That success and the four 20-win seasons that followed paved to the way to the A-10, which has ranked one spot ahead of the MVC in Ken Pomeroy’s conference rankings the last two seasons and ranks three spots ahead this season.

The addition of Loyola creates a natural rival for Dayton in the A-10 because it’s now the second-closest school in terms of miles. Only Duquesne in Pittsburgh is closer.

“It starts and stops with basketball for us,” Dayton Athletic Director Neil Sullivan said in November 2021 when the A-10 announced it would add Loyola in 2022, “and I think their basketball programs, specifically their men’s basketball program, has been on the national scene. They’ve made deep NCAA runs, including to the Final Four, and at the end of the day, the Atlantic 10 is built on quality basketball. Anything that can strengthen that is important to Dayton. It’s important for the brand of the league. It’s a great school. It’s in a great market. It has achieved a lot of other things beyond basketball, but our lens is basketball.”

Valentine spoke about the potential for a new A-10 rivalry at the conference’s media day in October.

“I hope we can compete with (Dayton),” he said. “I think it’s a natural rival, but we’ve got to step our game up because I know what UD Arena’s looking like on a random January night on a weekday. We’ve got to get our arena to the point where we’re looking like that on a weeknight in January.”

TUESDAY’S GAME

Loyola Chicago at Dayton, 9 p.m., CBS Sports Network, 1290, 95.7