USA Today article, NCAA Basketball Cinderellas

[kato669]

Loyola and Drake listed along with BYU, Belmont and Winthrop

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaab/2021/02/09/2021-march-madness-cinderella-teams/4436559001/

[Blers42]

“In 2018, coach Porter Moser took the Ramblers (17-3) to the Final Four. This group isn't as special as that remarkable team, but the same winning recipe has been coming to fruition of late.”

How is this team not as special? It’s not even March yet.

[LU 86]

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/remember-loyola-this-team-is-even-better-than-the-one-that-made-the-final-four/

even better article

[ahunte1]

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/remember-loyola-this-team-is-even-better-than-the-one-that-made-the-final-four/

even better article

That's a great article. Thanks for posting!

[Dansen]

Loved this graphic

[kato669]

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/remember-loyola-this-team-is-even-better-than-the-one-that-made-the-final-four/

even better article

Yeah, much better

Quite a contrast in the two articles, though it's understandable that USA Today is more lukewarm/milk toast since they are hardly known for their sports reporting.

[swellafelon]

Great article LU 86 posted, but I'm going to quibble with its claim that Marquise is the highest rated recruit in Rambler history.

For one thing, we have two players on our current roster who are higher rated, in terms of # of stars at least, in Anderson and Agunanne.

Second, I'm sure JCT, with his encyclopedic knowledge of Rambler history, can come up with additional higher-rated players from our past. Two that come to mind for me are Keith Gailes and Gerald Hayward, both of whom I'm pretty sure were Top 100 recruits per Street & Smith magazine, in the pre-internet era. (I remember stalking the newsstands in the fall waiting for their College Basketball Preview issue to arrive, along with previews by Sporting News and Lindy's.)
I highly suspect that LaRue Martin was higher-rated too.

Edit: I finally clicked on the link in the article relating to the Kennedy rating claim. I see that Big Frank was rated below Marquise by 247. One could also argue that Damezi is not a "recruit" but a transfer.
I guess my quibble boils down to the fact that the writer of the article is a Millennial punk who thinks history began with the invention of the internet.
But still a great article

[bmh_twosix]

Seems like everyone decided it was "release my article on Loyola" week.

Writer of this one is a student at Northwestern and a great follow on Twitter (@CBBCentral).

[LU 86]

I'm going with Bernard Jackson 1982 Phillips, he did transfer from Wichita State. He was Chicago Player of the Year

[swellafelon]

I believe Len Bertolini was also a Chicago prep POY.

Other highly rated Ramblers of more recent vintage that come to mind are transfers Cully Payne and Justin Cerasoli. I remember Cerasoli was ranked in Rivals Top 100, just ahead of Joachim Noah, and Payne was offered by DePaul as a high school freshman.

Goes to show that high school rankings are no guarantee of college success.