Loyola-home-1/20-2pm

Hopefully Bo’s minutes will increase from the 20 on Wednesday.
Those were 20 productive minutes:
12 points on 5-9 shooting, 5-7 on 2s. 2-2 FT
3 assists, 0 turnovers.

As Caleb avoids foul trouble and his minutes increase, so do his numbers.
34 minutes, 3 fouls
15 pts on 6-10, 3-3 FT !!
6 rebounds, 3 offensive vs the 7 footer
4 blocks

Caleb has been amazingly consistent on offense-perhaps such consistency is common for players who do most of their scoring near the basket. You’d see much greater volatility for Octave, Nugent, Bo, Batch for example. No great insight on my part there.
As several of us have opined - Caleb is our most improved player

Caleb has added an effective right hand move near the hoop which I suspect has taken a lot of hard work.  

GG played more minutes, partially because he usually avoided foul trouble.
He rebounded better. 
He drew more free throws and made a much higher % of them.
But as all have been saying, Caleb is showing great improvement in many areas.

Also...while a small sample size, he's 6-8 FT over his last three games.

Don't think he'll be a 70+% FT shooter, but if he can get to the mid 60s, that'd be nice.

They have several tall lads- think HC has to use Ryan and take Louth out of mothballs as well.

Hack a Dike is definitely in order, the Golden Man is 22-68 for the season from the line.

Loyola is worse from the line (62%) than HC !

Amazing that I actually had an argument with someone on our board about this. I tried to point out that this is just math. Dike shoots 59 percent from the floor. He shoots 33 percent from the line. Which would you rather he shoot a lot of – shots in the paint, or free throws? If he gets 10 field goal attempts, he'll make almost six – or, almost 12 points. Whereas, he would need to shoot 36 free throws to score 12 points. Thankfully, AU fouled him twice in the final few minutes of the game Monday. He made...1 of 4.  

The fallacy in that argument is that it has to be the guy guarding Dike that gives the foul. No! One of our guards fouled him to prevent a layup. ANYONE can give a foul! And if a team is bad at free throws, like Loyola, you want them shooting a lot of free throws! Loyola is 347th out of 351 teams in D1 in free throw percentage, at .620. It's game malpractice NOT to foul them.

Not everyone can travel the day before classes start for various reasons, I'd assume there'd be students arriving on campus today.

What would you rather do at that age: another weekend at home or a "free" (no schoolwork) on campus before the semester starts?

Yes, but field goals are worth two points. Free throws are only worth one point. So you have to shoot more free throws to score the same amount of points that you'd get shooting field goals. If I make five non three-point field goals, that's 10 points. I could make five field goals in five attempts, or five field goals in 10 attempts. I get the same number of points. But I would have to make 10 free throws to equal the same amount of points than I get from five field goals.

Loyola shoots 43 percent from the floor. So, if Loyola shot 100 two-point field goal attempts, the stats say they'd make 43 of them. That would be 86 points per 100 field goal attempts (43 x 2). Loyola shoots 62 percent from the foul line. If they shot 100 free throws, the stats say they'd make 62 of them. That would be 62 points per 100 free throw attempts (62 x 1). To equal the 86 points per 100 Loyola scores from shooting/making field goals at their current FG percentage, they'd have to make or average making 86 out of 100 free throws. Which they don't do. I'm not saying you put them on the line 50 times. I'm saying in a close game, if you foul them strategically, the percentages are greater that they'll score fewer points per possession shooting free throws than they would shooting two-point shots, which increases your team's chances of winning. In Dike's case in particular, the stats are overwhelming in favor of fouling him and making him shoot free throws rather than letting him shoot from the floor.