Bison Begin Road Stretch Saturday at Loyola

Saturday, February 8

Baltimore, Md.

5 p.m.

Bucknell University

Loyola

Photo by: Marc Hagemeier

2/7/2020 12:48:00 PM | Men's Basketball

The Bucknell men's basketball team finds itself in the unusual position of chaser instead of chasee, as a three-game losing streak has dropped the Bison into seventh-place in the jam-packed Patriot League standings. There are still seven games left to play in the regular season, and Bucknell sits only one game out of fifth place and two games out of third, but five of those seven games, including four of the next five, will be played on the road.

That away stretch starts on Saturday, when Bucknell travels to Baltimore to face Loyola for the second time in a two-week span. On Jan. 25 at Sojka Pavilion, the Bison turned in their best offensive showing of the season in a 98-83 victory over the Greyhounds, However, that terrific performance was followed by the three consecutive setbacks against Army, Boston University and Lafayette, three teams Bucknell is now hunting in the standings. Meanwhile, Loyola appears to be turning the corner in the other direction. The loss at Sojka was their seventh in what would become an eight-game losing streak, but the Greyhounds have now won two straight thanks in part to getting two key players back from injury.

Bucknell's next two games will be played in the state of Maryland, with a trip to Annapolis to face Navy coming up on Wednesday. That will be followed by what figures to be a fun afternoon in Lewisburg on Feb., when Mike Muscala '13 will be back in town to have his jersey retired during Bucknell's home game against American.

Here's more info on Saturday's game at Loyola:

What: Bucknell (9-15, 5-6 PL) at Loyola (11-13, 3-8 PL)
Where: Reitz Arena, Baltimore, Md.
When: Saturday, Feb. 8, 5 p.m.
Webcast: Patriot League Network
Local Radio: Eagle 107 (107.3 FM WEGH)
Listen Live: BucknellBison.com and Eagle107.com
Live Stats: LoyolaGreyhounds,com

COMPLETE GAME NOTES

Bucknell Probable Starters
G: Jimmy Sotos (11.7 ppg, 3.7 rpg, 3.9 apg)
G: Andrew Funk (10.4 ppg, 4.0 rpg, 1.3 apg)
G: Avi Toomer (11.4 ppg, 4.4 rpg, 1.9 apg)
F: John Meeks (12.3 ppg, 4.9 rpg, 0.9 apg)
F: Bruce Moore (8.9 ppg, 2.9 rpg, 0.8 apg)

With a Win over Loyola, Bucknell Would ...

... snap a three-game losing streak and improve to 10-15 overall and 6-6 in the Patriot League.
... avoid its first four-game losing streak in Patriot League play since 2008-09.
... sweep the season series and defeat the Greyhounds for the seventh straight time.
... improve to 10-1 against the Greyhounds at Reitz Arena.
... improve to 300-128 all-time in Patriot League play (regular season). The Bison would become the first PL team to reach 300 wins. Holy Cross has the next-most victories with 237.
... give Nathan Davis his 99th win as Bucknell's head coach.

Headlines

Bucknell is looking to shake off a rare three-game losing streak and make a run back up the Patriot League standings. The Bison enter Saturday's game at Loyola in seventh place but is just one game out of fifth and two games out of third with seven to play. Five of the final seven games will be on the road, including four of the next five.
A three-game conference losing streak has been almost unheard of for Bucknell. This is the 30th year of the Patriot League, and the Bison have experienced three straight league losses in only six of those 30 seasons.
Bucknell and Loyola will be meeting for the second time in two weeks, and the Bison will be trying to match their offensive output from the first meeting, when they shot a season-best 54.1% from the field in a 98-83 victory at Sojka Pavilion. In the three games since then, however, Bucknell has averaged 59.3 points on 37.9% shooting.
Bucknell's two recent losses to Army and Lafayette followed a similar script. The Bison wiped out double-digit deficits in both games, only to go cold again down the stretch. At West Point, Bucknell came from 13 down to tie the game at 53-all with 8:11 to play, then went 1-for-11 on the way to a 68-59 loss. On Monday night against Lafayette, the Bison came from 15 down to take a few small leads in the second half, but they missed their final 11 field-goal attempts of the night in a 65-62 setback.
John Meeks entered the starting lineup just before the start of league play and has been terrific in that role. He set career highs with 22 points and nine rebounds in a win over Army, and he ranks 11th in the Patriot League in scoring at 14.8 points per game in conference action. Meeks is shooting 48.6% from the field, 39.5% from 3-point distance and 29-for-31 from the foul line in his 10 PL contests, and he has scored in double figures in all 10 games. Meeks missed the Boston University game last Saturday due to illness.
Loyola's roster has been ravaged by injuries for much of the season, but getting a couple of key players back last week helped the Greyhounds win back-to-back games on the heels of an eight-game losing streak. Santi Aldama, a 6'11" freshman from Spain, made his season debut against Navy last Saturday, and he had 11 points in 17 minutes in a 79-73 win. Aldama joined the starting lineup at Holy Cross on Wednesday and tallied 11 points and eight rebounds in a 74-60 victory. The Greyhounds also got point guard Cam Spencer back in that game after he had missed more than a month due to injury.
Aldama and Spencer came back to a lineup that already featured the Patriot League's leading scorer in Andrew Kostecka, who averages 21.0 points per game. Kenneth Jones is the league's most accurate 3-point shooter at 44.4%. Loyola shoots 46.7% as a team, the third-best mark in the Patriot League, on the way to 73.2 points per game. The Greyhounds have given up 75.4 per game, however, second-most in the league.
This will be Bucknell's fourth straight game against a team that enters the contest on a winning streak of at least two games.

How to Get the Game

The Bucknell-Loyola game will be streamed on the Patriot League Network at PatriotLeague.tv.
The game can be heard in the Susquehanna Valley on the radio on Eagle 107 (WEGH 107.3 FM). Doug Birdsong handles the play-by-play duties. The pregame show begins 30 minutes before tip-off.
Live statistics can be accessed at LoyolaGreyhounds.com.
The audio feed is available online free of charge via BucknellBison.com and Eagle107.com.
Follow @Bucknell_MBB for in-game updates on Twitter.

Last Time Out

Bucknell charged back from as many as 15 down to take the lead in the second half, but the Bison could not coax a shot to drop in the final five minutes and fell to Lafayette 65-62 on Monday night at Sojka Pavilion.
John Meeks and Jimmy Sotos led the Bison with 13 points apiece, while Avi Toomer logged eight points and a career-high 10 rebounds. Those three combined for 25 of Bucknell's 35 second-half points, as the Bison rallied from a double-digit deficit against Lafayette for the second time this season. Back on Jan. 5, Bucknell erased a 13-point margin with a 17-0 and then kept right on going in a 78-66 win. This time, the Bison went ice cold down the stretch and could not finish off the sweep.
Justin Jaworski scored 20 points to lead Lafayette, which won its fourth game in a row to improve to 15-7 overall, 7-4 in the Patriot League. It was Jaworski's 3-pointer with 4:54 to play that gave the Leopards the lead for good, although the game wasn't decided until the very last second.
The Bison missed their final 11 field-goal attempts of the night, nine coming after two Meeks free throws put them ahead 62-60 with 5:14 left.
Bucknell had a chance to tie it, inbounding from the sideline in the frontcourt with 2.3 seconds left. Sotos' crosscourt pass found Meeks, but he lost the handle going up and time expired.
Bucknell outrebounded Lafayette 40-34. Thirteen of those boards came at the offensive end, which marked the team's most since it had 13 at Syracuse on Nov. 23.
Bucknell saw its nine-game series winning streak against Lafayette come to an end.

Bucknell vs. Loyola

The Bison and Greyhounds have met 22 times previously. Bucknell leads 19-3 in the series, including a 13-1 mark since Loyola joined the Patriot League in 2013-14.
Bucknell is 9-1 all-time at Loyola's Reitz Arena and 10-2 at home (2-0 in Davis Gym, 8-2 at Sojka Pavilion). Both of the Greyhounds' wins in Sojka Pavilion came before they joined the Patriot League.
Bucknell had beaten Loyola eight straight times until the Greyhounds won 78-77 in Baltimore in 2016-17.
The first series meeting came on Jan. 7, 1987 in Lewisburg. The Bison prevailed that day 72-70. A year later Bucknell won 80-60 on Loyola's home floor.
Bucknell and Loyola played twice within the 1992-93 season. The Bison won 75-59 in Baltimore, and in late February at Davis Gym the Bison rolled to a 116-85 victory. In the latter game, the Bison produced what was then their second-highest point total in program history, led by an incredible 9-for-10 3-point shooting performance by Hall-of-Famer Mike Bright.
Bucknell swept the season series last year to extend its winning streak to five in a row over the Greyhounds. The Bison held on for a 71-68 win at Sojka Pavilion before prevailing 84-72 in Baltimore two weeks later.
In this season's first meeting at Sojka Pavilion on Jan. 25, Bucknell shot a season-best 54.1% from the field and scored a season-high 98 points on the way to a 98-83 win over the Greyhounds. Andrew Funk scored a career-high 22 points, while Walter Ellis added a career-high 13 as part of a 39-point night for the Bucknell bench. Bucknell led 42-41 at the half, and then shot 65.5% in the second half, including 7-for-11 from three. Isaiah Hart and Andrew Kostecka dropped in 18 points apiece to lead Loyola.

Notable Numbers

On the heels of a 98-point performance against Loyola on Jan. 25, the Bison have been kept under 60 points in consecutive Patriot League games for the first time since February of 2014.
Bucknell is shooting a solid 34.0% from 3-point range, third-best in the Patriot League. However the Bison have struggled to finish closer to the basket. The Bison are now shooting 47.4% from 2-point distance, which ranks 10th in the Patriot League.
Bucknell's short-range shooting issues have been even more magnified in the Patriot League, which has six teams ranked in the top 75 nationally in 2-point field goal percentage (3-Army, 16-Loyola, 17-Lafayette, 24-Boston University, 69-Colgate, 71-American). The Bison rank 251st.
Bucknell has held opponents to 41.2% shooting overall and 29.9% from 3-point distance in its victories this season. Those numbers jump all the way up to 50.3% and 37.8% in the team's losses.
Bucknell has held eight of its 11 Patriot League opponents to 33% shooting or worse from 3-point range. The big anomaly came in the loss at Colgate, where the Raiders went 14-for-23 (.609) from the arc.
The Bison would like to even up a free-throw shooting disparity. Opponents have attempted 105 more free throws this season, leading to a 359-291 scoring edge. Bucknell has attempted more charity tosses than its opponents in each of the last five seasons.
Avi Toomer has hit multiple 3-pointers in 13 of his last 18 games and is shooting 40.6% from the arc this season, up from 35.3% last year.
As a team, Bucknell did not have more than seven steals in any of its first 10 games of the season, but they have pilfered seven or more in 11 of their last 14 games and 10 or more in six of the last 14.
Walter Ellis has hit a 3-pointer in seven straight games.
Jimmy Sotos has multiple threes in six straight and is 14-for-29 (.483) in that span.
Bucknell had a perfect day at the free-throw line at La Salle, finishing 18-for-18. That is the fifth-most free throws without a miss in team history. The Bison ran their streak to 25 straight made free throws before missing late in the Army game.

Possible Upcoming Milestones

Jimmy Sotos needs 23 assists to catch Abe Badmus (375) for eighth on Bucknell's career chart.
Sotos needs three steals for 100 in his career.
Andrew Funk needs six points for 400 in his career.
Bruce Moore needs four points for 800 in his career.

Who's Got Next?