There’s little doubt that when the Missouri Valley Conference decided to replace Creighton with Loyola University Chicago in 2013 that some thought the conference’s move was a gamble, maybe even a hope and a prayer.
In place of a program that won eight MVC basketball tourney titles over its last 15 years in the conference and annually ranked among the NCAA Division I attendance leaders, the Valley picked another Jesuit institution, but one with far less recent success in the conference’s signature sport.
After its Sweet 16 appearance in the 1985 NCAA Tournament, a year when Loyola was good enough to be a 4 seed, the Ramblers had one 20-win season in 28 years. Just five of those years ended with winning records. Nine ended with single-digit win totals.
The MVC bet on Loyola. Five years later, it has paid off-handsomely.
Loyola emerged as the best team in the conference over the course of the season and actually has surpassed the 27-6 record of that 1984-85 team. This year’s 28 wins ranks behind only one Ramblers team: the 1963 national championship squad that went 29-2 and is the school’s crowning athletics achievement.
In five years in the Missouri Valley, competitiveness within the league hasn’t been an issue after the first year, with records of 8-10, 7-11 and 8-10 the last three years before this year’s breakthrough. Loyola also has posted overall winning records three times.
Where others might’ve seen a program floundering in the Horizon League, the Valley clearly saw potential. Loyola’s Gentile Arena was recently renovated, and the school has an excellent men’s volleyball program that made the final four in 2013 and won the national title a year later. The school also was a fit in its being a Jesuit school in a large city, similar to Creighton, and Chicago also certainly wasn’t a bad city to add for school enrollment purposes, as it is considered a rich area for prospective college students.
“We strongly believe in the commitment and the potential that is very evident with this institution,” said MVC Commissioner Doug Elgin said at the press conference announcing the school as a member in 2013. “University leadership has made a very significant investment in athletics facilities and in staffing in recent years, and we are confident that Loyola is going to be a great competitive fit in our conference.”
It’s safe to say the relationship between the Valley and Loyola has been a smashing success. Almost everything the MVC could’ve hoped for from Loyola has come true. The only scale still to climb is continuing to build a following that matches the Ramblers’ current success, something that takes time for any program, especially one that has been down for so long and plays in a market that has been luke-warm for college basketball for years.
Oh, and for the second time in five years, Loyola actually ranks ahead of Creighton in the RPI (the Ramblers were 26th after Sunday, nine spots ahead of the Bluejays).
Loyola was never going to completely replace Creighton or Wichita State, which have emerged as two of the premier year-in, year-out programs in the country. The Ramblers have become a success and a more than worthy member of the league, though, and in far quicker time than many might have expected. And MVC leadership deserves all the credit in the world for seeing what others didn’t and making a wise choice.
Not surprisingly, this year’s MVC Tournament was dominated by close games. For the second time in three years, eight of the nine games were decided by 10 points or less, with the Loyola/Illinois State final the lone outlier. The average margin of victory for the nine games was just 7.2 points-even less than the 7.7 in 2016-and Friday’s gripping quarterfinal games were decided by a combined 17 points. In a league where teams 2-through-10 in the standings were separated by just five games this year, none of this should be much of a surprise. Only once in the tourney’s 41-year history has every game been decided by single digits-1999, when the average margin of victory was 4.6 points.
Saturday’s semifinal round had a distinct Illinois flavor to it, as all four semifinalists came from the state for the first time in conference history, leading to the MVC being called the Illinois Valley Conference, as dubbed on Twitter by Valparaiso beat writer (and Hoopville alum) Paul Oren. Loyola, Bradley, Southern Illinois and Illinois State advanced out of Friday’s quarterfinal games.
Attendance at this year’s tourney was down, the five-session, four-day total registering at 34,810 for the event, including 8,056 for the championship game. Unquestionably, attendance has slipped after the loss of Wichita State to the American Athletic Conference, as Shocker fans were easily the largest contingent in recent years.
The absence of the Shockers was not the only reason numbers were down, though, and it’s quite possible that this is one area where the MVC’s parity worked against the league. Many Valley teams had good seasons this year, but only one of them had a great one, and that happened to be a Loyola team that is still building a fanbase back up after 30+ years of mostly struggles. It was a big achievement when the Ramblers got in just under 5,000 people to sell out their Gentile Arena homecourt for their regular season finale against Illinois State, their first sellout for a home game since 2003.
Once-rabid fan bases at schools like Bradley and Southern Illinois are still coming around, but it’s not surprising if they aren’t traveling large followings to St. Louis yet when they’re still nowhere close to selling out their home arena yet, even as their programs are on the upswing. Also, after Loyola every other MVC team finished with between 13 and 20 wins but also between 13 and 18 losses.
Such records indicate what the league was this year: a more-than solid one, but also lacking standout teams to help it take the next step to excite the more casual masses. A couple more standout programs on the fringe of NCAA tourney discussion may well have provided an attendance push that is just missing when teams are good but not great.
We’ve said it before, though: losing Creighton and Wichita State does not mean the MVC is in trouble, and the conference selling out the Scottrade Center for its semifinals in 2007 with only one of those two teams among the semifinalists shows just how rabid fan bases are in this league at its best. There’s plenty of basketball tradition at so many Valley schools that a multiple NCAA bid conference should always be the goal, and a destination site tourney-especially one as well-run and much-loved as Arch Madness-is a more than worthy endeavor.
