Dick Weiss on NCAA Tournament
SAN ANTONIO—Loyola of Chicago knocked off its share of giants on the way to the NCAA Final Four.
But the smaller Ramblers from the Missouri Valley Conference had no answers for the biggest giant on the court when they played Michigan in the national semi-finals.
Moe Wagner, the Wolverines’ hulking 6-11 junior center from Berlin Germany, overwhelmed Loyola with 24 points and 15 rebounds here last night as Michigan ended Loyola’s Cinderella fantasy, 69-57, before a near sellout crowd of 68, 257 at the Alamo Dome to advance to Monday’s championship game against Villanova.
Wagner shot 10- for-16, made three 3s, grabbed six offensive rebounds, had and had three steals as the Big Ten Wolverines (32-6) fought back from a 47-42 deficit with a 12-0 run to take a 54-47 lead with 4:59 to play. Wagner drained a three and scored on an old fashioned three-point play during that lethal stretch of 4:20 as Michigan silenced the Ramblers, whose tallest player during that stretch was 6-6 forward Donte Ingram, into submission by forcing them into five straight turnovers.
Then Wagner locked up the game and Michigan’s 14th straight victory with a layup and another three as the Wolverines expanded the lead to 59-51 with 2:59 to play. Wagner is only the third player in Final Four history, other than Larry Bird and Hakeem Olajuwon, to get 20 and 15 in a national semi-final.
“I just tried to go in the game, take what the opponents is giving me, what the game is giving me, stay emotionally solid and don’t get emotionally drunk and it worked out today,’’ Wagner said.
Junior guard Charles Mathews, a transfer from Kentucky, contributed 17 points for Michigan. Center Cameron Krutwig, the Valley Freshman of the Year, led plucky Loyola (33-7) with 17 points and six rebounds. But
The Wolverines recovered from a 22-point first half to shoot 57.1 percent in the second half and forced normally efficient Loyola offense—which had a 41-31 lead– into dust, scoring 22 points off 17 turnovers and getting 19 second chance points and limiting the Ramblers to just 16 points in the final 14 minutes.
“Obviously you don’t want to go in those droughts and allow teams to go on runs like that’’ Loyola senior forward Donte Ingram said. “I think this team was trying to be aggressive, trying to make the right plays. I think a couple times we got a big sped up and made a miscue. It happens.’’
The Ramblers waved the white flag when officials wheeled Sister Jean Dolores, their 98-year old team chaplain, off the court and into the back hallway with 1:36 to play.
A lot of media tried to paint the Wolverines as the villains in this fairy tale this week. But Wagner wasn’t buying into that story line. “You’ve got to give them a lot of credit,’’ he said. “I don’t really like the saying ‘Cinderella story’ because it always includes somehow that they’re not supposed to be there and the way they were playing is incredible.
“So good offensively and so solid defensively. They definitely deserve to be here. And so efficient. And tough to guard. And the whole villain thing, you guys love to write about it, talk about it but at the end of the day, it’s just basketball. You know? And we just try to win. That’s all we do.’’
Loyola can take consolation in the fact coach Porter Moser has built a program his school can be proud of. “When we walked off the floor, I told them, “The more you invest in something, the harder it is to give up,’’ Moser said. “And they didn’t want it to end. They have so much to be proud of. They changed the perception of Loyola Chicago men’s basketball.
“They impacted so many lives around them, stating with our campus and spreading across the country because we had high character kids playing their tails off.’’
