Sorry guys its been a long time since I have posted. For some reason I was locked out of the forum while they were doing changes to the site but now everything seems back to normal.
Wow!!! What an awesome tournament it has been!! Both Loyola Chicago and Nevada have had nail biting amazing runs thus far and tonight more than likely will be more of the same. Both of these teams can score but they are quite different. I'm gonna breakdown both teams for you.
Loyola Chicago has had an incredible year. We all know about their tenacious defense. They suffucate opponents holding them to just 47.6% from the field on the year, they create turnovers on 20% of the opponents possesions, they clean up the glass very well and they hardly ever foul. These are all characteristics of a shutdown defense. On offense they are one of the best shooting teams in the nation! Hitting shots at 57.7% a clip from the field! Which combined with the fact they grind out opponents while eating up clock as much as possible, this is a very hard team to beat. Similar to UVA but Loyola-Chicago is more efficient shooting the ball. The one weakness I see with this team is that they have a tendancy to turnover the ball a little too much than I would like from a slow paced offense.
Nevada also has had an amazing year! Yes they lost to San Diego St in the MWC tourney but this is a team that steam rolled almost everyone. They get it done behind one of the best offenses in the nation. They rarely ever turnover the ball which is huge because they hit shots from the field 55% of the time. The combination of the two allows them to rack up points quickly and efficiently. They do most of their damage from beyond the arc where they hit shots at almost 40%! Defensively they defend the perimeter well however they do not defend the paint extremely well, they do not create many turnovers and they are below average in cleaning up the glass. Rest assure though they will outscore most of their opponents behind a fast paced, razor sharp offense.
THE MATCHUP:
Nevada offensively is tough to stop as usually stout defensively Texas and Cincinnati found out the hard way. It may take them a minute to find a hole in the opponents defense like against Texas and Cincy but once they figured it out they can put up points in a hurry on anybody. Tonight they will more than likely struggle against Loyola initially. Nevada shoots the 3 ball 40% of the time and Loyola defends the arc very well holding opponents to around 33%. If Loyola can defend well enough to make Nevada miss some shots which they should, they will have an easy time in cleaning up the glass as Nevada does not crash the offensive glass well at all. With that said Nevada will get theirs at some point. Theres only so much you can do defensively to stop them. What makes this game different than the last two however is offensively I expect Loyola to find holes in Nevada's defense and score at a higher % than Nevada's last two opponents. Cincy and Texas have been offensively challenged all year. This Loyola team is 7th in the nation in hitting shots. I dont expect them to ever go on a long enough drought to allow Nevada to take a comanding lead or to allow Nevada to come back from a large deficit. Loyola is experienced, efficient and too stout defensively to lose this game in my opinion. Nevada will have to be perfect offensively from the get go to win this game and I truly do not see that happening with how good Loyola's defense is. My money is on Loyola Chicago to win this game but I will take the 2 points I got earlier as I do not see Nevada winning this game let alone by more than 1 possesion.
LOYOLA CHICAGO +2
GL 
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