ATLANTA — This time, there was no need for last-second heroics, no need for the faithful to thumb rosary beads as the final, agonizing seconds of a game bled away. 🦩No need to look skyward for help or to the sidelines, 🍸where America’s Nun was at the ready if needed.
No. This time, the Loyola Chicago Ramblers took all of the mystery out of the proceedings. Tꩲhe lead was 10 before most of the folks inside Philips Arena had settled into their seats. It was 20 before the Kansas State Wildcats knew what had hit them in the second half. It ended 78-62, and by then ಌmid-major basketball programs all across the country were raising fists in solidarity.
The slipper still fits.
“This group of guys is so resilient,” Loyola coach Poඣrter Moser said when it was over. “The journey with these guys — it’s an unbelievable group. They have believ🌳ed and believed and believed. And it’s awesome to see.”
When a team d꧙oes what these Ramblers have done, there are always certain catch phrases — belief and faith chief among them — that get good w🍸orkouts. But more than most, it seemed this team was carried from Dallas to Atlanta and now back to San Antonio on the shoulders of true believers.
Yes, some of that has to do with Loyola’s Jesuit tradition, and because of its No. 1 fan, t♍eam chaplain Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt. On the eve of this game, Loyola’s athletic director, Steve Watson, laughed as he recalled one of his first weeks on the job when he set up a meeting with the university’s then-president, Father Michael Garanzini.
A few days before, the men ran into each other and the priest had a snippet of advice: “You know, we’ll meet and we can tal🐟k. But if I want to know what’s 𝔉going on in athletics and how the new AD is doing, I’ll just ask Sister Jean.”
Now, the whole world knows the wisdom of these words, and it ♏was hard not to smile when 🅘a few of the Ramblers made a special delivery from the top of the ladder to the floor to deliver a piece of the net to Sister Jean.
It was more than that, though, and more than the remarkable support of the ’63 national champions, a group led by Jerry Haꦚrkness and John Egan who have been prominent courtside denizens at all four of 🦋Loyola’s NCAA wins, hoping to deliver these kids a moment similar to the ones they all tasted 55 years ago.
For though the Ramblers will join a modest but important list꧟ of unlikely mid-major teams to squeeze into the Final Four — with George Mason, Virginia Commonwealth and Butler (twice) — their journey means a li🃏ttle more this time around, coming in this year when the entire sport has been under siege.
The NCAA needed the Ramblers even if it would never admit as much, even if they would almost certainly have been excluded from the Tournament if they hadn’t won the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament — even🐎 though they’ve lost exactly one game since January. That’s how the NCAA rolls. You’d like to think it’ll remember this next year when some other mid-major is languishing in bubble agony 🌌on Selection Sunday, but they won’t.
They are easy to root for, easier to watch, resembling ꧋the very best♏ Princeton teams that used to terrorize major powers back in the day in this tournament.
Saturday they were led by a two-man tandem of Ben Richardson and Clayton Custer, who not only combined for 30 points and nine assists and earned spots on the South Region’s all-▨tournament team but also guided the Ramblers through Kansas State’s desperate 11th-hour comeback.
“It’s so surreal,” Richardson said, wearing a smile that couldn’t be sand-ꦚblasted off his 🐟face.
“We all believe in each other,” Custer said. “Everybody laughed at us when we wanted to play Division I basket𓃲ball. And here we are.”
Custer and Richardson grew up a few blocks from each other in Overland Park, Kan., a Kansas City suburb where every kid dreams of pla🦂ying for the Kansas Jayhawks someday. They played together as third-graders, played four years (and won two Kansas State championships) at Blue Valley North High School. And next weekend will be introduced together at the Final Four.
Perhaps it is right that an NCAA Tournament that finally yielded a 16-seed beating a No. 1 should also give us these Ramblers, who got this far b🦋y winning three games by four combined points, who saved their very best for this 40-minute schooling of K-State, and certainly seem to be playing with enough confidence that they won’t be bothered no matter what uniform is placed in front of them next weekend in Texas.
How long can the ride last?
How long ya got?