Match Information
Opponent	Mount St. Mary's Mountaineers
Date	Saturday, December 1, 2018
Time	1:00 p.m.
Location	Baltimore, Md. | Reitz Arena
Tickets	Purchase
Getting There	Directions
Television	MASN | Channel Finder
Online Media	Live Video | Live Stats
Follow Us	Facebook | Twitter
Game Notes	Loyola

Quick Hits About The Hounds

• Loyola University Maryland returns to Retiz Arena for to host the 174th meeting of the State of Maryland's most-played rivalry. The Greyhounds will take on Mount St. Mary's University at 1 p.m. on Saturday, December 1.
• The game will air live on MASN, the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, and it will also stream on the Patriot League Network.
• Saturdays' game is part of a Loyola-Mount St. Mary's doubleheader with the Greyhoudns women hosting the Mountaineers at 4 p.m.
• It's also Alumni Day at Loyola. Former men's and women's basketball players can sign up to celebrate with their former teammates online.
• Andrew Kostecka was named the Patriot League Player of the Week on November 26 after recording a career-high in points twice in six days, including 30 at Towson on Sunday night.
• Tavaras Hardy is in his first season as head coach of the Greyhounds. He was named the 21st head coach in Loyola men's basketball history on March 28.
• Hardy will be joined on the sidelines by three assistant coaches who are also in this first year at Loyola: A.J. Guyton, Ivo Simović and Brenden Straughn. Kevin Farrell is back for his seventh season as the team's director of operations.
• Five players – Jaylin Andrews, Brandon Bradsher, Kenneth Jones, Casmir Ochiaka and Markese Redding – made their Loyola debuts in the season-opener at St. John's.
• Three players – Isaiah Hart, Andrew Kostecka and Chuck Champion – who started more than half of last year's 30 games return for the 2018-2019 season. 

Turn On The Television

• The Loyola-Mount St. Mary's game will air live on MASN, the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network. It marks the 13th year of Loyola's relationship with the network.
• Jason Knapp, the television voice of the Patriot League on CBS Sports Network, will call the play-by-play, while Craig Esherick will handle the analysis.

Series History

• The Loyola-Mount St. Mary's rivalry is the most played between two college basketball teams in the State of Maryland. Saturday's game will mark the 174th time the former Mason-Dixon Conference foes have met on the hardwood.
• The rivalry dates to January 20, 1910, the second season of basketball at Loyola. The Greyhounds won the initial meeting between the teams, 35-24, but The Mount holds a 100-73 advantage all-time.
• In addition to being the oldest series in state history – it predates Loyola-Maryland by two seasons – it is also the most-played. The 173 previous meetings exceed the 161 between Johns Hopkins and McDaniel (formerly Western Maryland), a series that started in 1930.
• In last year's December 2 meeting, Isaiah Hart scored a career-high 26 points in his seventh collegiate game, but Mount St. Mary's made nine free throws in overtime to secure an 80-75 non-conference win.
• Hart made 11 of 19 shots from the field and also had a team-high four assists for the Greyhounds. Cam Gregory scored 19 points and had a team-high eight rebounds, while James Fives and Chuck Champion each scored 11.
• Champion forced overtime with a twisting layup 12.1 seconds before the end of the second half, knotting the game at 69-69. Loyola got a defensive stop on Mount St. Mary's final possession, and the action moved to overtime.
• Fives grabbed an offensive rebound and scored in the paint to open scoring in the extra period, and after the Mountaineers missed a 3-pointer, Champion converted a pair of free throws to put Loyola up four, its largest lead of the game.
• Mount St. Mary's, however, scored the next five points on Junior Robinson free throws before Champion scored off a drive with 1:24 left, putting Loyola back up one, 75-74.
• Robinson, who had 39 points for The Mount, made another two free throws with 59.1 seconds left, and Donald Carey tallied the Mountaineers' lone field goal of overtime to push the lead to three with 41 seconds on the clock.
• Both teams came up empty on their next possessions, and Loyola called a timeout with possession under 10 seconds to go. A 3-pointer rattled out off the in-bounds play, and Mount St. Mary's grabbed the rebound. Robinson made a pair of free throws to seal the win.

Last Time Out

• Andrew Kostecka scored 20 of his career-high points in the first half as the Greyhounds built a five-point lead at the break, but Towson's defense held Loyola to just 30.4 percent from the field in the second as the Tigers pulled away for an 85-69 victory Sunday night.
• Kostecka's 30, which also came with a team-high six rebounds and three assists, topped his previous high of 23 set just six days ago when he had 23 on Monday night at the University of Detroit Mercy. He made 4 of 8 first-half 3-point attempts, and Loyola had seven from behind he arc in the opening 20 minutes, but they were just 3 of 10 from deep after the break.
• The Tigers took a 19-10 lead less than 10 minutes into the game on a Nakye Sanders jumper, but Kostecka scored 12 points during a 17-5 Loyola run. He hit a three with 6:44 to play in the first half to put Loyola in front 25-24, and he then came up with a steal that lead to a fast-break dunk at 6:27, pushing the lead to three.
• Towson's Brian Fobbs scored on the other end, but Kostecka came back with two more, and after a Brent Holcombe steal, Kostecka fed Jaylin Andrews in transition for two, giving Loyola a 31-26 lead at 5:20.
• A Kostecka three with just over two minutes to go, and a Chuck Champion layup with 44 seconds left in the first half, gave Loyola a pair of seven-point advantages, and it would take a 41-36 lead into the locker room at halftime.
• Loyola maintained its lead early in the second half, and Andrews' second 3-pointer of the game pushed the advantage back to seven, 51-44, with 14:32 left in regulation. Towson, however, reeled off 10 in a row with Fobbs scoring the final eight of the run. His three off a Nicholas Timberlake assist gave the Tigers a three-point lead it would not relinquish for the remainder of the contest. Fobbs scored a team-high 25 points, while Tobias Howard added 23, and Sanders scored 14 to go with nine rebounds.
• In addition to Kostecka's 30, Champion scored 16 points and had three assists. Andrews and Kenneth Jones both scored eight points, and Jones had four assists for the Greyhounds.

Patriot League Plaudits

• Andrew Kostecka was named the Patriot League Player of the Week on Monday, November 26, after averaging 23.7 points, 5.7 rebounds and 3.0 assists in a trio of games last week.
• Kostecka set a career-high in points twice during the stretch, first totaling 23 points on Monday, November 19, at the University of Detroit Mercy. After finishing with 18 the following night against the University of Hampton – earning GotPrint.com Legends Classic All-Tournament Team honors in the process – Kostecka came back with 30 points on Sunday night at Towson University.
• The junior guard leads Loyola, and is second in the Patriot League in scoring, this season with 17.7 points per game. His 5.0 rebounds are second on the team, and his 2.2 assists lead the Greyhounds.

Holcombe Gets Hot

• Brent Holcombe had the best offensive game of his career November 11 against Dartmouth, pouring in 20 points on 8 of 11 shoot. He made two of his three attempts from 3-point range and also pulled down a season-best seven rebounds while blocking two shots.
• Two days later, against Delaware State, Holcombe saved his best play for late in the game. He entered the game with just under 15 minutes to play and had seven points, five rebounds and three assists over the next minutes.
• He followed that effort with his second career double-double on Friday night at Temple, scoring 17 on 7 of 11 against the Owls to go with a career- and game-high 12 rebounds. Holcombe also had a team-high four assists and two blocked shots.
• On Monday night at Detroit Mercy, Holcombe logged his second double-double in a row and third of his career with 12 points and 11 rebounds.
• Through seven contests, Holcombe is third on the team with 10.4 points and first with 7.1 rebounds per game.

Assists From Everywhere

• Loyola is averaging 14.9 assists per game this season, a number that ranks third in the Patriot League. The number is more than three higher than the Greyhounds averaged last year, and Loyola has not ranked above eighth in the conference since joining the Patriot League in 2013. 
• The Greyhounds have reached the 2018-19 total by having not having any players ranked in the top-15 in the Patriot League in per-game assists. Eight Greyhounds are averaging 1.3 assists per game or more.

Passing The Boards

• On paper, rebounding looked to be a bit of a question mark for the Greyhounds this season after the departure of 2018 graduate Cam Gregory who finished third all-time at Loyola with 876 career rebounds.
• Through five games, however, the Greyhounds have answered that question in a positive sense, outrebounding four of their six opponents by an average of 1.7 per game.
• Brent Holcombe leads the Greyhounds with 7.1 per game; KaVaughn Scott has grabbed 3.9 per game, while James Fives and Sam Norton are each averaging 3.1 per game. Loyola's guards have been a large part of the success on the glass with Andrew Kostecka checking in second on the team at 5.0, and Chuck Champion third at 4.7.

Champion Doubles Up

• Chuck Champion had his first career double-double November 11 against Dartmouth, scoring 17 points while leading all players with a career-best 11 rebounds.
• The junior guard scored 12 in the first half, including 10 in the final 10 minutes of the stanza. He finished 7 of 12 from the field. In two games (2018 and 2019) against Dartmouth, Champion has averaged 21.5 points against the Big Green. His previous career-high in rebounds was nine against Navy last season. The junior guard scored 17 again, just over a week later, in a win over Hampton, tallying 15 of his points in the second half.
• This season, Champion is second on the Greyhounds with 13.9 points and first with 32.6 minutes per game. He has scored 10 or more points in all seven of Loyola's games.

Getting To The Stripe

• Loyola has been adept at getting to the free-throw line through the first six games of the season. The Greyhounds have gone to the stripe 150 times, making 108, and rank 53rd in NCAA Division I in free-throws made, 57th in attempts. Both numbers top the Patriot League.

All-Around Andrew

• Andrew Kostecka earned Patriot League All-Defensive Team honors – the first for a Loyola player since the Greyhounds joined the conference in 2013-14 – last season after finishing second in the conference in steals per game (2.1) and fourth in blocks (1.1). He was the only Patriot League player to rank in the top five of both categories in 2017-18.
• His 29 blocked shots were the most in Loyola history by a non-post player.
• Kostecka was much more than just a defensive player, however, as he scored at every level and averaged 11.0 points per game as a sophomore. He shot .452 overall (.502 from inside the arc and .323 from 3-point range) and .745 from the free-throw line.
• A Maryland native, Kostecka scored 10 or more points 14 times and had a pair of 20-point games in 2017-18 for the Greyhounds. 

Consistent Like A Champion

• Chuck Champion missed the first five games of the 2017-12018 season with an injury, but he opened his year with a flourish, scoring a career-high 26 points on 12 of 15 from the floor in a game at Dartmouth College.
• Champion followed that effort with 11 or more points in seven-straight games, scoring 15 or better in his next six.
• Champion was one of the team's most-consistent scorers a season ago, topping the 10-point mark in 16 of the 26 games he played during the year, averaging 11.5 points per game, second-best on last year's squad and the top returning mark.
• Champion is also the team's returning leader in minutes played after averaging 30.7 as a sophomore. This season, he is averaging 33.6 minutes per game.

Big In The Last Three

• Brent Holcombe played his best basketball of his young career in Loyola's last four games of the 2017-18 season, averaging 11.5 points and 6.8 rebounds in contests against Lehigh, Navy, Army West Point and Bucknell.
• He scored a career-high 18 points on at Navy, knocking down 8 of 15 shots in the regular-season finale, both career highs. The 18 points eclipsed his previous-best of 17 points earlier in February against American. During the second half against Navy, Holcombe scored 11 of his points; nine of those points came over a seven-minute stretch in which he made a three to tie the game at 43-43 and a layup at 10:16 to push Loyola up two. He later passed up a three to assist on a triple by Andrew Kostecka at 6:41 that would give the Greyhounds a three-point advantage. He then converted free-throw line jumpers on consecutive possession to stretch that lead to seven at 4:27.
• In the Patriot League Championships First Round against Army West Point, Holcombe scored eight points, including two free throws with under 25 seconds left. He had his second double-digit rebounding effort of the year with 10.
• He followed that with a his first career double-double, a 12-point, 10-rebound outing against eventual Patriot League champion Bucknell University in the quarterfinal round.

Fives Back In '18

• James Fives will return to the Loyola lineup this season after missing the last 21 games of the 2017-18 season.
• Fives made six starts in the first nine games of last year and averaged 5.1 points and 3.9 rebounds in 22.7 minute per game.  As a sophomore in 2016-17, Fives started 30 of 33 games, averaging 6.1 points and 2.6 rebounds per game.

Scholarship For Sam

• After joining the team and playing as a walk-on for the last three years, Sam Norton was awarded a scholarship for his senior season.
• Norton saw increased playing time as a junior, playing in 26 games and starting 10 while averaging 2.7 points and 3.0 rebounds in 17.6 minutes per game.

Hounds Abroad

• Several former Loyola players have, or are about to, start professional seasons overseas. Those players include: Denzel Brito '15 (Onsabruecker T.B., Germany), Julius Brooks '13 (Corio Bay, Australia), Cam Gregory '18 (Tromso Story, Norway), Jarred Jones '17 (Lahti, Finland), Jordan Latham '14 (Hawthorn, Australia) Michael Tuck '08 (Sheffield Sharks, England), and Shane Walker '12 (Al-Ittihad, Bahrain).

Up Next

• Loyola heads on the road for its next five games, starting Wednesday, December 5, when it heads to Philadelphia for a game at Drexel University.

Patriot League Network

• All of Loyola University Maryland non-televised home men's basketball games will air live on the Patriot League Network for the sixth season.