Game Information
Opponent	St. Joseph's Hawks
Game Notes	Loyola
Date	Friday, December 29, 2023
Time	7:00 p.m.
Location	Philadelphia, Pa. | Hagan Arena
Tickets	Purchase
Directions	Click Here
Watch	ESPN+
Online Media	Live Stats

Quick Hits About The Hounds

• The Loyola University Maryland men's basketball team plays its final non-conference game of the 2023-2024 regular season on Friday, December 29, 2023, when it heads to Philadelphia for a 7 p.m. game at St. Joseph's University.
• Loyola is set to open Patriot League play five days later with a January 3, 2024, game at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York.

Watch The Action

• Friday's game will stream live on ESPN+.

Series History Versus St Joseph's

• Loyola will face St. Joseph's for the 29th time in series history and the first time this decade.
• The Hawks scored a 68-42 victory at Hagan Arena on December 9, 2014, to go up 18-10 in the all-time series.
• St. Joseph's has won 14 of the last 15 meetings between the schools dating back to the 1935-36 season. Loyola's lone victory during the stretch came on January 4, 1996, when the Greyhounds earned an 80-76 double-overtime victory in Baltimore.
• St. Joseph's is the third Atlantic 10 opponent Loyola will play on the road this year. The Greyhounds lost by one, 62-61, on December 6, at La Salle, and by eight, 62-54, on December 16 at George Mason.

Last Time Out

• Three Loyola players scored 18 or more points on December 22 as the Greyhounds set a school record for field-goal percentage in a 91-57 win over visiting St. Mary's College of Maryland.
• Deon Perry led the Greyhounds with 19 points, while Tyson Commander and D'Angelo Stines each had 18.
• Loyola made 33 of 46 shots in the game, good for 71.7 percent to beat the record that had stood since 1978. The Greyhounds' previous best came in a January 21, 1978 game against Lehigh when they made 31 of 44 shots (70.5).
• In the second half, Loyola shot 88.9 percent from the field, making all 11 of its 2-point attempts and 5 of 7 3-pointers. 
• Overall, the Greyhounds shot 63.2 percent from 3-point range (12 of 19), the 10th-best single-game performance in school history and the best when making 12 or more threes.
• The Greyhounds also controlled a 38-9 rebounding advantage against the Seahawks. Golden Dike finished with one less rebound than all of the Seahawks with a game-high nine boards.
• Dike scored seven and had a team-best four assists. Milos Ilic added nine points and four rebounds.
• St. Mary's twice cut the second-half margin to five points, the second time coming on a Hollique Johnson 3-pointer with 17:51 left in regulation to make it 48-43. An Alonso Faure free throw and threes by Commander and Stines stretched the lead back to 12, 55-43, and it remained in double figures for the rest of the game.

Record-Setting Performance

• Loyola's shooting against St. Mary's was on point as the Greyhounds set a school record by making 71.7 percent of their shots from the field (33 of 46). The program's previous best mark of 70.5 percent (31 of 44) came in January 1978 against Lehigh.
• In the win over the Seahawks, Loyola made 21 of 27 (77.8 percent) of its 2-point field goals while shooting 63.2 percent (12 of 19) from 3-point range. Loyola was 11 of 11 on 2-point attempts in the second half and shot 88.9 percent (16 of 18) overall after the break.

Tops In The Nation This Year

• The Greyhounds' performance against St. Mary's, albeit against an NCAA Division III team, was significant in national rankings this year.
• Loyola is the only team to shoot better than 70 percent in a game this season.
• The Greyhounds are also the only team nationally to hold an opponent to fewer than 10 rebounds in a game as the Seahawks finished with nine (h/t Sports Reference).

Stines Scores Off The Bench

• D'Angelo Stines has come off the bench in the Greyhounds' last fivce games, and the junior guard has pushed his scoring average back to double digits with 11 or more points in the four most-recent games.
• Stines scored 12 against both La Salle and Mount St. Mary's, and he had 11 at George Mason before going for a career-high 18 against St. Mary's. This season, he has scored 10 or more points in eight of Loyola's 12 games.
• Stines is the first incoming transfer to play for Loyola since Tavaras Hardy has been the head coach (dating to 2018-19). After spending two years at Old Dominion, the Baltimore-area native joined the Loyola program this offseason.
• Stines played in 55 games over two seasons for the Monarchs, making six starts and averaging 12.1 minutes per game. He averaged 2.5 points per game in those two seasons.
• The product of Baltimore Catholic League power Mount St. Joseph's High School made his Loyola regular-season debut at Florida and finished with 13 points, hitting 3 of 7 from 3-point range and 5 of 12 overall. He also had three assists against the Gators in 25 minutes.
• Stines has scored 76 of his 128 points this season in the second half of the 12 games. He is shooting 42.4 percent from the field in the second half compared to 28.3 percent in the first. From behind the arc, his number goes from 30.0 to 45.7 after the break.

Shooting In The Second

• Loyola's shooting has been significantly better in the second half of games, going from 40.0 percent in the opening 20 minutes to 46.0 percent in the next 20. 
• Scoring-wise, Deon Perry is averaging 7.2 in the second half of games and 5.3 in the first; D'Angelo Stines' scoring goes from 3.7 to 6.8, and Alonso Faure's rises from 2.4 to 5.3 over 12 games.

Golden Efficiency

• Golden Dike led the Greyhounds in scoring for just the third time in his career at Loyola when he scored 16 points at Florida in the season opener, doing so with efficient fashion.
• Dike made all five shots he took from the field and six of his eight free throws. He then scored 14 points on 7 of 12 shooting in the win at Brown, and he went 6 of 7 for 15 points at UMBC.
• Through Loyola's first 12 games, he leads the Patriot League in shooting percentage at .623 (38 of 61).
• He entered the season ranked second in school history in field-goal percentage at 55.9 percent, a mark is now at 56.6 after the St. Mary's game. 
• His three games with 14 or more points, through only seven contests, are already more than he's had in any one of his previous seasons. He had two such games as a freshman, sophomore and senior, as well as a one during his junior season.
• Dike is in his fifth year at Loyola and pursuing his M.B.A. in the university's graduate studies program.
• Last season, Dike had fewer than nine rebounds only once in the month of February, averaging 9.4 in that period to raise his season average to 6.7 per game, good for fourth in the Patriot League.

Top 10 On The Boards

• With his ninth and final rebound against Sacred Heart, Golden Dike moved into a tie for 10th all-time at Loyola with 690 rebounds, matching Bernard Allen's total from 2001-05. 
• Against Missouri, he became the 10th player in school history to grab 700 or more rebounds in a career. With 12 rebounds at Columbia, he moved into ninth all-time in the category, and he now has 744 total; Roderick Platt is 8th in school history with 745 total rebounds.
• Dike is second in the Patriot League in rebounds per game at 7.0.

Consistent In His Return

• Milos Ilic missed the entirety of the 2022-23 season while rehabbing a knee injury suffered on January 25, 2022, at Lafayette. His return this season has seen him start all 12 games, averaging 24.9 minutes, 7.3 points and 5.1 rebounds per game.
• After opening with five points at Florida, Ilic has scored nine points at Brown and then 12 against both Binghamton and Sacred Heart. He had four rebounds in each of the first four games before grabbing nine against the Pioneers. 
• He had his first collegiate double-double with 11 points and 10 rebounds at La Salle, leading the team in rebounds with his first double-digit performance on the boards.
• Ilic is third on the team in field-goal percentage, making 34 of 71 shots for a 47.9 percent mark.

Faure Breaks Out

• Alonso Faure entered the November 25 game at Missouri averaging just 4.4 points per game while shooting 37 percent from the field, but the senior post player went 6 of 7 from the field against the Tigers, was the same from the free-throw line, and he had a game-high 18 points.
• The 18 points matched his career-high output He then led the Greyhounds with 16 points against Delaware State, and he had a team-best 14 at La Salle. He is now averaging 7.8 points per game, and his field-goal percentage is 50 percent.
• Last season, Faure scored just nine points in his first two games of the year – DePaul and Brown – but he went for 18 in a November 17 game against Washington College. That sparked a five-game stretch in which he scored 60 points and averaged 12 per game.
• Later in the year, he averaged 13.8 points (69 total) in five games between February 11 at Lehigh and the regular-season finale on February 25 versus American.
• The native of Alicante, Spain, shot a team-best 58.1 percent from the field last year, making 115 of 198 shots to rank fifth in the conference in field-goal percentage; his 2-point field goal percentage was 63.6 percent (105 of 165). He has a career field-goal percentage of 54.2 percent that ranks fourth in school history.

Playing Big

• Deon Perry, who was named to the Patriot League All-Rookie Team following the regular season, and was the Greyhounds' leading scorer over their last 16 games, averaging 16.2 points in a stretch that opened January 11 with a then-career-high 22 at Bucknell.
• The 5-foot-8 guard shot 44.0 percent (51 of 116) from 3-point range during the 16 games, raising his per-game scoring average from 6.9 after the January 8 game at Holy Cross to its final mark of 11.4.
• Perry was more aggressive in getting into the paint during the stretch of 16 games and has gone to the free-throw line 53 times, making 49. Prior to the first Bucknell game, he had taken only 16 free throws this year.
• In his last 10 games of 2023-24, Perry averaged 19.3 points per game and was 39 of 82 from 3-point range (47.6 percent).
• Defensively, Perry had 19 steals in Loyola's last 11 games to raise his season total to 51, a number that was sixth in the Patriot League. 
• Perry had the seventh game with 20 or more points in his career at Brown early in 2023-24 and then came back with 17 against Binghamton. He is leading Loyola with a 12.7 points per game average to boost his career mark to 11.7 points. He is eighth in the Patriot League in points per game, and he is fifth in assists (3.7).

The Spanish Affair

• Loyola took an eight-day, three-game trip to Spain during August that enabled the Greyhounds to play outside competition while spending time immersed in the culture of a foreign country.
• The Greyhounds visited the cities of Bilbao, Madrid and Alicante while also taking trips to San Sebastian and the town of Loyola, birthplace of St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuit order which founded the university.
• On the court, the Greyhounds went 2-1 with a win over a junior team from Bilbao and a professional select group from Madrid. Valencia's juniors edged the Greyhounds by three in their final game. Note: the junior teams were comprised of college-age players in Spain.
• Tyson Commander led the Greyhounds with a 16.0 points per game average in Spain, while D'Angelo Stines put up 14.7 and Deon Perry averaged 12.0. Golden Dike and Alonso Faure both nearly averaged double-doubles with each averaging 9.3 points per game; the former posted 12.7 rebounds per game and the latter 10.3.

New Faces On The Sideline

• Three new voices have joined the men's basketball coaching staff and will be on the bench with Tavaras Hardy who is in his sixth season as Greyhounds' head coach.
• JerShon Cobb is back for his second year as an assistant coach with Loyola, and he is joined by two new-to-the-Greyhounds assistant coaches and a new director of operations.
• Mike Brennan is not a strange to Patriot League sidelines, but the 1994 graduate of Princeton is in his first season with Loyola. Brennan spent the last 10 seasons as head coach at American where he guided the Eagles to the 2014 NCAA Tournament. Coincidentally, Brennan was an assistant coach at Georgetown before taking the head coaching job at American in 2013-14, and Hardy replaced him on John Thompson III's staff with the Hoyas at that time.
• Matt Miller spent the last five seasons with as an assistant coach at Mount St. Mary's. He has nearly 20 years of experience as a collegiate and high school coach in the DMV area including as the head coach of St. Maria Goretti in the Baltimore Catholic League. 
• Ricky Hernandez joined the staff as director of operations following five years on the bench as an assistant coach at nearby Johns Hopkins. He was a part of the 2023 Centennial Conference Coaching Staff of the Year as the Blue Jays reached the NCAA Sweet 16 for the first time since 2015 and tied a school record with 25 wins.

At The Next Level

• Former Loyola standout Santi Aldama (SAHN-tee ALL-dah-muh) has made a considerable impact in his second NBA season during 2022-23. Aldama, who played for the Greyhounds from 2018-2020, earning 2019 Patriot League All-Rookie honors and then 2020 All-Patriot League First Team recognition, was a first-round pick of the Memphis Grizzlies in the 2021 NBA Draft.
• After seeing action in 32 games as a rookie, Aldama stepped into Memphis' starting lineup early last year at the four spot and is averaged 9.0 points and 4.8 rebounds per game for the Grizzlies in 77 games played. Aldama missed the first six games of the 2023-24 regular season before making his debut on November 5. In 23 games this season, Aldama is averaging 11.2 points and 5.5 rebounds per game. He led the Grizzlies with 24 points on November 14 against the Los Angeles Lakers, and he had a double-double with a career-high 28 points to go with 12 rebounds on November 19 against Boston.

Up Next

• Patriot League games start on Wednesday, January 3 at Colgate. Loyola returns to Reitz Arena on Saturday, January 6, for a 5 p.m. game against Lehigh University.