Game Information
Opponent	Columbia Lions
Game Notes	Loyola
Date	Monday, November 4, 2024
Time	7:00 p.m.
Location	Baltimore, Md. | Reitz Arena
Tickets	Purchase
Directions	Click Here
Watch	ESPN+ | International View Stream
Online Media	Live Stats

Quick Hits About The Hounds

• Loyola University Maryland men's basketball 113th season of intercollegiate play on November 4, 2024, when it hosts Columbia University in Reitz Arena.
• The game is set for a 7 p.m. tip-off and will stream live on ESPN+.
• Josh Loeffler will be on the bench as the Greyhounds' head coach after being taking the position as Loyola's 22nd all-time head coach in March 2024.
• He will be joined on the bench by four assistant coaches: Matt Blue, Kevin Farrell, Ricky Hernandez and Khyle Diaz. 
• The Greyhounds will be a new-look team in more ways than just its head coach for the 2024-25 season. Of the 6,475 total minutes played by Loyola players last year, only 53 percent of those return on the roster.
• The game is the first of 11 non-conference contests for the Greyhounds this season before they start their 18-game non-conference slate.
• Loyola starts the season with two-straight home games in nine years since it began against Tennessee State and LIU Brooklyn in 2015-16.
• November 4 is the earliest on the calendar that the Greyhounds have ever played a regular-season game. It is one day earlier than the November 5, 2019, contest at Marquette.

Watch The Action

• The Loyola-Columbia game, and all non-televised Greyhounds home contests, will stream live on ESPN+.

Series History Versus Columbia

• Loyola and Columbia will meet for the fifth time in series history on Monday night with the Lions entering having won three of the previous four.
• Last year, Loyola used a 12-0 run to take a 52-45 lead with 9:43 left in regulation at Columbia, but the Lions responded with a 24-8 run of their own to pull away for a 69-57 victory in New York City.
• Deon Perry led the Greyhounds with 17 points, and Chris Kuzemka added 15.
• Loyola, however, won the previous time the teams played, taking a 64-62 decision on December 2, 2014.
• Loyola led the entire second half of that game – including going up by as many as nine, 62-53, with 1:50 left in regulation – but Columbia's Isaac Cohen made three with 28 seconds left to tie the game at 62-62. After a Loyola timeout with six seconds left, an Andre Walker shot was blocked, but Eric Laster grabbed the rebound at the free throw line and sunk a 17-foot jumper as the buzzer sounded to secure the win.

About The Lions

• Columbia jumped to a 9-4 start last year before finishing the season with a 13-14 overall mark, going 4-10 in Ivy League play.
• Geronimo Rubio de la Rosa, who returns this year as a senior for the Lions, led the team with 14.4 points per game, while Avery Brown, now a junior, scored 9.9.
• Columbia was strong on the boards last year, outrebounding its opponents 35.7 to 33.4, though no player on the roster averaged more than 5.4 per game.

Addition From Injury

• While the Greyhounds lost a significant number of minutes played from last year's roster, they do return a considerable group that was out last season due to injury.
• Chris Kuzemka was averaging 6.7 points and shooting 36.7 percent from 3-point range through nine games when a broken hand in the December 6 contest at La Salle forced him to miss the rest of the year.
• A guard, Kuzemka averaged 21.6 minutes per game before his injury and had made one start. His season-high of 15 points came at Columbia, a week before his injury.
• Veljko Ilic missed all of last season and the last chunk of the 2022-23 season with an injury, but his return bolsters the Greyhounds' post play.
• Ilic averaged 13.7 minutes of action in 44 games from 2021-23, scoring 5.2 points and grabbing 3.3 rebounds per game.
• Samuel Gibbs was a rotation player for Loyola in the first five games of the year, averaging 6.6 minutes per, before missing the remainder of the season with an injury. A pair of freshmen, Troy Cicero Jr. and Matt Gray, were limited to four games and one game, respectively, last year.

Twins Back Together

• Twins Milos and Veljko Ilic are rarely apart off the court, but they have been separated in playing time since the 2021-22 season.
• They played together in 26 games that year before a knee injury cut Milos Ilic's season short during the second half of Patriot League play.
• He would miss the entirety of the 2022-23 season while rehabilitating the leg, and Veljko Ilic missed the first 13 games of that year with an off-season injury. He came back to the lineup to play in 14 games during 2022-23 before injuring his knee and missing the remainder of the year and all of 2023-24.
• Milos Ilic was on the court last year, save for two games, but Monday's 2024-25 season-opener is expected to be the first time they have played in a regular-season game together in 993 days since February 16, 2022, the date of Milos' injury.

Milos In The Middle

• A solid player his first two seasons on the court for the Greyhounds, Milos Ilic is expected to take an elevated role in the offense this season as the team's top returning scorer.
• Last year, Ilic averaged 7.6 points per game on just under seven shots per game. He shot 48.1 percent from the field in the process, a number that was identical in non-conference play versus Patriot League games.
• Ilic had his first career double-double in December at La Salle and finished the year third on the team with 5.1 rebounds per game.

Stiemke Spark

• Jordan Stiemke drew his first starting assignment for Loyola on February 3, 2024, against Holy Cross and scored five points in 17 minutes of action. He then upped his playing time to 25 minutes on February 7 at American, converting a layup and free throw for the game-winning points while finishing with six points and six rebounds.
• He then saw 32 minutes of action against Colgate on February 10, scoring 12 points for career-highs in both categories. The freshman from Bel Air, Maryland, came up with another career high four days later at Lafayette, going for 18 points in 38 minutes of action.
• Stiemke had his best statistical game on February 25 at Boston University, scoring 23 points on 8 of 18 shooting and 5 of 10 from the floor.
• The native of Bel Air, Maryland, has been Loyola's second-leading scorer since moving into the starting rotation, averaging 10.3 points in the 10 games. Prior to that, he had scored just 34 points in 15 games.
• As a starter, he shot 42.3 percent from the field, 45.7 from 3-point range and 78.0 at the free-throw line. His biggest statistical improvement came in 3-point shooting where he was just 3 of 12 (.250) in his first 15 before going 21 of 46 in the last 10.

New Faces

• Five new players dot the roster for the Greyhounds, four freshmen and a sophomore transfer.
• Jacob Theodosiou joined the program after spending his first collegiate season at Wyoming where he played in 10 games for the Cowboys. Theodosiou is a native of Ontario, Canada, but he played in high school at Western Reserve Academy in Ohio and helped his school win the Ohio Prep Conference Championship as a senior when he averaged 18 points and six rebounds in 2022-23.
• Braeden Speed comes to Loyola from Brophy Prep in Phoenix, Arizona, he earned All-State Second Team honors and helped the Broncos to the Class 6A (largest group) State Championship Game in 2022-23.
• Greg Guidinger led Central York High School to the 2024 Pennsylvania 6A (largest group) State Championship and was named Mr. PA Basketball a year ago.
• Goap Kodi joins the Greyhoudns out of the DMV area where he was a starting post player for Georgetown Prep's 2023-24 team that went 22-6 overall.
• Ben Menker joined the team as a walk-on from Mason, Ohio, where he earned All-GMC honors at Mason High School.
• The newcomers are not limited to the players for the Greyhounds as two of Josh Loeffler's assistant coaches are new to the Evergreen campus.
• Matt Blue joined the program as an assistant coach after spending the last four years at the NBA Global Academy located Basketball Australia's Centre of Excellence at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra. Previously, Blue was a collegiate assistant at Lafayette, Hartford and Susquehanna.
• Khyle Diaz is an assistant coach in his first year at Loyola after serving in an operations role at Cleveland State.

You Look Familiar

• Josh Loeffler slides a few chairs to his right on the Greyhounds bench into the spot as head coach after spending four years as an assistant at Loyola on G.G. Smith's staff from 2013-17.
• Two of his assistants are also familiar to the Loyola crowd.
• Ricky Hernandez was the team's director of operations during the 2023-24 season after spending five years as an assistant to Loeffler down the road at Johns Hopkins.
• Kevin Farrell is a 2012 graduate of Loyola and was a four-year team manager before spending nine years (2012-21) as the team's director of operations.

At The Next Level

• As a school of less than 4,000 undergraduate students, Loyola University Maryland boasted three former student-athletes on NBA rosters as players and one as a head coach last month on opening night. Two members of the men's basketball incoming class of 2019, Santi Aldama (SAHN-tee ALL-dah-muh) and Cam Spencer, are on the Memphis Grizzlies' roster, and four-time men's lacrosse All-American is a member of the Golden State Warriors.
• Michael Malone, a 1994 graduate of Loyola, was a four-year letterwinner as a point guard for the Greyhounds. He is now the head coach of the Denver Nuggets.
• Aldama was a first-round draft pick in the 2021 NBA Draft after leading the Patriot League in scoring and rebounding in 2020-21, and Cam Spencer led the conference in scoring the following season.
• Aldama has played in 176 NBA games through November 1 and is averaging 13.8 points and 7.0 rebounds through six outings this season.
• He starred for his native Spain this summer, earning TISSOT Most Outstanding Player honors at the Olympic Qualifying Tournament before averaging 17.7 points and 9.3 rebounds in three games during the Olympics.
• Cam Spencer, who was a three-year starter for the Greyhounds from 2019-22, and won a NCAA Championship at Connecticut in 2023-24, has not yet played in a NBA game this season.
• Pat Spencer holds the Loyola men's lacrosse records for career assists and points and was the 2019 NCAA Division I Player of the Year for the Greyhounds. He switched to basketball after graduating from Loyola and has seen action in six career games with the Warriors.
• Malone had 282 assists in 108 career games with the Greyhounds from 1989-93. He is in his 12th season as a NBA head coach and guided the Nuggets to the 2023 NBA Championship.

Up Next

• Loyola will play its second home game of the season on Saturday, November 9, with a 7:30 p.m. start against Lancaster Bible.
• The Greyhounds then head to Newark, New Jersey, for a November 12 contest at NJIT.