Game Information
Opponent	Lehigh Mountain Hawks
Game Notes	Loyola
Date	Saturday, January 13, 2025
Time	2:00 p.m.
Location	Bethlehem, Pa. | Stabler Arena
Tickets	Purchase
Directions	Click Here
Online Media	ESPN+ | Live Stats

Quick Hits About The Hounds

• The Loyola University Maryland men's basketball team will be make its third Patriot League road trip of the season for a Saturday, January 18, game at Lehigh University in a 2 p.m. tipoff.
• Loyola has three players averaging 12.1 points per game or more through the season's first 16 games and five at 7.3 or higher.
• Milos Ilic is one of 35 players nationally (who qualify for the national rankings) and average 13.5 or more points and eight or more rebounds per game this season. Ilic enters the sixth conference game with marks of 13.8 and 8.1.
• Loyola is second in the League in rebounding margin at +1.8 per game. Milos Ilic leads the Greyhounds with 8.1 rebounds per game and four other players – Jordan Stiemke, Veljko Ilic, Jacob Theodosiou and Braeden Speed – average 3.0 or more per game.
• Josh Loeffler is on the bench as the Greyhounds' head coach after taking the position as Loyola's 22nd all-time head coach in March 2024.
• The Greyhounds are 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 returned to the roster this season.

Watch The Action

• The Loyola-Lehigh game will stream live on ESPN+.

Progress Through 15

• Loyola picked up its seventh win of the season in its 15th game, matching the Greyhounds' win total from the 2023-24 season (32 total games).
• In Josh Loeffler's first year as Loyola's head coach, the Greyhounds have seen improvements in just about every statistical category from last season, notably: field-goal percentage (.437 from .417), field-goal defense (.451-.465), 3-point defense (.325-.358), and scoring offense (70.3, 64.0).

Busy Start To League Play

• Loyola played its first five Patriot League games over a stretch of just 12 days spanning from January 2-13.
• The Greyhounds are one of two teams (American) in the conference to have as many games in as few days. 

Series History Versus Lehigh

• Loyola and Lehigh will meet for the 33rd time in series history on Saturday afternoon and the 25th time since Loyola joined the Patriot League in 2013-14.
• Loyola's 80-74 victory on January 5 in Baltimore drew the series even at 16 wins for each team in the previous 32 games.
• Jordan Stiemke made 9 of 14 shots and went 6 of 6 from the free-throw line to score a career-high 25 points in the teams' first meeting this season. 
• Lehigh took an 88-76 decision on January 6, 2024, in Baltimore despite Golden Dike recording the second triple-double in Loyola's program history. The Mountain Hawks then held on for a 75-70 victory in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on February 17.
• The teams first played a pair of trio of games between 1913 and 1915 making Lehigh the second-oldest Patriot League foe of the Greyhounds other than Navy.

Last Time Out

• American scored off the opening tip and never trailed on Monday night as the Eagles took a 73-54 victory over host Loyola in Reitz Arena.
• Elijah Stephens picked up the loose ball off the tip and got to the rim to score for the Eagles less than four seconds into the game.
• Braeden Speed would drive and score for Loyola just over 30 seconds later, but Stephens scored the next basket to put American in front for the rest of the game.
• American led 19-9 with 8:35 to play in the first half, but Loyola went on an 8-0 run to close within a pair, 19-17, on a Milos Ilic dunk at 6:08.
• The Eagles, however, had a 10-0 run of their own to answer and built a 29-17 lead at 3:32. They never led by less than 10 after that point.
• Jordan Stiemke scored 11 points to lead Loyola; Milos Ilic scored nine, and Veljko Ilic added eight.

Home Court Holds

• Through five rounds of Patriot League games, the home team has won all but three of the 25 games that have been played.

Playing Efficiently

• After five conference games, Loyola ranks second in the Patriot League in offensive efficiency per Ken Pom with a 107.7 rating. 

Focal Point

• Milos Ilic has become the focal point of the Greyhounds' offense this year, and the 6-foot-10 post from Gornji Milanovic, Serbia has responded with his best start to a season in four years at Loyola. Ilic has led the Greyhounds with 13.8 points and 8.1 rebounds per game.
• Ilic's 13.8 points per game are more than six higher than his previous season-high after he put up 7.6 points per game last year. 
• Per Ken Pom, Ilic is taking 28.0 percent of Loyola's shots when he's on the court this season, up from 17.2 percent a year ago and 16.9 as a freshman in 2021-22. His Ken Pom usage rate is 29.6 percent this year, a rate that ranks in the top-65 nationally.
• Ilic ranks 25th in NCAA Division I in points per game for players listed as 6-foot-10 or taller.

Shooting On Point

• Milos Ilic's rise to the top of the Greyhounds' production has been fueled by many things, with a significant improvement in shooting percentage the majority of the reason.
• This year, Ilic has shot 52.7 percent from the field, up from 48.1 in 2023-24 and 40.1 as a freshman in 2021-22.
• That percentage is in large part to the fact he has played more than 90 percent of his minutes at the five position for the Greyhounds this year after spending almost all of his time on the court as a four in his first two seasons.
• As a result, Ilic has taken 87 percent of his shots this year as two-pointers, and he has made those at a clip of 56.5 percent (83 of 147) through 16 games, a three-percent improvement over his first two seasons.
• He has attempted only 22 shots from 3-point range this year (13 percent of his shots attempted). As a freshman in 2021-22, he took 71 3-pointers before his season-ending injury which comprised 51.8 percent of his 137 attempts. Last year, he took threes 23.4 percent of the time in 183 shots.

Pounding The Boards

• Milos Ilic is third in the Patriot League in rebounding through games of January 17 with 8.1 per game. His rebounding average is also 71st in NCAA Division I, and he ranks in the top 110 nationally in both offensive (79th, 2.81) and defensive (110th, 5.31) rebounds.

Dishing, Too

• In addition to leading the team in scoring and rebounding, Milos Ilic leads the Greyhounds in assists with 45, an average of 2.81 per game. He is the only Patriot League player to lead his team in all three categories.
• He ranks eighth in the nation in assists per game for players 6-foot-10 or taller, and he is one of three players nationally of that height category to lead his team in rebounds, assists and points per game, joining College of Charleston's Ante Brzovic and Davidson's Reed Bailey

On The Defensive

• Loyola's perimeter defense has helped it rank tied second in the Patriot League – and No. 159 in Division I – through games of January 15 in 3-point field goal defense. Opponents are shooting just 32.5 percent from behind the arc against the Greyhounds this year.
• It's a significant turnaround for Loyola from a year ago when it ranked 310th out of 351 Division I teams as teams shot 35.8 percent from 3-point range against the Greyhounds.

Contributions In Many Areas

• Jacob Theodosiou leads the team in minutes played (28.6) through 16 games as one of only three players on the roster averaging more than 27 minutes.
• The sophomore transfer scored a then-career-high 23 points at Coppin State, making 4 of 8 3-pointers with three in the final 11 minutes of the comeback win. He had another 20-plus point game at DePaul when he made 9 of 10 shots to score 22. The native of Waterloo, Ontario, then put up a new high of 27 points in a one-point win over Navy, going 6 of 11 from 3-point range and 7 of 8 at the free-throw line.
• He is third on the team in scoring (12.1), second in steals (1.2) and fourth in rebounds (3.8).
• Theodosiou has also been the Greyhounds' best free-throw shooter this year. He has gone to the line a team-leading 76 times and made 64 for an 81.6 percentage from the charity stripe. His 74 free throws attempted are fourth in the Patriot League.

Settled In

• Jacob Theodosiou opened his Loyola career with 14 points against Columbia, but then he was averaging just 8.2 through six games.
• Since then, he has averaged a team-leading 14.5 points (145 total) in the last 10 games dating to his 23-point effort on December 2 against Coppin State. During the 10 games, a big difference has been his ability to get to the free-throw line. He has averaged 6.6 attempts from the stripe per game in those contests, up from 1.7 in the year's first six games. He has also shot 38.6 percent from 3-point range since the start of December.

Bouncing Back Nicely

• Jordan Stiemke had his lowest scoring output of the 2024-25 season to start December when he saw just 14 minutes of action, went 1 of 5 from the field and scored two points at Coppin State.
• Stiemke responded by tying his to-date season-high in scoring with 15 points five days later at Delaware State before scoring a game-best 22 at Mount St. Mary's on December 14. He then scored 12 on December 21 against Hampton and had 10 at DePaul. 
• He had his second-highest scoring output of the year with 19 in the Patriot League opener at Holy Cross, and he set a to-date career-high with 25 against Lehigh. Stiemke has averaged 15.1 points over Loyola's last nine games.

Bench Scorer

• Jordan Stiemke has been the top scorer off the bench in the Patriot League this season, averaging 12.9 points per game through 16 Loyola contests to lead conference players who have started seven or fewer games.
• Nationally, he is ranked 15th in points per game among NCAA Division I players who have played in 12 or more games and have six or fewer starts per stathead.com.
• The native of Bel Air, Maryland, was Loyola's second-leading scorer in the last 10 games of his freshman season (2023-24), averaging 10.3 points. Prior to that, he had scored just 34 points in 15 games.
• Spanning the last two seasons, Stiemke is averaging 11.96 points over the Greyhounds' last 25 games.

Turnaround On The Line

• Loyola is second in the Patriot League and No. 144 in the nation as of January 15 with a 72.8 percent mark from the free-throw line. This year's percentage is almost  10 points better than the 64.4 percent the Greyhounds shot from the charity stripe in 2023-24 when they ranked 341st out of 351 NCAA Division I teams.

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 205 NBA games through January 15 and is averaging 12.9 points and 7.1 rebounds through 35 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 an NCAA Championship at Connecticut in 2023-24, made his NBA debut on November 20 in a Grizzlies game against Philadelphia and later scored his first NBA basket on November 23... off an Aldama assist.
• 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 an NBA head coach and guided the Nuggets to the 2023 NBA Championship.

Up Next

• Loyola returns to Baltimore for its next two, starting with a January 22 game against Lafayette.