Game Information
Opponent	American Eagles
Game Notes	Loyola
Date	Saturday, February 15, 2025
Time	4:00 p.m.
Location	Washington, D.C. | Bender Arena
Tickets	Purchase
Directions	Click Here
Online Media	ESPN+ | Live Stats

Quick Hits About The Hounds

• Loyola University Maryland men's basketball starts a two-game road swing on Saturday, February 15, with a 4 o'clock tilt at Bender Arena in Washington, D.C., against American University. The game is the second of a Greyhounds-Eagles doubleheader with the Loyola and American women's teams tipping off at 12:30 p.m.
• Milos Ilic is one of 39 players nationally (who qualify for the national rankings) and average 14.0 or more points and 7.5 or more rebounds per game this season. Ilic enters the 14th conference game with marks of 14.0 and 7.6.
• Loyola is third in the League in rebounding margin at +0.9 per game. Milos Ilic leads the Greyhounds with 7.6 rebounds per game and four other players – Jordan Stiemke, Veljko Ilic, Braeden Speed and Jacob Theodosiou – average 3.3 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-American game will stream live on ESPN+.

Progress Being Made

• 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). Loyola then eclipsed last year's total in its 17th game this season. Through 23 games, the Greyhounds have made a three-win improvement since last year.
• 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 (.431 from .417), field-goal defense (.455, .465), scoring offense (69.2, 64.0) and scoring margin (-1.7, -7.9).

Magic Numbers

• Scoring defense has been a staple of the Greyhounds 10 wins this season, games in which they have yielded just 61.8 points per game compared to a 24-game average of 70.8.
• Loyola has gone 8-1 in games when it has held its opponents to 69 or fewer points with the only outlier being Army West Point's 64-60 win on February 12.

Series History Versus American

• Loyola and American will meet for the 108th time in series history on Saturday when the teams take the floor in Bender Arena. The Eagles, who are the Greyhounds' most-played Patriot League opponent, hold a 55-52 lead in the previous 107 games.
• The teams split a pair of regular-season meetings last year, each winning on the other's home floor. American took a 66-52 victory in Baltimore on January 15, 2024. Loyola then outlasted American in a 44-43 decision on February 7 in Washington, D.C.
• In this season's first meeting on January 13 in Baltimore, the Eagles scored off the game's opening tip and never trailed in a 73-54 victory. 
• Loyola and American, which were longtime foes in the old Mason-Dixon Conference, first met during the 1927-28 season when the teams split a pair of meetings.

Last Time Out

• Army West Point scored the last seven points of Wednesday night's game against Loyola, and the Black Knights left Reitz Arena with a 64-60 road victory.
• Jordan Stiemke grabbed a rebound off a missed Greyhounds free throw and flipped a pass to Braeden Speed cutting to the basket, and Speed laid in a basket to give Loyola a 60-57 lead with 3:28 to go, but it was the last Loyola points of the game.
• Josh Scovens pulled Army West Point within two, making the back end of two at the free-throw line 30 seconds later, and then Jalen Rucker made two with 1:33 on the clock to tie the game at 60-60.
• A Loyola turnover gave the ball back to the Black Knights, and Rucker pulled up from inside the foul line to hit a jumper with 43 ticks on the clock, putting Army West Point up a pair, 62-60. Loyola had a 3-point attempt rim out with 25 seconds left, and the long rebound went out of bounds in Army West Point's favor. Rucker was fouled after the inbound, and he made both shots at the charity stripe.
• The Greyhounds got off a pair of 3-pointers in the final 15 seconds, but neither connected, and Army West Point finished with the win.
• Milos Ilic scored a team-high 20 points and led Loyola with eight rebounds as the Greyhounds had a 44-33 advantage on the boards.  Jordan Stiemke added 13 points to go with six boards, while Veljko Ilic scored 11 and had six boards.

Fewer Turnovers

• The Greyhounds' increase in assists per game during conference play (13.8 from 13.1) has also come with a better assist-to-turnover ratio in League contests with a plus 1.33-to-1.0 rate
• Loyola has reduced its turnovers per game to 10.8 in its 13 conference outings compared to 13.7 out of the league.

Scoring Twins

• Milos and Veljko Ilic are one of 10 sets of twins playing for the same team in NCAA Division I Men's Basketball this year, and they rank third among twins in scoring. They lead the country's twins in rebounding with a combined 12.7 per game.
• Elon's TJ and TK Simpkins lead the group with a combined 28.4 points per game, while Utah's Gabe and Mason Madsen have combined for 23.6.
• The Ilic brothers are averaging a combined 22.0 points per game. 

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 14.0 points and 7.6 rebounds per game.
• Ilic's 14.0 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 29.3 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 30.3 percent this year, a rate that ranks in the top-55 nationally. In Patriot League games, he is second in the conference in percentage of shots taken when he's on the floor (31.1), and he is second in usage rate (31.3)
• Ilic ranks 24th 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 51.5 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 87 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 83.1 percent of his shots this year as two-pointers, and he has made those at a clip of 54.8 percent (121 of 221) through 24 games, a 3-percent improvement over his first two seasons.
• He has attempted only 45 shots from 3-point range this year (16.9 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 on 183 shots.
• Ilic has been taking threes at a slightly higher rate during Patriot League contests, averaging 2.2 per game compared to 1.5 out of conference. He has made 41.4 percent of his shots from behind the arc in the 13 League games, 44.4 percent in Loyola's last five games.

Dishing, Too

• In addition to leading the team in scoring and rebounding, Milos Ilic leads the Greyhounds in assists with 67, an average of 2.79 per game. He is the only Patriot League player to lead his team in all three categories.
• He ranks 11th in the nation in assists per game for players 6-foot-10 or taller (per stathead.com), 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.

Veljko In Victories

• Veljko Ilic has been key in Loyola's wins this year, and his statistics reflect it. The senior post player has averaged 10.0 points in the nine wins he has played in – he missed the VMI game with an injury – a more than five-point increase over the 6.4 he's averaged in 14 losses.
• Ilic has shot 64.3 percent from the field in the wins (36 of 56) compared to 42.9 (30 of 70) in the losses. The numbers in wins are buoyed significantly by going 7 of 9 in wins against both Navy and at Lehigh.
• With his 7 of 9 shooting performance at Lehigh on January 18 moved him into qualifying for the conference statistics in field goal percentage. He ranks sixth at 52.4 percent.

Bench Scorer

• Jordan Stiemke has been the top scorer off the bench in the Patriot League this season, averaging 12.0 points per game through 24 Loyola contests to lead conference players who have started 10 or fewer games.
• Nationally, he is ranked 29th in points per game among NCAA Division I players who have played in 20 or more games and have 10 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 11.8 points over the Greyhounds' last 33 games.

Contributions In Many Areas

• Jacob Theodosiou leads the team in minutes played (29.8) through 24 games as a first-year player on the Greyhounds' roster.
• 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. His 22-point game at Bucknell marked his fourth with 20 or more this year, and he set a new career-best with 32 on February 8 at Colgate.
• He is second on the team in scoring (12.6), first in steals (1.5) and third in rebounds (3.8). Theodosiou is fifth in the conference in steals per game and 10th in points.

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 leads the team with 14.1 points (254 total) in the last 18 games dating to his 23-point effort on December 2 against Coppin State. During the 17 games, a big difference has been his ability to get to the free-throw line. He has averaged 5.1 attempts from the stripe per game in those contests, up from 1.7 in the year's first six games. 

Starting To Spark

• Tyson Commander joined the starting lineup in the second game of the year and was in the opening five for 19-straight games until coming off the bench on February 1 against Boston University. 
• In that new role, he has sparked bench scoring in a role that Jordan Stiemke previously held. Commander scored nine against the Terriers and then went for 16 to tie his season-high in a win at Lafayette.
• He has scored nine or more points in six games this year. In those six games, he has taken 54 shots, a total that accounts for 42.2 percent of the 124 he's taken in 24 total games.

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. He has played in 216 NBA games through February 14 and is averaging 12.8 points and 6.7 rebounds in 46 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 for the Grizzlies
• 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 19 games this year for Golden State.
• 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

• The Greyhounds head to New England for a Wednesday, February 19, game at Boston University.
• Loyola then returns to Reitz Arena on Sunday, February 23, to host Colgate University.