Game Information
Opponent	Colgate Raiders
Game Notes	Loyola
Date	Sunday, February 23, 2025
Time	12:00 p.m.
Location	Baltimore, Md. | Reitz Arena
Tickets	Purchase
Directions	Click Here
Online Media	ESPN+ | Live Stats

Quick Hits About The Hounds

• Loyola University Maryland men's basketball returns to Reitz Arena on Sunday, February 23, for the first of its last two regular-season home games. The Greyhounds will host Colgate University in a 12 noon game.
• Sunday's game is the first of two-straight home contests for Loyola. The Greyhounds concluded a stretch of four games out of five on the road on Wednesday night in Boston. It is just their third home game since February 1.
• Milos Ilic is one of 42 players nationally (who qualify for the national rankings) and average 13.9 or more points and 7.5 or more rebounds per game this season. Ilic enters the 16th conference game with marks of 13.9 and 7.5.
• Jacob Theodosiou leads the Patriot League in steals per game at 1.7 and total steals with 44.
• Loyola is third in the League in rebounding margin at +0.7 per game. Milos Ilic leads the Greyhounds with 7.5 rebounds per game and four other players – Jordan Stiemke, Veljko Ilic, Braeden Speed and Jacob Theodosiou – average 3.5 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.

Watch The Action

• The Loyola-Colgate 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 26 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 (.429 from .417), field-goal defense (.459, .465), scoring offense (68.3, 64.0) and scoring margin (-2.4, -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 8-2 in games when it has held its opponents to 69 or fewer points with the outliers being Army West Point's 64-60 win on February 12 and Boston University's win on February 19.

Tops In Swipes

• Loyola leads the Patriot League in steals per game (7.27) and Jacob Theodosiou is tied for first individually (1.7).
• Theodosiou has averaged 1.9 steals per game in conference contests after averaging 1.36 in non-conference outings.
• He leads the Patriot League in games with two or more steals with 14 this season, per stathead.com. 

Playing Them Close

• Eight of the Greyhounds' 15 Patriot League games this season have been decided by six or fewer points, and Loyola has gone 3-5 in those outings.

Series History Versus Colgate

• Loyola and Colgate will meet for the 26th time in series history on Saturday, the 24th time since Loyola joined the Patriot League prior to the 2013-14 season.
• The Raiders lead the series 19-6 and have taken the last nine dating back to the 2021 Patriot League Championship Game.
• Colgate won both regular-season meetings last year and won the first contest between the two programs this season.
• Jacob Theodosiou scored a career-high 32 points in this year's first meeting on February 8, but Colgate closed the game on a 10-1 run during the last 68 seconds to take an 82-68 win over Loyola.
• The Greyhounds led for more than 20 minutes of the game and were up by as much as nine in the first half.
• All six of the Greyhounds' wins in the series have come in Baltimore. Loyola is 0-12 in Hamilton.

Last Time Out

• Milos Ilic gave Loyola a 66-63 lead with 99 seconds left in regulation on Wednesday night, but Boston University tied the game with a fade-away basket and free throw 27 seconds later, and a Terriers basket with 25 seconds to play gave them a 68-66 Patriot League victory in Case Gymnasium.
• Ilic's basket put Loyola up three with 1:39 on the clock, but Kyrone Alexander made a fading jumper at 1:12, and he drew a foul on the Greyhounds. He made the ensuing free throw, and the game was tied for the eighth time, 66-66.
• The Greyhounds misfired on a pair of shots over the next 30 seconds, and the Terriers got possession on a loose ball rebound that went out of bounds on the baseline.
• Alexander converted again in the lane with a pull-up at the 25-second mark to give Boston University a 68-66 advantage for the 20th lead change of the night.
• Loyola had a shot blocked out of bounds with 6.1 seconds on the clock, and a 3-poitner from the corner after that rimmed out to preserve Boston University's win.
• The Terriers built a 53-45 lead with 11:09 to play on a Miles Brewster three, but the Greyhounds spread a 15-4 run over the next five-plus minutes.
• Stiemke scored a team-high 19 points for Loyola, while Theodosiou and Milos Ilic both had 13. Loyola outrebounded the Terriers, who entered the game as the Patriot League leader in rebounding margin, 32-31. Milos Ilic and Theodosiou each had seven, and Tyson Commander grabbed six.

Fewer Turnovers

• The Greyhounds' increase in assists per game during conference play (13.7 from 13.1) has also come with a better assist-to-turnover ratio in League contests with a plus 1.35-to-1.0 rate
• Loyola has reduced its turnovers per game to 10.9 in its 15 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 12.3 per game.
• Elon's TJ and TK Simpkins lead the group with a combined 29.9 points per game, while Utah's Gabe and Mason Madsen have combined for 23.1.
• The Ilic brothers are averaging a combined 21.9 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 13.9 points and 7.5 rebounds per game.
• Ilic's 13.9 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 29.2 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 30.0 percent this year, a rate that ranks in the top-55 nationally. In Patriot League games, he is third in the conference in percentage of shots taken when he's on the floor (30.6), and he is third in usage rate (30.7).
• Ilic ranks 15th 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 51.2 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 86 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 83.0 percent of his shots this year as two-pointers, and he has made those at a clip of 55.0 percent (132 of 240) through 26 games, a 3-percent improvement over his first two seasons.
• He has attempted only 49 shots from 3-point range this year (17 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 36.4 percent of his shots from behind the arc in the 15 League games.

Dishing, Too

• In addition to leading the team in scoring and rebounding, Milos Ilic leads the Greyhounds in assists with 69, an average of 2.85 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 6.6 he's averaged in 16 losses.
• Ilic has shot 64.3 percent from the field in the wins (36 of 56) compared to 45.1 (37 of 82) 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 seventh at 52.9 percent.

Bench Scorer

• Jordan Stiemke has been the top scorer off the bench in the Patriot League this season, averaging 12.2 points per game through 26 Loyola contests to lead conference players who have started 10 or fewer games.
• Nationally, he is ranked 30th in points per game among NCAA Division I players who have played in 23 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 12.0 points over the Greyhounds' last 36 games.

Contributions In Many Areas

• Jacob Theodosiou leads the team in minutes played (30.2) through 26 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 (12.5), first in steals (1.6) and third in rebounds (4.0) and assists (2.4). Theodosiou is first in the conference in steals per game and 13th 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 13.8 points (275 total) in the last 20 games dating to his 23-point effort on December 2 against Coppin State. During the 20 games, a big difference has been his ability to get to the free-throw line. He has averaged 5.3 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 134 he's taken in 26 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 48 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 game against the Raiders will be the first of a two-game homestand and is followed by a Wednesday, February 26, game against Bucknell University.