For seven years, Patsos was Sisyphus and Loyola basketball was his rock. Every time he would push the rock up to 18 or 19 wins and third place in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, it would slide back to 12 or 13 wins and seventh in the conference. There was great support in Baltimore: Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti came to games; Patsos’s mentor, Gary Williams, pushed loyal Maryland fans to get behind his former assistant’s program.
But every time Patsos nudged the rock anywhere close to the top of the mountain, the damn thing slid back on top of him again.
Until Friday night.
Finally, Reitz Arena looked exactly the way Patsos envisioned it when he first walked in and saw 2,100 empty seats — most of which stayed empty on game nights back then. The joke about Loyola basketball in those days was that during timeouts most of the students who showed up for a game were on the court — leading cheers in front of a mostly empty student section.
Not anymore. The place was packed and rocking — literally — for Loyola’s game against Iona, with first place in the MAAC on the line. When the students began jumping up and down during timeouts, the bleachers actually rocked.
“This is the game we want to play,” Patsos told his players. “These guys are the champs. Don’t expect to knock them out with one punch.”
Iona is the defending league champion and the MAAC team, along with Siena, with the most impressive basketball pedigree. This season, it beat Maryland in November — by 26 — and there were a number of NBA scouts in the stands to take a good hard look at point guard Scott Machado, who’s averaging nearly 10 assists per game. Both teams were 11-2 in conference play. Iona had won the first meeting by 11 in January.
For 30 minutes, the night played out exactly the way Patsos dreamed it while he was battling that rock. His team jumped to an 11-3 lead and Iona Coach Tim Cluess called a timeout. The lead continued to build. Before the first half was over, Cleuss had called two more timeouts (bringing back memories of Pete Gillen in his days at Virginia) and he hadn’t slowed down Loyola at all.
R.J. Williams, a tiny jet of a freshman point guard who generously is listed at 5 feet 8, had kept Machado out of the lane and forced him into some decidedly un-NBA-like play. Loyola was dominating on the boards and beating Iona down the court consistently. The score at the break was 47-30, and the only problem in Patsos’s world was figuring out what to yell at his team at halftime.
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