Hoopapalooza Stop 4: Rogers Park

(Many apologies. I could've sworn I posted a blog before I let the Gentile Center close to midnight, but I'm not seeing it in the system.

Since I was stupid and didn't create the blog in a word file, I'll have to try to recall it from scratch. Here goes...)

Loyola's Midnight Madness, which opened its doors at 10 p.m. Friday, attracted about 1,000 students who showed up for pizza and T-shirts and pop and raffles and giveaways and contests. Shrewdly, though, the marketing folks have learned to hand out tickets that can't be exchanged for the maroon "Rambler Pride" T-shirts until the end of the shindig.

That kept the students in the stands and the energy high for the whole event, which wrapped up about 11:40 p.m.

HIGHLIGHTS:
--Junior guard Geoff McCammon, the former Conant great, won the dunk contest. He closed out freshman forward Shaun Adams in the finals by having two of Loyola's women's players kneel in the lane...then having two more kneel on top of them. McCammon flew over the wincing quartet for the winning jam. Six-foot guard Charles "Chuck Nasty" Winborne didn't make the finals.

--Senior sharpshooter Marcus Thames buried 20 3-pointers in one minute to advance to the co-ed finals. He drilled 15 3s in the finals, but suffered a heart-breaking loss to senior Maggie McCloskey in the finals. McCloskey, who owns the NCAA women's record with 3-pointers in 69 consecutive games, hit her 16th 3-pointer at the buzzer to win the title.

--The women ran through a scrimmage, then the men had a scrimmage which made the NBA All-Star Game look like a heated competition. I hadn't seen so much cherry-picking since my playground days.

However, coach Jim Whitesell didn't exactly want his guys getting after it too hard. He even held out senior forward Andy Polka, who's 100 percent after undergoing offseason surgery to correct a serious ankle problem. Polka, an Oshkosh, Wis., native, went to the Green Bay Packers' doctor among others to figure out his issues.

"I tore all the ligaments in my ankle," Polka said. "They knew that all along and they thought it was going to be OK (with rest). But it ended up chipping the bones off in the front of my ankle and the ligament never grew back right. It's kind of hard to play basketball with an injury like that."

Now Polka benches 350 pounds without breaking a sweat and could be just the kind of senior force that this inexperienced Ramblers squad needs if it doesn't want to be buried in the solid Horizon League.

"As I keep saying to my wife, 'It's going to be young and fun,' " said coach Jim Whitesell.

How young? Loyola has four scholarship freshmen, four scholarship sophomores, one new junior-college transfer, a junior in McCammon who has never played more than 14 minutes in a game and two seniors (Polka and Thomas).

Polka promised that sophomore PG Courtney Stanley, who started coming on late last year, is as fast with the ball as any point guard in the Midwest. Whitesell suggested that Stanley and freshman PG Gabe Kindred will play together on occasion and get the ball moving.

LW