As the season’s midpoint approaches, the Loyola Ramblers, coached by Mary Helen Walker, have one of the most improved records in women’s college basketball.
Last season, Walker’s first at Loyola and first as a head coach, the Ramblers struggled to a 3-23 record. It was Loyola’s sixth straight season of 20 or more losses. In the last eight years, under five coaches, Loyola’s record was 40-172, a winning percentage of .189.
Going into this weekend’s games at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and Texas-Pan American, junior center Lauren Sirus, sophomore guard Tracy Hoffmann and their teammates have a 6-4 record and a five-game winning streak.
To put the improvement in perspective, the six wins matches the total victories Loyola achieved in 51 games the last two seasons.
Walker, a St. Louis native and 1991 graduate of Holy Cross, said her players received “a taste” of improvement when they ended last season by losing the 21st of their last 22 games. In the Midwestern Collegiate Conference tournament, the Ramblers gave eventual tourney champ Wisconsin-Green Bay a battle, falling 66-61. Last season wasn’t a total loss for Loyola. Sirus, a 6-foot-1-inch Immaculate Heart of Mary graduate, averaged 12 points a game, shot a school-record 60.9 percent from the floor and made second-team all-MCC. Hoffmann, the fiercely competitive 5-7 former Sandburg player, averaged 13.3 points and 4.2 assists a game and made the MCC’s all-newcomers team.
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But Walker had missed recruiting season, because she was not named coach until April 1999. And the team she had coming back for 2000-01 lacked depth and defense.
Walker addressed those shortcomings, using the recruiting skills she honed as an assistant at Providence. She signed freshman guards Lauren Yops and Jennetria Harden from Michigan. She recruited 5-11 forward and Elgin native Ramona Aguado from Downstate John A. Logan Junior College. Logan is coached by Marty Hawkins, who coached Loyola’s last winning team in 1988-89.
Yops has become an effective point guard, enabling Hoffmann to play shooting guard. Harden, the team leader in steals, prefers to come off the bench. Aguado can drive to the basket or shoot from three-point range.
Helping one another in Walker’s motion offense, the two veterans and three recruits divide the scoring rather evenly: Sirus 12.7 points per game, Hoffmann 11.5, Yops 10.8, Harden 9.6 and Aguado 7.8.
Last year Loyola’s entire team consisted of nine women. This year Walker has nine or more who contribute.
Frequent starter Beth Dilling, from Mother McAuley, averages 5.2 points a game. Veteran sharpshooter Ryan Johnson from Ann Arbor, Mich., contributes 6.2 points a game. There’s also Maggie Toczylowski (3.9 points) from the St. Louis area and senior guard Kristy Madura (2.0) from Schaumburg (2.00.
Loyola has been an outstanding free-throw-shooting team, hitting 73.9 percent. Dilling, very aggressive near the glass, has averaged only 18 minutes per game but has tried the most free throws, 42. Sirus is shooting 84.6 percent, Yops 78.9 and Aguado 87.5.
“I knew nothing could happen overnight,” Walker said. “I knew I first had to earn the players’ trust.
“I knew in my heart we could get it done this year. It would be easy now to say, `We’re satisfied.’ But we don’t want to rest on it.”
Praise for Illini: Tennessee coach Pat Summitt was not shocked when unranked Illinois upset No. 14 Auburn 73-56 and snapped the Tigers’ eight-year, 55-game home winning streak against non-conference opponents.
“Illinois was a very, very young, but talented team when we played them in Hawaii in November,” Summitt said of her team’s 111-62 victory. “But Theresa Grentz is a great coach. Illinois’ great schedule helped make Illinois a great team.”
Three Illini freshmen combined to make 19-of-33 shots and score 44 points in the win at Auburn. Iveta Marcauskaite, 6-4 native of Lithuania, hit 11-of -16 and scored 24. Aminata Yanni hit 4-of-6 and scored 11. Anne O’Neil hit 4-of -11 and scored nine.