The loser of the Loyola-Bradley game Thursday will be the first team to get knocked out of the Missouri Valley Conference tournament.
The winner will suffer an even tougher fate — a date with top-seeded Wichita State.
Of course Loyola coach Porter Moser still would relish a shot to take down the Shockers, who went 16-2 in league play. But first things first.
“Bradley is very young but playing with a ton of confidence, and their young guys have logged a lot of minutes,” he said. “They’re playing loose, like they have nothing to lose.”
Loyola (14-16, 7-11) enters as the No. 8 seed, and Bradley (5-26, 3-15) is ninth. The teams split their meetings, both of which featured a combination of strong defense and weak shooting. The winning team scored 54 points in both games.
“If we win ugly,” Moser said, “I’m fine.”
Loyola went 24-13 last year, and Moser was hoping for similar results in his fifth season. But leadership issues and a team-wide shooting slump (42.8 percent, 34 percent from 3) led to inconsistencies.
“We didn’t have that alpha-dog leader,” Moser said. “That has been an issue — and our shooting has been worse. But our attitude has been great in terms of effort and defending. That’s what has kept us in games.”
Bradley, meanwhile, has struggled while giving freshmen more than 80 percent of the team’s total minutes, making it the nation’s youngest team.
If 10.5-point favorite Loyola can get by Bradley, the Ramblers would take on a 23-7 Wichita State team that Jerry Palm of CBSSports.com projects as an 11-seed in the NCAA tournament.
Wichita State beat the Ramblers 76-54 one week ago in a game that was never in doubt.
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“A lot of people say: ‘Oh, Wichita,’ but a lot of crazy stuff happens in March,” Moser said. “The good news is we played them last week, so the ‘scout’ is fresh. And (to win the tournament) you’d have to go through them anyway.”
Twitter @TeddyGreenstein