LOUISIANA La. — Loyola-New Orleans will never be confused with Georgia Tech ... except maybe for its strong academic program.

In basketball, the Wolfpack became a confidence-builder here Monday night.

After Louisiana’s 79-45 devastation at the hands of Georgia Tech last Tuesday in the Preseason NIT opener, the Cajuns needed Monday’s 89-57 runaway win over the NAIA Wolfpack in the worst way, according to head coach Jessie Evans.

“This was good for us,” Evans said after his squad bolted to a 44-24 halftime lead and led by a 30-point margin most of the second half. “We responded well. Now that we’ve gotten through that, we need to get tougher and get some more leadership.”

The Cajuns (1-1) were tough enough to go on a 13-0 run late in the first half, using three straight three-pointers from Brad Boyd and Antoine Landry to go from a 24-16 advantage at the 6:10 mark to a 37-16 bulge with 2:30 showing on Brian Hamilton’s transition layup.

Then, early in the second half, Laurie Bridges’ three-pointer opened a 16-0 run that made it 60-26 before Loyola (3-3) finally got its second bucket after halftime to snap the streak.

“From the start, they (Loyola) looked like they were shaky with their ball handling,” said Bridges, who had five steals and six assists to go with 17 points. “We got a lot of turnovers on the press.”

Loyola committed 30 turnovers, 19 in the first half when the Cajuns had 12 steals.

“When you do that, you’re not going to beat anybody,” said Loyola coach and UL Lafayette graduate Jerry Hernandez. “We teach the bounce pass all the time, and they probably got 10 turnovers when we had air passes that they deflected and turned into layups on the other end.”

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Dan McDonald
dmcdonald@lafayette.gannett.com