March Madness: Ranking the remaining teams in the South Region

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DALLAS, TX – MARCH 17: Sister Jean Dolores-Schmidt celebrates after the Loyola Ramblers beat the Tennessee Volunteers 63-62 in the second round of the 2018 NCAA Tournament at the American Airlines Center on March 17, 2018 in Dallas, Texas. (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images) /

3. Loyola-Chicago Ramblers (11 seed)

Strength: Balance and poise

With the obvious exception of UMBC, no team has had a more exciting tournament than the Ramblers, who is one of just a few teams to have back-to-back game-winning shots to get to the Sweet Sixteen. Clearly close games won’t be an issue, which is good considering how low scoring their games usually are.

While Clayton Custer is the guy who gets most of the praise, he’s just one of five guys who average double figures, including Donte Ingram who made the go-ahead bucket to beat Miami. This team doesn’t need one guy to score 20+ to win, which can be a good thing.

Weakness: Offense when down

Loyola-Chicago benefitted from playing a couple of teams who although are good, aren’t offensively explosive. This team isn’t going to score 80 points likely and depends on keeping it low to really have a chance.

Their upcoming opponent Nevada showed against Cincinnati (an even better defensive team than the Ramblers), and are a top-tier shooting team. Kentucky can use their abundance of athletes to try to overwhelm this team as well. Is the defense good enough to hold them down? Or will an unknown source of an offense be required to make a historic run?

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