The Siena Saints (7-12, 4-5) will try to end another two game losing streak as they head to Baltimore, Maryland to face the Loyola Greyhounds at Reitz Arena Friday night at 7:00pm.

The Saints have six two-game losing streaks and one three-game losing streak on the season, and haven’t been able to generate any momentum during a roller coaster 2010-2011 campaign.

Injuries and inexperience continue to be the main causes behind the Saints’ woes, but they have also had increasing difficulty over the last few weeks to shoot the ball with any effectiveness.  Perhaps it’s mounting pressure, perhaps it’s just bad luck, but the Saints will try to get a valuable road win on Friday night to even their record in the conference against an improved Greyhound club.

Led by head coach Jimmy Patsos the Greyhounds have won their last four contests and 6 of their last seven games, highlighted by a home victory against conference leader Fairfield – the Stags’ only conference loss so far this season.  The team has managed to turn their season around after losing six of seven games in the month of December.  Loyola brings a balanced scoring effort every night as the team has seven players averaging over 8 points a game, and depth as they have 8 players averaging more than 19 minutes played per game.

The Greyhounds’ effort on Friday night will begin with their leading scorer to try and stop Ryan Rossiter’s conference domination to get the home win – 6’10″ junior forward Shane Walker is leading the team in scoring with 11 points per game and is also grabbing almost 8 rebounds per contest.  Senior tri-captain Jamal Barney continues to excel coming off the bench, scoring just over 10 points in 16 games played this year.  And with the injury riddled Saints, the depth and scoring ability of almost the entire Greyhounds rotation will cause problems on both ends of the floor.  The Saints have had their moments this year, but they may continue to struggle against Loyola.

Coach Buonaguro had mentioned in the past week that he wants to get his freshman point guard Rahkeem Brookins some more rest to try and keep him from hitting the mythical “freshman wall,” so look for Jonathan Breeden to get some more run at the point.  Freshman swing-man Trenity Burdine has seen increased action as well, so getting the underclassmen more minutes at this juncture would seem to be apropos, and potentially beneficial.  Clarence Jackson will remain out with an ankle sprain, and Kyle Downey will start in his place again, but Downey is still nursing a sprained ankle of his own.  Davis Martens may return to action, but there has been no update on the status of his ankle injury.  Owen Wignot will continue to start and play with his bruised finger.

The Saints will look to endure the remaining conference schedule and avoid more injury while trying to stay out of the play-in game and keep pace with the rest of the division.  If the Saints can get healthy by the end of the year and find themselves in the middle of the pack, there’s no doubt that they can do some damage in the tournament.  Coach Buonaguro must also look, though, to the future, and try to get the players he has to be ready for next year and beyond without mortgaging the present.  These are tough times for Saints fans, but the players continue to play hard, and will continue to do so until the final buzzer sounds in Bridgeport, or beyond.