ANN ARBOR – You won’t detect the most important aspect of Detroit Loyola’s basketball team from the scorebook. However, it shows up all across the final results.
“The brotherhood is great,” said Jai’Ron Foster, who’s been on the team for over three seasons now. “It’s amazing that you could wake up every day and know that you can call someone your brother. You can actually call 13 guys your brother. You know that they’ve got your back and you’ve got theirs, so that’s a blessing.”
“We’re taking this year seriously,” added classmate Martez Davis. “When we know we’re not playing like we should be playing – not just the coaches, but us as leaders and us as seniors – we all come together and say, ‘Hey, we’re slacking.’ We have young guys on the team, but everybody is the same. Nobody is better than anyone. We all come together and we fix our mistakes.”
Those mistakes have been few. With 10 seniors on its 14-man roster and four returning starters from a team that won a district championship in 2024-25, this could turn out to be Loyola’s year. Midway through the season, the Bulldogs stand 9-0 and have completed their first rotation through Catholic League AA Division competition unblemished (6-0). Loyola has already avenged losses from last season to Jackson Lumen Christi, Riverview Gabriel Richard and non-league foe Grosse Pointe South.
Head Coach Dennis Morey saw the potential in this group early on, and says it’s not just a matter of paying dividends ─ it’s a matter of how they operate.
“It’s just them and their chemistry,” he said, “being able to talk to each other and tell each other what they need to do and what they need to do better, and then responding to each other.”
That was the case in Tuesday night’s 63-43 road win at Ann Arbor Fr. Gabriel Richard. While Loyola controlled the run of play over the first half and led by 17 points at the break (38-21), the Fighting Irish erased much of that gap in the third quarter, closing to within 8 points (45-37). From that point on, Loyola closed out the game on an 18-6 tear by slowing the tempo and looking for easy baskets.
“We had one bad quarter, but I thought, overall good,” Morey said. “First quarter was a little sluggish; I liked the tempo, though. Second quarter was outstanding defensively, with good patience on offense. The third quarter was very flat, not like ourselves. The fourth quarter was again, outstanding.”
Davis, Foster, DeAndre Dann and sophomore Donovan Clark are the four returning starters.
“These guys have come up through our program since their freshman year,” Morey said. “They’ve played together, they’ve won together, they’ve lost together. They understand each other and they understand what it takes. Our brotherhood is the biggest thing at Loyola; not just in our basketball program but throughout the school. We’re such a small school that we always talk about the brotherhood, how close everyone is, and how everyone is looking out for each other.”
Being able to lean on each other has created excitement around the Fenkell Road campus this winter.
“I’ve been looking forward to this season since my freshman year, knowing that I was coming in with a group of guys that I feel like I can trust,” Foster said. “They felt like they could trust me, so that was for the better; that kind of did a lot for me.”
The friendship among Loyola teammates has extended beyond the basketball court, too. While Foster and Davis said the core group has been tight since sixth grade, they realized they needed to nurture that unity even more as rising seniors.
“We knew we had a great group of seniors to lead us last year,” Davis said. “Us, as juniors, were saying we had to be better, so we did a lot of team bonding over the summer and fall, whether it was going to Coach’s house for a team barbeque, summer league games, riding in the car bonding, talking and laughing, or going to Buffalo Wild Wings after -- just having a good time to all get on the same page.”
That close-knit nature of the Bulldogs has been mirrored by their play. Against Fr. Gabriel Richard, Davis and Clark each scored 13 points, while Foster added 12. Dann and Caleb Coleman chipped in 9 apiece, and Loyola got contributions from their non-starters as well.
“It all starts in practice, and it’s not even just our starters,” Davis said. “I wouldn’t even call them the bench, because there’s no bench. We’re all equal. Our second team presses us at practice, they push us to our limit, and we come out here and execute.”
Loyola will play all six AA Division opponents a second time over the back half of the season, starting with a rematch against second-place Dearborn Divine Child on Friday in the Falcons’ gym. Even though the Bulldogs won the first meeting, Morey isn’t about to take anything for granted.
“It was the first game of the year; everyone was sluggish. Both of us were still trying to figure things out. It should be a great contest, a great test for us,” he said. “I’m just excited for our guys. Hopefully we’ll get some rest and be ready for a shootout Friday.”
Loyola is one of the favorites to win the Catholic League Cardinal Division title – following the school’s other crowns from 1997-98, 1998-99, 2003-04, 2009-10 and 2022-23 -- and go on a deep playoff run. But Foster said those concerns which will be addressed down the line.
“It’s one game at a time. We’re just trying to get better as we go. We’re trying to work on things so we are trying to sharpen up as a team -- not just one person,” he said. “We’re trying to do this as a unit.”
