Loyola men’s basketball player Andrew Fava has lived in Baltimore, Gainesville and now New Orleans, but to him, Loyola feels like home.

“The first thing I realized was that this is a school where everybody knows everybody,” Fava said.

While transferring from a much larger university to a smaller campus was a huge transition for Fava, he was already very familiar with Loyola’s Jesuit values and their basketball team.

“I’m a Catholic. It’s a good Catholic school. I know the Jesuit education, but at the same time, this is a really great basketball team,” Fava said.

Fava attended a small Jesuit high school, Loyola Blakefield High School in Baltimore, Maryland before attending the University of Florida, which was his dream school. However, Fava also knew he would like the smaller size and feel that Loyola offered to him. That small college feel is something he said is shared between his Jesuit high school experience and his current Jesuit university experience. That feeling led him to pick Loyola as his transfer school.

“A lot of the people who come to your games; you get to know personally, whereas at Florida you have people rooting for you that you’ve never met,” Fava said.

Fava is excited to play for the men’s team. He liked that the team already had a great track record from last season and a lot of good underclass players.