Last Season: 27-2, 14-0 1st Place
win that made you raise an eyebrow: none
loss that made you raise an eyebrow: Illinois Wesleyan 101-108 2OT
Seniors: David Krombeen, Peter Bunn, Logan Neil, Nate King
Everything that needed to be said about Hope's 2012 season can be found in the post The 2012 Season from a couple weeks ago.
2012-2013
Key Returnees: Nate Snuggerud, Nate VanArendonk, Coltan Overway, Billy Seiler, Chris Ray, Josh Holwerda, Chase DeMaagd
If you've managed to follow along to this point you'll probably take notice that no one in the league graduates as much as Hope and Hope has just about the fewest returning players who contributed significant minutes last season. The biggest hole in Hope's lineup comes at the guard positions where Overway and Seiler will be the only experienced players. This past season Hope shot only 354 three-point shots and made 134, I'm fairly certain these are the lowest totals since the first or second year this shot became available. Nate Snuggerud is the only Hope player returning who shot over 30% from the arc, he's a forward not a 3-point shooter, so this is a big area of concern.
Over the past seven seasons or more, no one in this league has been better at replacing graduation losses than Hope. On paper this team looks quite a bit like the 2009 team that followed the 2008 Final Four team but maybe a little more experienced. That team wasn't expected to do much but ended up nearly winning the MIAA and winning the MIAA Tournament led by Jesse Reimink's incredible Senior season. Hope may have to lean on that kind of individual performance from Nate Snuggerud. Nate had himself some man sized games to close out 2012, so there's no reason to think he can't be that kind of guy.
Part of me really doesn't want to believe there's as much of a significant gap between Hope and the rest of the MIAA as there appears. Over the past two season's Hope has won 30 of 32 vs MIAA opponents, the next closest is Calvin with 18 and Adrian with 17 wins. The question then is does losing 3 players like Krombeen, Bunn and Neil bring Hope far enough back that they aren't a factor in the MIAA race? I think that answer is no.
Range of finish: 1st if things go really well, 2nd or 3rd
I was hoping to put all of these together into one final sure to be wrong preview on Friday, but that might have to wait until Monday. Now that I've completed these review/previews, I probably won't have much to write about for awhile. In the hopper are some thoughts on moving the Championship game to Atlanta (waiting for more info), maybe a look around the Great Lakes Region, some thoughts about schedules as they become available, and a former Hope player gave me a whole list of great things to think about and hopefully write about. Those will probably have to wait for rainy days.
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