Hope started Overway, Seiler, DeMaagd, Snuggerud, VanArendonk. For the foreseeable future this is Hope's starting lineup. I don't know when Steve Whittenbach is coming back and at this point my game by game updates and wishing/hoping seem like wishing and hoping. The net effect is the young guys are getting a lot of good minutes and that's not a bad thing, speaking of....... Eidson, Benson, Gardner, Byers took the majority of the substitute minutes. Lineups and rotations are certainly looking more clear-cut.
Game Recap:
I'm never quite sure what to make of D3's wilderness programs south of the Ohio River. Covenant certainly qualifies as one of those programs. Last year Covenant went 8-18 those wins included two over Berry (one of D3's lowest ranked teams) and teams like Freewill Baptist, Boyce and Tenn. Temple. Their actual record vs D3 was 5-16 and the middle of their season included a stretch of losing 12 in row. Needless to say there wasn't a lot to go on that made me excited to see the Dutchmen playing this team, other than the in-region game.
Covenant took their warmups and I really thought it would be an incredibly long night for them, the Dew Crew was out in full force tonight and did their 'counting misses' chants and Covenant reached 100 before the 10 minute mark. I don't know what kind of atmosphere's Covenant played in before but most of their home games bring in 50-250 people. I can't imagine they've played in front of 3,000 people very recently and for the program itself this was probably their first big game against one of D3's couple dozen or so "big name" programs since making the switch to D3.
Once the game tipped though I was sort of pleasantly surprised. I think Covenant played hard, played to win and didn't seem too intimidated by the surroundings. They reminded me quite a bit of the Westminster team from last spring. There was some quickness and athleticism I didn't expect. Their early press gave Hope some trouble but gradually Hope figured it out and it didn't bother them much.
Offensively Covenant made some nice extra passes and really worked the ball inside well, their turnovers were their ultimate undoing. Several of those were just pretty careless. Defensively Covenant had a lot of trouble with Hope's size and strength and most of the second half they just couldn't stop Hope without fouling.
Hope had moments in this game where they played really well on both ends of the floor. Defensively they looked much better and more active to me than against Cornerstone. Progress has been made but at times it was just a little too easy to break the defense down. This will get better, but I'm not sure Hope's going to reach the level of an elite defensive team.
In the end this ended up being a reasonably comfortable win over an opponent that's difficult to compare and difficult to process what it means exactly.
Freshmen: I have to keep telling myself how many Hope's playing, this is odd. What a story Alex Eidson is turning into though, he really looks like he's going to be the 2/3 guy off the bench. Never would have guessed that 6 weeks ago. Gardner played well with 8 points and 3 steals, its nice to have a sort of hounding defensive backup to Coltan. It was also nice to see them playing together tonight a little. At some point Fr. aren't Fr. anymore and we're getting closer. I'm not sure we've established what an average night should be for any of them yet but I like that each has become pretty solid contributors so early on in the season. Hope really needed that to happen.
Lineups: Less experimenting, more playing. As much as the first year guys are getting comfortable its looking like the coaches are as well. I'd still like to see a game without foul trouble though, it was Van Arendonk's turn tonight.
Scoring and Interesting Stats:
Turnovers: Covenant had 26 of them and Hope certainly had something to do with those but there were a handful of passes to the guy in the first row. It wasn't pretty sometimes. Hope on the other hand did a decent job in that department with 17, in a high possession game with quite a few fast breaks it wasn't bad save for the problems with the press. The more they see it the more they'll work it out, tonight it seemed to catch them off-guard.
Freethrows: 45 of them. I don't know what Hope's record for FT attempted is but we were near it. Covenant just couldn't defend without fouling and Hope just kept attacking the basket. Nice to see them make a good chunk of those as well.
Coltan Overway: 21 points, 6 assists, 3 triples..... set a nice tone early, active on defense, really felt like he got the team rolling.
Nate Snuggerud 18 points, 6 rebounds, 5 steals......pretty workman like effort, was kind of a pest on defense sometimes.
Caleb Byers 11 points.......kind of limited minutes with just 15 but produced well
Alex Eidson 10 points.......included a very Joel Holstege/David Krombeen like reverse layup. He seems to have nailed down one of the back-up 2/3 guard spots.
Billy Seiler 7 points, 9 rebounds......kind of a tough night shooting but I stuck him in here because of the rebounds which led the team
Efficiency:
Estimated Possessions: Hope 77 Covenant 81
Kind of a high paced game, considering all the trips to the line it really didn't feel or look that way. Given all Covenants turnovers I really can't account for the 4 more possessions they had. I'm not sure that's actually real, something in the formula with ft attempts (which is a guess) probably.
Offensive Efficiency: 112.44
Covenant actually came into this game with a pretty low defensive efficiency number, this might be the best anyone had done against them. Certainly the most points they've allowed. This wasn't a great night shooting from outside of layup range for Hope yet they still hit 87 points.
87 points was more than anyone's scored against Covenant by 18 and 28 over their season average.
Deffensive Efficiency: 90.04
I thought Hope was playing pretty well on defense yet they allowed Covenant to shoot 50% from the floor, so its a little surprising this number is this low. The reason is turnovers and this probably shows just how costly those were, without them Covenant was scoring at a 132 rate. Hope should feel sort of ok with this because they forced a lot of those turnovers, way to many easy baskets though. Credit where its due, Covenant made some nice extra passes.
Rebounding Efficiency:
Hope: 38.5% of available offensive rebounds
Covenant: 37.9% of available offensive rebounds
Hope probably could have done a little better job keeping Covenant off their offensive glass, I'm not sure this is much to worry about.
Moments or Plays of the game:
Nothing that changed momentum or the result of the game really happened. I did like Caleb Byers twice powering through contact and throwing the ball off the board at odd angles defying gravity and physics for two baskets.Nate VanArendonk had a mean, kind of scary dunk early in the second half where he hung on the rim a bit and the ref from way out at half-court decided it was too much. It sure looked to me like he was protecting himself.
Covenant's coach accidently called a time-out late in the game and then ended up setting up a play for Sparta's Matt den Dulk. His teammates ran it to perfection and Matt knocked one in to give his large group of supporters a nice moment.
My game ball goes to:
Coltan Overway, he was really good tonight with one of his better offensive games.
Standings
Overway - 2
Byers - 1
DeMaagd - 1
VanArendonk - 1
Seiler - 1
Going Forward:
The most important thing from last night's game was the in-region win which moves Hope to 1-2. From a team perspective I think it was a good outing overall against an opponent that really was probably a pretty big unknown. Hope just sort of put it in cruise control for much of the game.
I give Covenant a lot of credit for their effort, they played hard and didn't seem to overwhelmed with the environment and didn't seem to get down on themselves. There was some quickness and athleticism I probably didn't expect. Overall I think they carried themselves well.
Saturday Hope will play Spring Arbor a team I'm not quite sure about. They seemed to play well against Olivet and Grace Bible yet beat the Comets on a last second shot and just scraped by the Tigers. I think both teams will have a match-up problem, Hope matching SAU's 4 guard sets, and SAU matching Hope's bigger line-ups. This might be a game where we see more Chase DeMaagd and Matt Parisi and maybe Hope playing some zone.
Up Next: Saturday vs Spring Arbor at DeVos Fieldhouse
No comments:
Post a Comment