Hope started Overway, Seiler, DeMaagd, Snuggerud, VanArendonk. Both teams used fairly short benches and had 4 guys logging major minutes. Alex Eidson further solidified the idea he's the 2/3 guy off the bench with 29 minutes.
Game Recap:
Unfortunately due to a bout of food poisoning and an incredibly terrible audio connection I wasn't able to follow this game much. I tuned in to follow the live stats with about 5 minutes to play and the overtime.
On the list of teams I figured Hope would have trouble with Spring Arbor was kind of in that gray area. I saw them on Tuesday struggle with Olivet and had the impression they were not playing well as a team. On Friday I saw them struggle to put away Grace Bible. Their four guard offense presents match-up problems the biggest being not many teams have someone athletic enough to defend Chris Bellamy, throw in the very good looking Rob Hogans and its a tough deal for some teams, Hope would be one of those 'some teams'. Bellamy had 32 Hogans 17.
Olivet played zone for most of their game Tuesday with great success, SAU went 4-12 from 3 that night and Olivet never had a reason to come out of the zone. I understand Hope played some on Saturday, SAU went 8-13, doubling their season avg., enough to keep them close enough and give them a chance to win the game.
Spring Arbor is now 8-4 on the year but 8-1 outside the excellent NAIA Crossroads Conference. This isn't much comfort to me as I had this game penciled in as a win. For the weekend, Hope missed an opportunity to gain a little momentum heading to Orlando. Instead they played two teams who pretty much beat their season averages in a lot of categories. This was not the weekend Hope was looking for.
Series: You have to go back to 2002, but Spring Arbor has now won 3 of their last 4 against Hope.
- 2001 Hope 102 Spring Arbor 78
- 2002 Spring Arbor 72 Hope 71
- 2010 Spring Arbor 63 Hope 55
- 2012 Hope 73 Spring Arbor 56
- 2013 Spring Arbor 77 Hope 73 ot
Turnovers: Hope had 20 in this game, 14 of those were logged as SAU steals. This is too many regardless of how an opponent defends you. In a close game you can't have 7 more turnovers than your opponent and expect to win.
3 point shooting: For the season SAU was shooting just 32 % from behind the arc coming into this one and went 8-13. Those are major points. Hope actually had a pretty good day from back there themselves going 7-16. I'm not sure these quite wash-out though.
Nate Snuggerud 23 points, 5 rebounds.......to be expected given SAU's front-line is one guy, I'm sure Nate had a guard on him most of the day
Billy Seiler 14 points.....pretty good considering the quality of guards on the other side
Efficiency:
Estimated Possessions: Hope 67 Spring Arbor 71
Considering this was an overtime game this was a pretty slow paced game. That probably plays into SAU's hands a bit. The turnover difference of -7 is the difference in possessions.
Offensive Efficiency: 109.53
Only slightly off where I'd like to see them. Turnovers is probably the primary reason this wasn't better.
Deffensive Efficiency: 108.91
This is above Spring Arbor's season avg coming in and is becoming a pattern. The defense needs to tighten up, I'm all for giving leeway on the quality of opponents but at some point you have to start stopping people and Hope's not doing that well enough.
Rebounding Efficiency:
Hope: 53.8% of available offensive rebounds
Spring Arbor: 41.9% of available offensive rebounds
Hope had a good day on their own boards, against a team playing mostly 4 guards it should probably look like that. Against a team playing 4 guards 41.9 probably isn't too good.
Moments or Plays of the game:
Three point shots in overtime are just deadly, SAU's Rob Hogan's hit one 14 seconds into overtime and Hope was behind the whole period.SAU's scored points on every possession of overtime but one.
My game ball goes to:
Nate Snuggerud, having not seen this one I don't know who else should get it.
Standings
Overway - 2
Byers - 1
DeMaagd - 1
VanArendonk - 1
Seiler - 1
Snuggerud - 1
Going Forward:
It's going to take some time to figure out what a loss to Spring Arbor means, they have two more games with MIAA teams in the next couple weeks (Alma, Albion). So there will be some score comparisons to go on, the one with SAU/Olivet is not favorable. This may be a loss that looks pretty bad as the season continues, or maybe not so bad depending on what SAU does in its conference.
Hope got the in-region win they needed on Friday night but they missed out on gaining some much needed momentum going into their downtime and heading to Florida. Its now 10 days until they play Mississippi College and I hope this loss burns a little bit. Mississippi is another of the important in-region games and another opponent that's a complete unknown.
The defensive performance this weekend was kind of troubling. Friday they looked good at times but gave up too many easy baskets. For the weekend both opponents shot above their season averages and scored at a higher rate than they had been. These are things that can't really continue.
Up Next: Dec 20, vs Mississippi College in Orlando at the DeVos playground.
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