Wheaton 79 Hope 75

Box Score
this link isn't working, I'll fix it when it becomes available.  You can view the boxscore by going here and choosing it in the game results from Saturday

Hope started Overway, Seiler, DeMaagd, Snuggerud, VanArendonk.  Third time Hope's used this starting 5.  Gardner and Byers were first off the bench, Eidson and Benson followed about 1 minute later.  Nine guys saw the most action.  Once again the substitutions and lineups felt a little more settled.  We're getting there, until Whittenbach comes back then we can blow everything up again.  Btw, Whittenbach was dressed but didn't play.  Still next week?  (fingers crossed)

Game Recap: 

(sorry about the extra line spacing, if I could fix it I would)
 
Except for the part about falling behind by 15 I think this one went about as expected.  I was pretty impressed with what Wheaton has going for a basketball team.  Last year I felt Wheaton was the best D3 team I saw, they nearly and maybe should have won the CCIW and I'm not so sure I wasn't watching this years CCIW champion yesterday -on video.  We'll see of course but they looked pretty good.

Hope fell behind 6-0 early before gathering themselves after a timeout and rolled off 8 points of their own.  It was a pretty good early stretch of basketball for both teams.  Hope made 6 or 7 shots in a row and scored points on 9 straight possessions by my quick count.  It was enough to build a mini 3 or 4 point lead for a few minutes.  Right about the time it felt like Hope was taking a bit of control Wheaton hit 3's on 3 of 4 possessions in succession, 12 of their next 13 points came from behind the arc and a 5 point lead was a 2 point deficit.

Wheaton went in the locker room up 40-36 in a very entertaining and well played first half.  Once again Hope had to deal with some foul trouble, this time Nate Van Arendonk picked up two early fouls.  Hope's been working around this pretty ok thus far but I'd really, really, really like to see them make it a half without someone having to sit.  Just to see what a difference it makes, I think they're 0-5 in the non-first half foul trouble category.

Early in the second half Wheaton imposed their defensive will and it seemed to become more and more difficult for Hope to find open shots.  The deficit found its way to 9 before a couple big back-to-back threes put Wheaton up by 15 at 65-50 with a little over 9 to play.  Then all of the sudden the defensive light bulb went on.  Hope really started pressuring the ball and were rewarded with an incredible 4 straight steals which they converted to points.  Wheaton's prolific FT shooting kept Hope at bay however, Hope did a great job fighting back into this one and even had several other chances to cut the deficit further but just couldn't make the key shot.   

Overall I thought Hope played really well and played through some adversity, its good to do those kinds of things early.  I don't know where the sudden defensive energy came from at the end but bottle it up and bring it back as much as possible.  It was a stunning couple minutes that took a team from pretty much dead to suddenly right in the thing.  Wheaton ended with just 1 FG in the last 9 minutes, granted on only 3 shots because of trips to the line, but still, that's awesome.


random things

The last 3 Hope/Wheaton games have been pretty excellent. 

• 2011  Hope 80 Wheaton 74
• 2012  Hope 79 Wheaton 78
• 2013  Wheaton 79 Hope 75 

This one was a lot like last year, a frantic comeback at the end that falls a little short.......without the absolute theft of the game by the winner this year.



One quarter of Hope's minutes were logged by the Freshmen Gardner, Eidson and Benson.  So far each has had nice moments and some tough ones.  Today was a little tough for Gardner and Eidson, pretty good for Benson.  It should be pretty clear by now these 3 figure prominently in the plans so some inconsistency should be expected.  I think the next couple weeks of games is pretty important for them to gain some confidence.  Hope's going to need these guys.

In-region record troubles?     Possibly, I think what this loss does besides making them 0-2 in-region is it really makes the upcoming Covenant, Mississippi College and Aurora games must haves.  To be a really viable at-large candidate you need to have no more than 6-7 in-region losses.  If you are an at-large candidate it means you likely lost a few league games along the way.  I would feel a lot better if they could get to the conference portion of the schedule 3-2 in-region.  The MIAA is going to be a pretty interesting race this year with some fun games I think.  The upside is Hope's in-region strength of schedule should be crazy good.  Long way to go for that stuff.

 
 
Scoring and Interesting Stats:

Hope ended up taking 17 more FG attempts than Wheaton, the two primary reasons were Hope's advantage of 8 turnovers and Wheaton spending the last 9 minutes of the game mostly at the FT line.  They only attempted 16 second-half shots and only 3 in the last 9 minutes.  A little unusual.

Billy Seiler  18 points, 3 steals........the kind of game you like to see from a Senior, was really aggressive early and his defense was part of the catalyst for the big comeback. 

Coltan Overway: 14 points, 5 assists.....13 assists for the weekend, we're getting to a point where I'm comfortable enough to say his bench production from the last two years is translating nicely to a starting role.  Never had a doubt actually.

Nate Snuggerud  13 points, 7 rebounds......Wheaton didn't give him much room and really pressured him.  Looked visibly upset at some no calls a few times.  Just needs to get used to it.

Brock Benson  12 points, 5 rebounds....after one point Friday comes back with this vs a better team.

For the weekend 8 guys reached double figures at least once, for the year 9.  Spreading the wealth has always been a Hope offensive staple.  It's good to see this happen a little early in the year, perhaps a little earlier than last even.

Efficiency:

Estimated Possessions:  Hope 73  Wheaton 73

Normal, at times the game had a really nice flow and pace to it.  At other times there were many successive trips with FT's that slowed things down a little.  This is also about 6 or 7 possessions higher than Wheaton had been playing per game.

Offensive  Efficiency:   102.11
Against a team that has seemed to play pretty good defense on the year so far, this isn't too bad and its the best anyone's done against the Thunder.  Hope was actually a touch more efficient in the second half, I'm sure mostly due to that frantic last 10 minutes. 

75 points was more than anyone's scored against Wheaton by 12 and 25 over their season average.


Deffensive Efficiency:  107.00
After this weekend this is 1 point under Wheaton's offensive avg for the year.  I don't think Hope played a bad defensive game just not great and not quite as good as Wheaton's.  If there was one thing that hurt it was maybe not getting out or recognizing the 3-point shooters quick enough.  I thought they were better at that in the 2nd half.


Rebounding Efficiency:
Hope: 32.4% of available offensive rebounds
Carthage: 30.8% of available offensive rebounds

Both teams did a good job keeping the other off the offensive boards, however for the game Hope managed a 17-10 advantage in second chance points.

Moments or Plays of the game:

Middle of the first half when Hope had a 5 point lead Wheaton hit 4 three's on 5 straight possessions at a point when it looked like Hope might start to control the game a little.  It was a quick swing and ultimately led to a 20 point swing over the middle portion of the game.

 

With Hope rallying Peter Smith hit a three with about 6 minutes to play to push the margin back to 9 points.  This was Wheaton's only FG in the last 9 minutes of play.  Hope never got closer than 4 but this shot probably prevented those FT's from being a little more tension filled.

 

With the game on the line Wheaton made their last 10 FT's late in the game. 

My game ball goes to:

Billy Seiler, I really liked how aggressive Billy started this one.  He set a nice tone early after Hope had fallen behind.  It was also his defensive play that started the rally from 15 down.  He had a really good day

Standings
Byers - 1 
Overway - 1
DeMaagd - 1   
VanArendonk - 1 
Seiler - 1 


Going Forward:

Hope's played probably the two best CCIW teams and lost both games which were still in doubt with 5 minutes to play, both on the road.  They've really challenged themselves early with a team that experience wise just isn't quite ready to compete at that level.  The good news is they've done well given the circumstances and these games will hopefully pay off for them in the long run.  For the weekend Hope gets out of Illinois with a win and a loss, something they hadn't done on two other trips to Wheaton in this event with similar kinds of teams.

Next week the schedule eases up quite a bit with Covenant on Friday and likely Spring Arbor on Saturday.  Since Covenant is considered in-region that's the game that matters most and is a must win for post-season purposes.  Spring Arbor strikes me as something between Aquinas and Cornerstone but maybe a little closer to Cornertstone.  Its the kind of game they should win but they'll have to play well to do so.

Up Next:  Friday,  Dec 7 vs Covenant College at DeVos Fieldhouse