Box Score
Hope started Gardner, Seiler, Eidson, Snuggerud, VanArendonk. Pretty short bench today with Neil and DeMaagd grabbing 14 and 17. Denham spelled Gardner a couple times, Byers and Benson played small parts. Hope got some big time minutes from Van Arendonk, Seiler and again Gardner.
Game Recap: (apparently this Calvin game required a novel)
Leaving Olivet's gym on Jan. 19 I was sure I had seen a Hope team that might not recover from the blows taken in the previous two games. Routed on the road at your rival, letting that rival beat you twice losing at Olivet. Hope was down, way down. Things had to be fixed, and fast or the season which was already maybe lost could never be recovered.
Over the next few games I watched intently for those positive signs that this team could get to a point they could give Calvin a legitimate run for its money. On both ends of the floor things started to improve, it was harder to score against them, easier to score on the other guys. Minutes were changing, those who could play defense were seeing more, those who couldn't less. Then I watched a Sr. point guard go down with an injury, surely the death blow right?
Apparently Fr. point guards from Indiana come with super hero blood coursing through their veins. Gardner took the wheel confidently and said 'I got this'. It took less than two games for me to realize this wasn't the problem I thought it might be. But still in the back of my mind 'maybe by the tournament' was all I could muster for a positive thought.
Wednesday night at Kalamazoo a young women who's been a part of our little basketball clan asked me point blank in her always cheery way 'so do they have a chance Saturday'. And I said bluntly, because I sometimes lose all tact, 'No!!'. I had crushed her soul. I somehow gathered enough sense to say 'well maybe, if they clean up the bad habits that crept back into this one' or something stupid like that, but I really believed 'no'.
Between then and Friday I tried really, really, really hard to not think about it. To just go into Saturday with an open mind. But Friday I started looking at stuff, stats, efficiencies, replaying the last game in my head, thinking about whats changed since then. Over and over it really didn't look good to me, I didn't think they had come far enough yet. But, I started to lay it all out, 'ok here's what has to happen' and I wrote this crazy preview.
Saturday morning as I was ready to leave about 100 Canadian geese flew overhead, because I notice crap like that. It was a gloriously sunny February day and thought, at least its a nice day. Once inside DeVos some old friends from that other school stopped by, I tried to convince them but more myself, that yes I thought Hope had gotten better. I probably didn't sound too convincing because I wasn't really sure myself.
(Actual game recap starts here)
Hope started off nicely, early baskets by Snuggerud and VanArendonk put Hope in front, defensively Hope caused a couple turnovers and things looked positive. By the 14 minute mark it was Hope leading 11-5. Calvin's defensive noose started to tighten and things began to look quite a bit like that horrible Wed. night in January. By the 5 minute mark Calvin had seized control and led 24-17, the only real difference had been Hope's defense staying a little stronger, they competed on the boards. Nothing was really coming easy for them, shots that went in the last time, weren't this time. With so little time remaining in the half it was so important to break this death grip of defense Calvin had on them, just find some way, anyway, to keep this margin close and regroup at halftime.
Chase DeMaagd, the 6-3 F from Woodland, played at tiny Barry County Christian. Woodland is about as out in the middle of nowhere you can get between Grand Rapids and Lansing. This Sr. is usually asked to guard bigger players with more accomplished basketball backgrounds, sometimes the butt of opposing fans catcalls and jokes, then they see he can play and they shut up. Chase DeMaagd rubbed two sticks together and lit his own personal fire. First it was one basket then another with a ft to boot. Then it was drawing a foul on a rebounded ft, then a simple put back on a Ben Gardner miss, followed by another in the first half's final minute. This Sr., possibly playing in his last Hope/Calvin game had made a halftime score that probably should have been 22-34 or something, 31-34. 10 points, 2 offensive rebounds in 6 minutes, the games leading scorer. Chase made his team believe, Chase made me believe.
As the early 2nd half played out Hope opened strong scoring points on all but a couple possessions. By the end of those critical first 5 minutes of the half mark, a thunderous VanArendonk dunk had put Hope ahead by 5. Calvin answered right away and the game seemed on. Back and forth it went with neither team grabbing a foothold on the game or momentum. The under 8 media timeout came at 6:56 with Hope leading by 2. Yeah, this qualifies as having a chance late to win it.
Billy Seiler curled off a high screen and banged in a 3 with a man in his face, Brink answered with a 3 of his own, Snuggerud banked in a 3, Brink answered again. Torture man, glorious torture. We ended up tied two more times until with less than one minute to play Nate VanArendonk, this mountain of a kid who has received far more criticism than most should receive floats in a beautiful lefty hook to give Hope the lead. Now comes the tricky part, surviving the Calvin 3. Many Hope teams have tried, many have spectacularly failed. But not today, the damn thing stayed out. Then free-throws those hate inducing 15 foot shots, all of them went in.
Cue the celebration.
12 years in a row now Hope has won at least one game against Calvin. Surely the longest such streak in school history. Series stands at 96-88 with Hope winning 8 of the last 10 and with the ridiculous point total between them now at 108. Since Calvin swept the regular season in 2009, the two have split each year except last.
NCAA you ask? Well its complicated of course and probably actually better to just wait things out but.....yesterdays win actually made an at-large bid a possibility. Teams have received bids into the NCAA's with 7 and 8 in-region losses and an in-region win% north of 70% with a strong strength of schedule. With 2 wins next week and a win in the MIAA semi-final and the Pool C making loss in the championship game puts Hope 15-6 or .714 and a relatively strong but not CCIW strong strength of schedule. You would at least think they'd be in the conversation. As always I'd recommend winning the tournament and the auto-bid. Next week is really important to finish strong.
Speaking of MIAA tournaments, things have become a little crazier with Olivet beating Trine and Hope's win. Officially nothing is settled except Calvin and Hope will host a semi-final while Olivet, Trine and Adrian sort out the final two spots. Calvin and Hope will play a big role in determining tournament fates as each play Olivet and Trine next week. The inside tracks still probably belong to Trine and Adrian with Olivet needing to win one and hope Trine doesn't. What was kind of a boring straight forward looking season suddenly has an interesting finish.
Scoring and Interesting Stats:
Rebounding: has to be top of the list, the Knights came into this with the best margin in D3. Hope outrebounded them 41-33. I think I heard this was only the 2nd time that had happened this year.
Free-throw shooting: Calvin hurt themselves by going just 8-16 while Hope had a just slightly above their avg day of 19-26. Those 11 points were huge of course.
Turnovers: Not great, finishing with 18. Considering it was 11 at the half though Hope did a much better job keeping that under control the second half. After reviewing this a second time, many turnovers were the result of getting stuck with the ball in the middle of Calvin's defense. Still some shaky passing at times.
Ben Gardner: 16 points, 4 rebounds, 2 steals.........seriously I think he has super hero blood in his veins, he's been pretty incredible these last few games
Nate VanArendonk: 12 points, 7 rebounds, 6 assists.......outstanding, many different things have made Hope better but none bigger than this guy.
Chase DeMaagd: 12 points, 3 rebounds.......kept Hope in the game with his late first half play
Nate Snuggerud: 11 points, 7 rebounds.....relatively quiet but knocked down those really big ft's that I couldn't watch in the games waning minutes.
Billy Seiler: 11 points, 9 rebounds......what doesn't show up here is defensive work, 37 grueling minutes
Alex Eidson: 11 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists.......also hit the first set of 'clinching' ft's, no pressure freshmen
You might notice these 6 guys add up to 73
Efficiency:
Estimated number of possessions: Hope 73 Calvin 71
No more than a handful each more than last time. Kind a weird one where the first half had more possessions but less scoring, while the 2nd half had more scoring, fewer possessions.
Offensive Efficiency: 99.52
Not great and the lowest since those back-to-back losses 3 weeks ago. However its quite an improvement over the first game which was an eff of 74. For this game the first half was 80 which looked an awful like the game in Grand Rapids while the 2nd half was a 120 rate. There's a good chance that 2nd half was the highest rate anyone has scored on Calvin this year in a half.
Defensive Efficiency: 99.15
This is an improvement over the 112 up at Calvin and just a touch above Hope's season average. First half was 92, second half 106. Feels weird to say it but the defense scraped out enough stops in the first half to keep this game from getting away like the first one.
Rebounding Efficiency:
Hope: 41.9% of available offensive rebounds
Calvin: 33.3% of available offensive rebounds
This is right around Hope's avg, maybe above it by only 1 rebound, this is below Calvin's season avg.
Really I think you have to call this an exceptional day and a dramatic turn around from the first meeting. Second chance points was 17-11 in Hope's favor. About 70% of the point difference between the two games can be explained by turning around the rebounding.
Moments or Keys to the Game:
There were so many:
Chase DeMaagd keeping Hope in the game with his end of first half effort.
Hope establishing a lead in the first 5 minutes of the second half.
The sequence of 4 straight 3's by Seiler, Brink, Snuggerud, Brink
Nate VanArendonk's left hook shot to take the lead with under a minute to play.
Grant Neil knocking the ball of a Calvin players leg to gain possession of the ball with the lead under a minute to play.
Making all the ft's in the last 5 minutes of the game.
My Game Ball Goes To:
Everyone, from Ben Gardner and Nate VanArendonk's great play all the way down the bench to Chris Ray being the first one up to lead the cheers. This whole team was in tune to prove to others and themselves they could do this. It was an inspiring thing to see from a Hope team.
Standings
Snuggerud - 5
Overway - 4
VanArendonk - 2
Eidson - 2
Seiler - 2
Gardner - 2
Byers - 1
DeMaagd - 1
Benson - 1
Neil -1
Everyone -1
Going Forward:
Its really impossible for me to put into words what this win meant for this team, I can only see what I observe from my seat way across the gym. But I have no idea I can only imagine and I bet it felt great. Prior to this, Hope's biggest win was probably beating Adrian when they were still 11-1, otherwise this season's been full of lots of close but disappointing losses to good teams. And of course the mother of all beat downs in this rivalry only 3 1/2 weeks ago. Since then they've appeared to improve, appeared to make changes to make themselves a better team. All of that was validated yesterday in a small 2 hour window of a much larger season.
The incredible effort and confluence of things that had to happen for Hope to win and only win by 3 is a testament to just how good I think Calvin really is. I expect Calvin to wrap up their Championship rather easily this week, so while Hope's 'in it' I really don't think they are. Hope's week brings chapter 2 of the 'redeem our embarrassment tour'. As bad as the first Calvin was the first Olivet game wasn't much better. Yesterday's win brings things back into play that seemed distant dreams only a couple weeks ago. Now its about continuing to improve and push towards that conference tournament. As good and as hard as Hope played yesterday they'll need to be even better 10 days from now in the MIAA Tournament.
Olivet comes to Holland Wednesday with the plain and simple need of having to win to keep their MIAA tournament hopes alive. This team beat Hope once and they could do it again. Wednesday 6 Sr's take their ceremonial last walk onto the DeVos Fieldhouse floor, its going to be emotional for those guys and not the easiest game to play.
Up Next: Me vs the inevitable crash coming from the lowering of my serotonin levels
Wed. February 13 Olivet at Hope, DeVos Fieldhouse
(I know you're disappointed there were no slaying the lion references, you can only go to that well once)
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