Box Score
Hope started Gardner, Seiler, Eidson, Snuggerud, VanArendonk. Lowish minutes for the starters except for Gardner who logged 30. Neil, Denham, Benson, Byers, DeMaagd were the primary guys off the bench. This one wasn't in doubt with 12 to play and that's when the the starters gradually exited the game. Corey McMahon logged 10 minutes, the most action since early in the season. Whittenbach, Ray, Parisi and Holwerda all played in the final minutes.
Game Recap:
I never like to call games with Albion easy because they really rarely are, but this was a pretty easy win for the Dutchmen and I'm happy to say it was largely because Hope made it easy for themselves. Hope took the bull by the horns scoring points on its first 6 possessions mostly of the layup or in close variety. By 5 minutes into the game Hope already had an 8 point lead. The game went back and forth a bit for the remainder of the half with Albion never really getting closer than 5 points.
With about 2 minutes left before the break Alex Eidson hit their first 3-pointer of the half after missing their first 5 to put Hope up 14. Albion scored the final 6 points of the half to give them at least a chance to stay in the game. Reality was though that Hope had outplayed them considerably and were scoring many, many baskets within just a few feet of the rim. VanArendonk and Snuggerud had established themselves in close with 11 and 6, and most of the 25 combined points from Gardner, Eidson and Seiler had also come in the paint.
I fully expected Albion to compete hard in the second half, those late points really had to turn the emotion in their favor. However, Hope slammed that open door shut by out-scoring Albion 14-2 to start the second half once again mostly by getting the ball in close. With the completion of a 3 point play by Nate VanArendonk the lead was 20, Albion had yet to register a fg and truthfully you could kind of start to see it on their faces that they knew this hill was too steep to climb.
Gradually over the next few minutes the starters began taking their curtain calls and the bench emptied. Corey McMahon and Jordan Denham really played very well in their stretches on the court and were catalysts in continuing the good play that had long been established. The lead reached 29 points at one point as Albion just continued to have a difficult time stopping Hope from scoring and that was really the story of the day.
97 points isn't the most Hope scored against Albion even recently. In 2010 Hope scored 98, but on that day Albion scored 90. There have been some really tough defensive struggles over the years with a few games like yesterday's mixed in. The contrast between the game at Albion and this one was pretty interesting. Back in Albion the Britons were able to dictate the flow of the game more, grabbing the early lead allowed them to really play aggressive on defense. Yesterday Hope forced the issue inside and Albion just couldn't really respond and ended up playing from behind all day long.
So far so good for the Fr. point guards, through two games without Colton Overway Hope's kept control of the turnovers, just 7 yesterday, 8 on Wednesday. I think Hope's doing a nice job making sure those guys always have somewhere to go with the ball. It's always fun to watch young guys grow as a season goes on and Ben Gardner's confidence seems to have blossomed from earlier in the season. Jordan Denham had been playing with the JV this semester and his minutes yesterday were his best on the varsity squad.
Just an observation but the last 2 games I've watched they've been a much better passing team and its really opened up the offense. Ball movement to me has always been a staple of good Hope offense and yesterday especially I saw a lot more passes right on the money to put a guy in perfect scoring position. Combine this with improved interior play in general and its really not hard to see why this team has been so efficient its last 3 games.
Scoring and Interesting Stats:
Free-throw shooting: Going to pick on the other guys today. Albion was 13-28 the first time they met and it directly affected the outcome of the game. The Britons have been atrocious at the line in league play, just 56% going into yesterday's game. I'm sure they talked about it a lot beforehand. So it probably shouldn't have been a shock to see them go 24-29 and raise their league average to 60%.
Moral victories.
FG shooting: Hope shot 68% for the game, 74% in the second half. Here are Hope's last 6 halves of basketball shooting percentage......66, 54, 31, 68, 63, 74. When you shoot the ball that good you really don't have to be great on defense.
Turnovers: Only 7 yesterday and a big fat zero from the PG position between Gardner and Denham. Outstanding!
Rebounding: A light day on the boards for both teams, seems rare to see both teams with less than 30 boards.
Nate VanArendonk: 16 points, 3 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 blocks, 6-6 fg, 4-4 ft......Albion couldn't stop him, when Nate plays like that only the best teams in D3 have a shot to beat Hope and I don't think that's exaggerating. I'll let you decide what 'best' means.
Ben Gardner: 14 points, 4 rebounds, 6 assists..... just a really good day, nice A/TO ratio of infinity. Badly outplayed both Albion pg's.
Alex Eidson: 12 points, 2-4 3's......one of the many who has stepped up his game in Colton's absence.
Nate Snuggerud: 8 points, 5 rebounds, 2 assists.........best I've seen him move this year, took a nasty fall early second half limiting his minutes, by the time he was ready to return to the game it wasn't really necessary.
Efficiency:
Estimated number of possessions: Hope 68 Albion 68
Offensive Efficiency: 142.91
If your lower jaw isn't lying on the floor it should be, this is a pretty incredible scoring rate. This is the highest of the season for Hope, and highest Albion's allowed. Hope scored 52 second half points on 23 attempted shots with an efficiency rating of 154.76. Mind blown! The grain of salt here is that Albion has given up a handful of these kinds of games. I seriously think I'd be hard pressed to find a higher number in D3, even in Grinnell's system.
Defensive Efficiency: 107.71
Who cares, right? When you score at such a high rate its pretty difficult to keep any kind of a defensive tone. A surprisingly solid chunk was the result of Albion not being pathetic from the ft line. Halves were roughly the same. Hope still had 7 steals on 12 Albion turnovers and some of their misses were pretty wild altered shots that a boxscore can't account for, there were good things here that won't get measured by efficiency. Scoring off turnovers was 17-4 for Hope, that's significant.
Rebounding Efficiency:
Hope: 23.5% of available offensive rebounds
Albion: 28.6% of available offensive rebounds
Probably the most useless metric of the year. Hope only had 17 chances to rebound their own miss, they got 4 of them. 7 would have been about their average. 2nd chance points was 8-7 to Albion, one of the few times Hope hasn't won this battle.
Moments or Keys to the Game:
The fast start to the beginning of the game allowed Hope to play from in-front and put a lot of pressure on Albion to both score and defend.
Albion scored the last 6 points of the first half to cut a 14 point deficit to 8 and give them a chance.
The fast start to the 2nd half slammed the door shut on Albion's chances.
Please keep pounding the ball inside.
My Game Ball Goes To:
When a team plays this well its hard to dish these things out, both Ben Gardner and Alex Eidson played very well on the day and had big influences on the game. But early on the two Nate's made life miserable for Albion's defense and it was Nate VanArendonk who Albion just had no answer for. His perfect day from the floor and the line combined with a couple nice blocks and assists really kind of made this choice easy.
Standings
Snuggerud - 5
Overway - 4
VanArendonk - 2
Eidson - 2
Seiler - 2
Gardner - 2
Byers - 1
DeMaagd - 1
Benson - 1
Going Forward:
If a book were to be written about Albion's season it would probably be titled something like 'The Crash of Flight 2013'. The Britons aren't a good basketball team and whatever it is that makes them play well at Kresge against Hope and Calvin just wasn't there for them this week. They had guys playing in this game who were supposed to be JV players, they have no JV because they need to be on varsity. They have 4 chances to pull themselves out of the basement of the MIAA, that's their reality and so its Hope's reality that they trounced a team at home they should probably trounce. The manner in which that was done was pretty impressive.
Still it feels better to see them just playing better and you get the sense that even with the loss of Overway this team can still reach something close to the team they expected to be this year. Wednesday its off to Kalamazoo, another team very similar to Albion, and struggling. It's kind of up to Hope to make sure they don't make the Anderson Athletic Center Kzoo's Kresge. In league play, really none of their road trips have been very easy and I suspect it will still take a stretch of good play to bring home a victory.
Up Next: Me vs being upset with terrible officiating in 25 point games
Wednesday, Feb. 6 Hope at Kalamazoo
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