2013 Season in Review: Adrian

2013:  18-8,  7-7  3rd tie
2012:  17-9,  9-5  2nd

win that made you raise an eyebrow:   at Wooster 57-56
loss that made you raise an eyebrow:  at Olivet 52-49, at Kalamazoo 70-62

Seniors:  Cody Barnes, Sean Gallant

When Adrian released its roster at the last minute in November it elicited responses like 'when do they release the varsity roster'.  Five key players who were expected to return, or able, did not.  So Adrian was left with a roster that contained around 9 Freshmen and a bunch of question marks.  It wasn't long before people realized that Adrian was pretty good and a 1 point last second win at Wooster confirmed that the Bulldogs shouldn't be taken lightly.  The non-conference portion of the schedule was poor and the Bulldogs thrived on winning games that they should have won.  By the time MIAA play opened Adrian was 11-0, ranked just outside the top 10 and stories about the 'best Adrian team since the 50's' floated around.

Then aliens came and took their point guard and all of their depth, what was left was this........

pretty much, right?  --maybe a little harsh too?

Right around Christmas time it was obvious the Adrian roster was written on an etch-a-sketch with players coming and going, Brandon Romain did both in the span of about 3 weeks.  I lost track of who was there when and who left, who went missing.  The important part was Adrian had a pretty young team, with little offensive punch, and little depth.  They still had enough to make them competitive and with Mark White pulling the defensive strings anything was still possible.  The early schedule didn't help them as they opened with what must have been terribly frustrating losses to Calvin and Hope.  A two point escape at home over Trine set up a trip to Olivet where the Comets won on a last second shot.  The MIAA title was already out of reach by the second Saturday of league play.

The second time around Calvin's Bryan Powell hit a last second three which permanently buried the Bulldogs title hopes before they headed to Holland and lost again.  They kept their heads above water and were probably pushing to get on their lifeboat in the MIAA Tournament.  When Adam Meier went down with a season ending knee injury the bulkheads gave way and it was game over.  A loss at Kalamazoo almost kept them out of the tournament and about 10 minutes into the MIAA semi-final at Calvin they probably wish they hadn't made it as they ended up losing 71-44.

How many times was this re-shot?

I kind of warned about not getting too excited about Adrian's non-conference performance.  I just didn't think Adrian would be almost a completely different team by the time the league rolled around. I saw that team the first part of the season and it certainly would have finished better than 7-7 in the league, though truthfully they still would have struggled on offense.  Even what was left though salvaged a season that with a couple different results in some close ones could have put them right in the fight for the 2nd or 3rd spots.  On the other hand, it could have gone a lot worse as well.  Each time I saw this team the chemistry and general 'vibe' seemed to get more and more negative.  2013 will forever be a season of 'what if' for the Bulldogs.

A pretty downer of a recap for an 18-8 team especially when 18-8 is the best record for an Adrian team since 1955. 

Statistics Corner

It was all about defense for Adrian again this season finishing with the #5 defense for points allowed and appearances within the top 100 in the NCAA statistics for just about all of the other defensive categories.  Offensively.....not so much.  The two that really stand out to me are ranked #365 in scoring and #407 in assists.  Adrian was a one-on-one team and not very good at it.

thing they did better than anyone in the league:  3-pt FG% defense, scoring defense
thing they did worse than anyone in the league:  assist baskets, scoring offense

Adrian had a frighteningly low number of assists, either they have a tendency to play in front of stingy scoring tables a lot or they play a lot of one-on-one basketball.  Observation says one-on-one.   Every team in the league recorded an assist on 49% or higher of their fg's.  Adrian recorded an assist on just 38%.  Ouch!


Efficiency

Offense:   95.47   Defense:  87.58   Total Eff Rating:   207.89

Team rank out of the last 10 years:   #2
League rank out of the last 10 years:  #22

This years team performed at almost exactly the same rate as last years team with the slight difference in offensive and defensive performance.  Better defense, worse offense.   Last year is the only Adrian team that ranks higher and only by a fraction, they were essentially the same although I think this years non-conference schedule was probably weaker.  As far as the league, #22 is pretty good since most of those teams above them are Hope/Calvin/Albion teams and a lot of those either won the MIAA or went to the NCAA tournament.  Performance wise, Adrian is getting pretty close to kicking in the door.

Defensively they turn in the 3rd best defensive performance in the past decade behind only Hope's 2006 team and some other team we'll get to in a later review.  I should be gushing about this more but I guess its what I've come to expect from Adrian.  Offensively, gack!  For a team that won 18 games they were in my estimation incredibly poor at scoring.  The final  efficiency number says 95.47 but this team wasn't performing at that level the last half of the season.  It was really a steady decline in production from around the time Brandon Romain decided he'd had enough right to the end of the season.  If they were just even an average D3 offensive team they probably would have been close to making the NCAA tournament as an at-large selection instead of holding on to the last spot in the MIAA Tournament for dear life.


2013-2014

Key returnees:  Eric Lewis, Adam Meier(?), Drew Torrey and 9 others

Would you fault me if I put question marks next to all the others?  What Adrian finished with was a pretty young roster of bit players that were used to surround Cody Barnes, Sean Gallant, Eric Lewis and Adam Meier.  Those four guys accounted for 72% of the shots and 75% of the points........two graduate, one is a question mark because of injury.  Adrian wasn't all that great on offense and 3/4's of it might not be back next year.  Eric Lewis might have to be a one man band.

Jr. to be Eric Lewis

The offensive prospects are pretty grim looking and even if Adam Meier can return to some form of his former self, it looks like next year might be another struggle on that end of the floor.  The good news is that as long as Mark White is sitting in the head coaches seat (which he never actually does) Adrian will play good, sound defense because he demands it. That means they'll have a lot of chances to win ball games that teams of equal offensive ineptness would not have.

I suspect we'll see a lot of unfamiliar faces again next fall so its pretty difficult to know exactly what Adrian will have returning.  Based just off the last roster its a young team with very little offense returning and frankly its questionable whether any of those returning guys can step right in and fill the void.  Ben Rodak and Rickey Jackson looked the most capable, but they certainly aren't a Barnes and Gallant.  

A lot is going to depend on what Mark White is able to bring into the fold, regardless this is likely to be a pretty young team.  How well they blend into some kind of offensive unit is going to dictate a lot about how next season is going to go.  Defense they will play, offense remains to be seen, but its the defense that convinces me Adrian isn't going to stray to far from being an MIAA Tournament team each season.


Range of finish:   Despite my negative outlook on their offense I don't think Adrian drops much if at all.  It's too good of a program with too many good recruiting connections to not have a good class of Freshmen or transfers arrive next fall.  Adrian has been in the top half of the MIAA for most of the last decade and really no worse than 5th only once.   Next year they look a little further away from an MIAA Championship than this year but still in the ball park, that defense will still carry them a long way.  3rd or 4th.  5th or lower if they fail to find some guys who can score.