Four Things

This was part of a larger project I had in mind that I scraped a couple times over the summer.  I believe these are 4 areas that kept Hope from being a little better team a year ago. 


Four Things To Watch:

Starting 5:

A year ago Hope used 11 different starters not counting 2 more for Senior Day, 8 different combinations and only using the same lineup consecutively 6 times in a 27 game schedule.  Only one player logged more than 20 starts.  You could say continuity was a problem.  Some was injury or illness related, some performance and a lot of it was sorting through a lineup that seemed to refuse to separate itself.  Hope really never found a consistency here until almost February then had to start over when Colton Overway went down to injury.

In the Grand Valley exhibition two weeks ago Hope used Gardner, McMahon, Eidsen, Blackledge, VanArendonk.  I would be perfectly content with this lineup all year.  Most likely Caleb Byers will return in Blackledge's place and unless Nate VanArendonk can stay out of foul trouble I wouldn't be too surprised if Benson took over the starting spot at some point.

I've never been too convinced that a starting 5 is really all that important as opposed to finding a best 5 overall, best 5 offense, best 5 defense.  But having a consistent starting 5 certainly would lead you to believe there's a consistency to the lineups, substitutions and rotations.  If you're constantly juggling your starting 5, you probably aren't very sure of the rest of your lineup either.


Fouls:

Hope likes to foul.  There its been said.  Last year Hope racked up 536 personal fouls, that was good for #357 in D3 out of 406 teams.  The previous two years Hope ranked 268 and 267.  Well above the D3 average in all 3 years.  Its hard to quantify this in wins and losses terms and it may not make a difference at all.  For Hope its been the stubborness, in a good way, of being reluctant to give up easy shots in the paint.  Hope seems perfectly content to make you earn it from the stripe.

I think this is a fine philosophy as long as your team is getting its fair share of fouls and free-throws at the other end.  Last year they totaled 703 attempts, or 124 more than opponents, nearly 6 more per game.  That was the most attempts since 1998 and on a per game basis probably the most in at least 2 or 3 decades.  The NCAA doesn't keep stats or rankings on how many FT's you give up but it was 579 attempts for Hope opponents.  I'm sure that would be up there.  When Hope's propensity to foul could hurt them is if these frequencies flip and Hope shoots fewer ft's than their opponents, that's only happened once in the last 13 seasons and 3 in the last 20.

With this years rule changes we'll probably see more fouls and more free-throws.  I think with Hope's seemingly increased front line depth and a PG that enjoys driving the lane the FT advantage should still be comfortably in Hope's favor.  More than likely though, Hope's going to be facing foul trouble for someone in nearly every game.

Actual FT Percentage:

Hope had 10 games last year where they shot below the D3 average at the line.  Shooting the D3 average probably nets you one more win and an overtime game with Wheaton.

Last year Hope shot 70.7%, this is above average......and repeat that 100 times.  Hope was a good FT shooting team last year, good, not great, just good.  I'm reasonably optimistic Hope will be a very good FT shooting team this winter.  Of the guys who return from last years team they collectively shot 83%, even taking into account the addition of the new players I think this still stays well above 70%.


Turnovers:

Last year Hope was #8 in the MIAA in turnovers per game, on the national level that was tied for #220 or right about in the middle of D3.  For whatever reason MIAA teams really don't turn the ball over  with 7 of 8 teams ranked in the top half of D3.   Within its league, Hope could be better but it might have only resulted in one more win last year.

One thing Hope has always seemed to be good at is creating turnovers.  Unfortunately the NCAA doesn't keep track of your opponents turnovers.    All we have is turnover margin where Hope was a +1.59 per game which was good for #103 in D3.  More than likely Hope was a top 75 or better turnover creating team. 

Even taking into consideration pace of play, Hope's turnovers rate was 20% or 1 in 5 possessions resulted in a turnover.  I think that's a little high.  Trine had the best turnover rate in the league at 15% or 1 in 6.  I'm not sure how much improvement is necessary to move the win needle, but I'd like to see Hope close that 5% gap between themselves and Trine.


3 point shooting:

The elephant in the room.  Hope was not a good 3-point shooting team last season.  They ranked solidly in the bottom half of D3 in both number of 3's made and percentage.  Their 32.4% from beyond the line was the teams lowest since the introduction of the shot in 1987.  Their 129 made 3's was the 2nd fewest since the early 90's when teams were much more selective in the 3-point attempts.  Hope's two fewest 3-points shots made years have come in the last two years.

The 3-point shot has been at its current length since 2009, certainly part of the decline can be attributed to that.  But even moving the line back another foot has only resulted in a 1/2 made 3 decline per game across D3.  Hope's been under the 6.3 made 3's average now two years running, after years of being above it.

Last season Hope had 10 games where they shot below 30% from beyond the arc.  Collectively those 10 games resulted in shooting 18%.  Dreadful!  Hope was a pretty solid 41.1% in its other games.  I'm sure most teams break down to something similar, but I think even shooting a still below average 30% in those other ten games gets you 3 more wins.

The other side of this coin is 3-point shooting defense.  Hope wasn't very good there either giving up the 3 at a 37.3% clip.  That ranked #374 in D3 out of 406 teams, slightly ahead of Finlandia.  The resulting difference on offense and defense was a margin of -39 3-point shots, almost 120 points on the season.

I think Hope has more options from beyond the arc than last year.  Blackledge, Stuive and Brushwyler are all capable 3-point shooters.  Those are tall guys that can shoot the 3 and Hope hasn't really had that in their arsenal for a few years now.  The guards Gardner, McMahon, Eidsen, Otto and Denham have to improve on their collective 31.5% average from last season.  What might be more important is Hope improving their perimeter defense and closing that -39 margin to something positive.

The Wisconsin Double

Hope tackled one of the toughest road trips you could even think up this weekend traveling to Wisconsin for games with UW-Whitewater and UW-Stevens Point on back-to-back nights.  Both of those teams are nationally ranked, and will probably remain so through the season.  They were certainly heavy underdogs on both nights and the final scores probably played out about as you would expect.

Whitewater 83  Hope 70
Stevens Point 82  Hope 62

In both cases Hope played good, maybe even great first halves.  As the second halves played out both nights the Dutchmen seemed to crumble under the weight of little things like foul trouble, rebounding, turnovers at the wrong times and probably a healthy lack of defense.  Both games featured a short spurt of time in which the opponent asserted themselves and grabbed what turned into insurmountable leads.  Against Whitewater it was a 4 point deficit at 6 minutes that was 11 less than 3 minutes later.  Against Point it was a 6 point game with 14 to play that 2 minutes later was 12, and a further 2 minutes was 18.  In each case Hope wasn't able to mount any kind of comeback once control had been established.

One of the things I learned last year doing this blog is that its really hard to write a game recap on a game you didn't see and only marginally easier for one you saw on video.  So this is all I have for the game rundown.

for efficiencies and stuff, click

GVSU 90 Hope 84

 Box

First Impressions:

Looking at rosters and concocting all sorts of crazy ways to measure a teams youth and experience is one thing,  but there is no substitute for seeing first hand just how young of a team Hope really is.  It should be stated the Dutchmen played this one without two Sr's where at least one would likely start and contribute significant chunks of minutes and a third Sr. spent 27 of 40 sitting on the bench with foul trouble, and actually 9 of those 13 played in foul trouble.  It was Jr. Corey McMahon and his merry bunch of underclassmen going toe to toe with a pretty decent if not good D2 squad.  Afterwards they had a juice box, cookies and a long nap.

Putting youth aside for a minute, the Dutchmen can play or at least they can on nights when they shoot the ball well like this one.  If you bother to read the local sports write-ups or watch Allan Babbit's post-game interview (a nice addition to the Hope website) you'll hear Coach Neil say some form of the word compete about a half-dozen times.  Compete they did, and fight to the bitter end.

If you walked in on this game without knowing it was Nov 14 or that it was an exhibition you would swear you were watching a mid-season contest.  It played with that kind of energy and intensity and substitution wise, exactly like you'd expect a regular season game to play out, from both sides.  I could come up with all sorts of tidbits to drive that point home but nothing does it more for me than GVSU's best player Ryan Sabin logging 39 minutes.  That doesn't happen in a normal exhibition.

This isn't to say this was a barn burner all the way, far from it.  GVSU had a couple of opportunities to lay the hammer blow down but failed to do so.  Twice they squandered big leads letting Hope back into the contest, which not by coincidence happen to be the moments Hope played their best at both ends of the floor.  In the end I think 6 points is a little bit of a blushing score for Hope, it didn't feel that close, or look that close.  Hope made some steals and shots down the stretch to narrow the margin.  But........

..with 5 minutes left down 6, Ben Gardner launches a 3 from the right wing that looks good all the way and rattles out, GVSU comes down runs their offense and PG Rob Woodson nails a 3 from just about the same spot on the floor, then the Lakers steal the ball on Hope's next possession and after a timeout run a simple play for an easy 2.  In a little over a minute a game heading for 3 points went to 11.    So yes there was a small chance for something special.

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2014 MIAA Schedules

A look at this years MIAA schedules

A couple things to note.  Asterisks represent "in-region" games as defined by Great Lakes Region teams, Administrative Region or the 200 mile rule.

The point scale is using massey ratings from last year and a super secret weighting system I cannot divulge.  Its the same as I used last year and is open to the flawed logic of applying last years results to this years teams.   Its not meant to be accurate, just give a general idea of schedule strength.


Adrian

Nov 15  vs John Carroll* @ Allegheny
Nov 16  @ Allegheny*
Nov 20  @ Franklin*
Nov 26  Siena Heights
Nov 30  Marygrove
Dec  1   @ UM-Dearborn
Dec  7   Carnegie Mellon*
Dec 18  @ Concordia, MI
Dec 21  Lawrence Tech
Dec 28  @ Mount Union*
Dec 29  vs Hiram* at Mt. Union

Best Opponent and Why:  Mt. Union, the Purple Raiders are coming off a 11-15 season that saw them come a heartbreaking loss away from winning the OAC Tournament Championship.  They would do well to crack the OAC top 4 and are probably the posh pick to do so.  They may not live up to those expectations but should still be within the middle few places of the OAC.  A close second here would be John Carroll who have similar expectations to Mt. Union.

Worst Opponent and Why:  Lawrence Tech.  The Blue Devils went 3-27 last year in their first year back from 40 years of non-existence.  This year they have 11 players on the roster all of them underclassmen and are choosing to red-shirt their only 2 returning Sr's.   Believe it or not UM-Dearborn is picked below LTU in the WHAC poll.  I find that hard to believe so I've gone with the Blue Devils, but really you could pick any of Adrian's WHAClicious opponents and probably be in the ballpark.

Overall impression:  This schedule isn't much different than last season minus a top program like Wooster.  None of these teams will win their conference or make their respective national post-season tournaments unless lightning strikes and they win their AQ.  JCU, Franklin, Mt. Union, Hiram have been no better than middle of their conference programs the last couple years with Allegheny, Carnegie solidly in the bottom of theirs.  For the second year in a row Adrian is going to tackle the likely bottom four teams from the WHAC and receive not much of a challenge in doing so. Regardless of graduation losses or attrition this is a schedule Adrian should do well against, its just probably not going to tell you much about them as a team.  Very weak and to me not befitting of a program with Adrian's ambitions.

On my scale of 100,  43.6
2013:  52.7
2012:  58

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