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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Most Improved:
Corey McMahon and maybe by a mile. One game sample size or not, Corey's a different player this year. He's bulked up a little and his confidence seemed to be sky high. I have no reservations in saying Corey has locked down the 2 guard spot for the foreseeable future. He won't score 21 every night but a position of strong need seems to have been filled. This will allow Alex Eidsen to play the 3 and in my opinion at least his more natural position.
Deer in Headlights:
Brushwyler, Stuive and Otto seemed to have a little of that and probably to be expected against an outfit like GVSU. I think they settled down some as the game wore on. Brushwyler in particular got a couple hard lessons in driving the lane at this level means college sized guys wanted that ball you had.
Most talked about:
If he isn't already its Harrison Blackledge and soon it will be less about who his father is and more about how good of a player he is and probably will be at Hope. 1) He's good 2) he appears to have a high basketball IQ 3) he does not shy away from contact and appears to encourage it 4) appears to like playing defense. The last two of those are difficult for Freshmen to grasp so early in their careers. Harrison is going to start while Caleb Byers is out, and at the very least will be the first big man off the bench after Caleb returns. Of the 4 Fr. he will easily log the most minutes throughout the season.
Officiating/New Rules:
I like them, I like them a lot. College basketball had almost seemed to grind to a halt in recent years and it was getting to the point scoring either felt like an accident or some amazing feat of wizardry and magic. That might be exaggerating and if you think so you've probably never watched Adrian or Albion against anybody.
At least in this game 47 fouls were called, that's not outrageous or even that high. I'm sure there will be games where you'd like to strangle the 3 guys with whistles just to make them stop blowing it, but at least for now players seem to know what you can't do and know its a foul right away when called. It was somewhat amusing to watch the guards especially when playing post defense desperately want to put their hand on the offensive player. I was more surprised by the ticky tack stuff called inside than anything I saw on the perimeter. It honestly felt like the chains have come off the game some, we'll see how I feel about it in a few weeks.
This game had 174 points, it didn't feel fast or up and down, it just felt like two teams shooting the ball well with plenty of space and unrestricted movement. It was refreshing and it seems like a good change.
Efficiency:
Estimated number of possessions: Hope 72 GVSU 72
Told ya it didn't feel fast, this is a normal paced game.
Offensively Efficiency: 116.34
I've tended to notice D1's and D2's operate at a higher level of efficiency, this is probably a little high but its still pretty encouraging that this particular Hope team was this efficient against this opponent. I suspect we'll see higher efficiencies than in the past since you can't legally mug guys anymore. How about a second half eff of 129.58 against a D2? Yes please.
Defensive Efficiency: 123.41
This is high, but its a D2 you're playing what would you expect? What I think is encouraging is that the 2nd half number was substantially lower and it was during that half Hope honestly out-played GVSU quite a bit.
Rebounding Efficiency:
Hope: 34.4% of available offensive rebounds
GVSU: 46.9% of available offensive rebounds
Its not shocking to be outrebounded by GVSU, just a couple bigger bodies and a little more quickness. I thought Hope battled pretty well here for most of the night.
Game Score:
Introducing something new. PTS + 0.4 * FG - 0.7 * FGA - 0.4*(FTA - FT) + 0.7 * ORB + 0.3 * DRB + STL + 0.7 * AST + 0.7 * BLK - 0.4 * PF - TOV.
This is a formula I ran across this summer, its supposed to measure a players total contributions to the game. I think I'll probably use it in a hockey, 3 stars of the game way.
3rd star- Ryan Sabin, Grand Valley State 16.6
Ryan was the best player on the floor for most of the night and registered 15 of his 23 points in the first half
2nd star- Rob Woodson, Grand Valley State 17.4
Rob's name is all over the play-by-play the last several minutes of the game. I can't imagine Hope will play a better PG this year
1st star- Corey McMahon, Hope 19.7
Corey had a great night shooting the ball with a couple surprise drives to the basket sprinkled in. In a weird way his box score looks remarkably like a Billy Seiler box score. He wasn't the best player on the floor, but he graded out that way.
Going Forward:
Overall I think this is a positive result. Hope looked like a team that belonged on the floor with that one. I don't know where GVSU fits exactly in the GLIAC hierarchy, sure they're picked second but they're a young team themselves. Time will sort that out. But at least for most of this one Hope was with them step for step a lot of the way.
As one coach put it Hope jumps right into the deep end of the pool next week with trips to Whitewater and Stevens Point. Its going to be interesting. Young teams like this will have nights where nothing seems to work, and nights where everything works, what you hope is they can smooth out those efforts into some form of consistent play. Hope got its feet wet last night and its hard to imagine anyone else in D3 being as good as GVSU. At least last night I was pleased with what I saw.
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