The affects on me personally were pretty minimal in the greater scope of what has been going on around me for the past week other than missing a much anticipated basketball game. I still have power and most importantly heat. Others as close as within a very short walking distance have been without power and heat for the entire weak. Simple things like going to the store, restaurant or even crossing town became epic adventures of chaos and patience. The usual long lines, frayed nerves of the last few days before Christmas were compounded by last weekends storm. Its the worst I can recall since my early childhood and that's what the local "experts" are saying as well.
The result of all of the icy mess is I've spent a week neglecting to finish these write-ups, if you want to call them that. By now most of my immediate thoughts following those games have disappeared from my head so this 'review' will be mostly of the stats variety. (heads-up: a lot of them will be like that this year)
Friday: Hope 78 Lake Forest 66
Lake Forest came into this weekend 3-4 on the season with wins over 0-10 Dominican, 5-3 Ripon and 1-9 Monmouth. They are at least as young or younger than Hope.
Efficiency:
Estimated number of possessions: Hope 69 Lake Forest 71
Offensively Efficiency: 112.47
I would take this all year.
Defensive Efficiency: 93.25
I would also take this. Keeping in mind Lake Forest hit two pretty meaningless 3's in the games waning moments, without those this would be under 90, which is excellent. Lake Forest is no world beater, probably heading to the bottom half of the Midwest Conference but isn't this exactly what you would expect a good Hope team to do against this kind of opponent?
Rebounding Efficiency:
Hope: 40.5% of available offensive rebounds
Lake Forest: 28.1% of available offensive rebounds
A pretty significant advantage and led to an 11-4 advantage on the scoreboard in 2nd chance points. Without looking I think this is Hope's best effort of the year.
Game Score:
3rd star- Jordan Gipson, Lake Forest 9.0
2nd star- Grant Neil, Hope 9.1
Early second half scoring was the catalyst to Hope building a commanding lead
1st star- Josh Irving, Lake Forest 16.4
In all, this was not a game in which individual efforts stood out especially from Hope's side which turned in a very balanced scoring sheet. I would like to have been there to see if my personal observation meshed with this statistical one. Hope's McMahon, Eidson, Blackledge, Benson and Lake Forest's Torey Davis score just over 8's.
Saturday: Illinois Wesleyan 91 Hope 83
Illinois Wesleyan came into this one 8-1 with a whole slew of convincing wins and just the one curious road loss at Loras. The Titans were ranked #3 in the latest D3hoops.com poll. Prior to this one the closest win IWU had had was 9 points the night before over Wilmington.
Efficiency:
Estimated number of possessions: Hope 76 Illinois Wesleyan 74
This was a pretty uptempo game, at least as far as number of possessions is concerned
Offensively Efficiency: 108.64
Considering the opponent I think this is pretty good. I neglected to check what IWU had allowed prior to this game on a game-by-game basis. From the score alone it was probably pretty close to the highest. I think Hope has played 5 really good teams so far, UWSP, UWW, Cornerstone, Wheaton, IWU. This was Hope's best offensive performance thus far against these 5 teams.
Defensive Efficiency: 122.72
Eventually to beat teams of IWU's caliber you have to be better at providing defensive resistance. Against those same 5 teams as above this is actually right in the middle of the 5 performances but its well over the 90-95 you get from the best defensive teams, getting this down to 100 gives you a chance to win these games. IWU is a very good shooting team at over 50% from the floor for the season. Typically those kinds of teams have very strong front lines that kind of pad the numbers a bit with a lot of easy layups, in IWU's case its just a team full of guys who can shoot the basketball very well. Their 12-26 performance from the arc testifies to that and against Hope's 3-15 effort was the clearest difference in the game.
Rebounding Efficiency:
Hope: 26.3% of available offensive rebounds
Lake Forest: 23.1% of available offensive rebounds
Pretty even on the glass with regards to offensive rebounding with Hope holding an 8-3 second chance points advantage. For the game IWU was +5 in rebounding overall mostly because Hope took 17 more shots from the floor. But, at halftime Hope was +5 in rebounding which means IWU enjoyed a substantial +10 on the glass in the second half, no doubt a big reason a tie game at halftime went to a one time 11 point lead for the Titans.
Game Score:
3rd star- Victor Davis, Illinois Wesleyan 13.7
2nd star- Ben Gardner, Hope 14.4
1st star- Andrew Ziemik, Illinois Wesleyan 21.6
21 points, 14 rebounds, 5 assists. No player in the game had a bigger influence.
Hope's Caleb Byers saw his first real significant action of the season contributing 14 points in a very good effort. Hopefully Caleb has recovered enough from his foot injury that this kind of production becomes consistent. I think Hope's missed him a little more than we might think. Look for Caleb to possibly crack into the starting 5 before the MIAA season begins with Blackledge becoming one of the first subs.
Going Forward:
With 8 games in the books Hope is 3-5 with 5 losses to teams that about 95% of Division 3 would also have 5 losses against. It gets significantly easier from here though with the only ranked opponents remaining being Calvin and possibly at some point Centre. What we do know is that Hope isn't one of D3's elite and that's probably not a shocker. We also know a very young Hope team has shown it can compete with some of D3's best for the majority of games......and that gets you a 3-5 record. After these 8 games you'd like to see some improvement and I think its there, it just might be difficult to see.
Hope heads to Crestview Hills, KY on Monday/Tuesday to play Centre and Thomas More. Centre is a fringe top 25 program with numerous tournament appearances over the years. This year they look like that same kind of program and will face Hope with a 6-2 record against teams I know little about. Thomas More you may remember from last year as having a sparkling record and being the team that blocked others with better resumes from being considered for the D3 tournament. Thomas More has a new coach and new scheduling idea that has pitted them against some of the best programs in the Great Lakes Region. They are 2-7 and probably just as good as last year.
In the grand scheme of NCAA tournament selection things, these are must win games for Hope. In the grander scheme of Hope becoming a better team and program these are also the kinds of games you'd like to see Hope win and pick up a little momentum for the MIAA season.
Up Next: Me vs I spent my holidays with power and heat guilt
Dec 30 vs Centre College at Thomas More, KY
Dec 31 @ Thomas More, KY
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