Hope-MIAA Semi-Final

Hope 65 Trine 62 OT
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Tell me when its ok to look

I saw Trine play at Olivet on Saturday.  I will admit, I mostly went because it was a nice day and it was on the way to Adrian for me.  I spent most of the game texting like a teenager.  Half engaged, half not.  What mostly pulled my head up from my phone was Will Dixon doing something Will Dixonie.  He impressed me

Trine is a good basketball team.  They don't beat themselves, don't turn the ball over, play solid if unspectacular defense.  They aren't particularly big but big enough for D3, and even for D3 they aren't very deep.  They are just a good team.  When I compile the final efficiency ratings at the end of the year they will finish somewhere in the middle of our Great Lakes Region, right behind all the teams they lost to and ahead of the ones they beat.  They beat one team with a winning record this year, Ohio Northern.    There is really nothing remarkable about them, except for Dixon and on occasion Tyler Good.

Dixon is the kind of kid you build a program around, recruit to compliment him.  On Saturday and again last night Trine head coach Brooks Miller unleashed his future star on their opponent.  20 shots Saturday, 24 last night.  27 points and 26 points, he played 44 minutes last night and 80 of his teams 85 over the two games  Miller put his faith in the Freshmen to deliver and he nearly did.

This night though belonged to Hope, somehow, someway they found a way to grind out a tough win against an opponent playing tough.  Down 6 twice with under 6 minutes to play they delivered 3-point shots out of the blue to close the gap.  Needing two free-throws with seconds on the clock Senior Nate Van Arendonk stroked them both home.  In overtime, they forced defensive stops and scored just enough points to secure victory.  Survive and advance.

I was impressed:
The post-season has snuck up on me again.  Its easy to forget what these games are like and how what you saw during the regular season really can't do justice to what happens when the importance of games goes up a notch or two.

I was impressed with Trine's execution, with their defensive effort, with how they carried themselves on the court.  They wore down a bit at the end but they gave themselves the best possible chance to pull off a win.  A play here or there and Trine would be playing in Grand Rapids Saturday.

On Hope's side I was impressed with their poise and confidence, not once did they really force something that wasn't there.  With 3 minutes to play down 6 they played like there was still 10 minutes to play.  They launched 3's confidently twice and made them when if they miss the game is pretty much over.  I'm a little at a loss for how to describe how they pulled this one out.


Talking about practice:
I wish I could rewind my mind to Satuday's Trine/Olivet game.  I bet I could find every offensive set they ran against Hope in that game, they were basically practicing against the Comets.  I should probably text less.

Midweek Semi-finals are a failure:
I think if we're going to keep doing this four team tournament we need to just move it to Friday's.  This midweek stuff results in lousy attendance, lousy atmosphere's.  The logistics of hosting this thing isn't so difficult that it can't be handled by the terrific staffs of our member schools on one day's notice.

Last night:
at Hope    1265
at Calvin    473

This is a drop of 1,500 from the same two locations last season and embarrassing.  Maybe the weather was worse than I thought but still this is awful.

2011, both semi-finals at Hope on a Friday night.
Game 1:  1210 
Game 2:  3205

Let's see, 2800 x $7.........
That's leaving a lot of cheese at the door.


Efficiency:

This man approves of the following, it was a Bo Ryan special

Estimated number of possessions:  Hope 63 Trine 63
Very slow and exactly how Trine would want it.  In regulation it was 56 each, the fewest of the season.  Down 9 with 11 minutes to play, with as few times as Hope was likely to see the ball at that pace is a pretty amazing comeback. 

Offensively Efficiency:  103.38

Hope scraped out a number just over 100 after a first half of low 90's and an overtime that included 1 field goal.  Hope took 21 shots in each half, the difference was making 5 second half 3's to none in the first half.  Trine held Hope to nearly this same number the first time they played in Holland.

Defensive Efficiency:  98.88

Trine had a 115 eff first half which could have been so much better.  In the second half Hope buckled down a bit, mostly from the 11 minutes down to 4 minutes period where they allowed no field goals and one measly free-throw.  A total of only 5 missed shots and two turnovers.  Seven possessions in seven minutes, that's how slow this thing was.  Bo Ryan would be proud (actually he'd still be angry about something but proud)

Rebounding Efficiency:

Hope:  28% of available offensive rebounds
Trine:  19.4% of available offensive rebounds

2nd Chance points:  Trine 7 Hope 4

Trine had 6 offensive rebounds in the first half resulting in 7 points on a 6 point halftime lead.  For the rest of the entire game including overtime Trine had zero offensive rebounds and zero second chance points.  This could be the whole entire reason we are thinking about playing Calvin Saturday.

To Trine's credit they did a nice job on Hope's end and kept Hope pretty close to a one shot and done team.  As I've pointed out before Trine hasn't always rebounded well against Hope and Calvin.

Other Interesting Stats:

So proud!

Going Forward:

Ok its cliche, survive and advance.  That's all that matters, when Saturday comes around no one cares if you looked pretty on Wednesday.  In a game barely attended by anybody Hope pulled out a game they looked like they would lose because the other team was playing desperate, end of season basketball.  It was a better win than it looks for reasons that only become clear later on.

Two 20 win teams meet up Saturday in whats become the annual showpiece of the MIAA post-season tournament to the delight of everyone who doesn't care about Hope or Calvin.  For the 8th time in 9 seasons the winner gets the automatic bid to the big dance, the surest way to make sure your Sunday is more relaxing.


Up Next:

Me vs ever understanding Big Ten Basketball

Saturday February 29, 3pm
MIAA Tournament Championship
Calvin vs Hope at DeVos Fieldhouse


I am really sorry only a handful of people will understand this last one.

"You say you counted the basket and it didn't go in?"

Hope's MIAA Week 7

Hope 110  Kalamazoo 78
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I know its not a hornet

I've tried to write these write-ups within a day of the game to keep my thoughts fresh.  For this one I failed to do that and by the time I sat down to do so my brain had moved on to other things without communicating that to the rest of me, so I don't have a lot to say about it.  I think the score speaks for itself, this wasn't very close and Hope played very well. 


click for math

Efficiency Update--late February edition

One of the things I like about efficiency ratings is it can tell you a lot about some teams for most of the season, but when we get to February they can almost never explain a handful of results that pop up out of thin air that from a statistical look make no sense at all.  Since the last time I updated this only 2 1/2 weeks ago Oberlin, Allegheny, Waynesburg and Capital have all scored wins that according to efficiency just really shouldn't have happened.

They are however still worth taking a look at and something I like doing, so here are the Great Lakes numbers updated through the Feb 19 games.

Top 5 Offensive Teams

1	Calvin	116.14
2	Mt. Union	116.09
3	St. Vincent	115.11
4	Wooster	113.55
5	Marietta	112.20

Mt. Union has moved up a couple spots, St. Vincent down one with Wooster replacing the stumbling Wittenberg since the last update.  The rest of the top 10 is PSU-Behrend, Ohio Northern, Wilmington, Medaille, Baldwin-Wallace.   There is barely 3 points separating 5 from 13, so its pretty closely bunched together.  Hope has moved all the way up to #12 with a 109.86

For MIAA fans, Adrian is back in the bottom 5 tied with 3 others.  D'Youville has the least efficient offense crown wrapped up with an eff rating of just 85.09, Adrian is at 93.66

Top 5 Defensive Teams

1	PSU-Behrend	89.31
2	Bethany	91.73
3	Hilbert	93.10
4	Wooster	94.22
5	Albion	95.40

Hilbert and Wooster switch places, Albion replaces DePauw.  I watched Bethany a couple times and that's a very good defensive team so I'm more inclined to believe their rating than before.  I'm still kind of skeptical of Behrend and Hilbert because I just don't think the  AMCC is very good.  The rest of the top 10 is Ohio Wesleyan, St. Vincent, Wittenberg, Thiel, DePauw.  Hope is up to #14 with a 99.63.  Its been a steady climb up since those early games against some of the best teams in D3.

Otterbein has probably clinched the 'worst defense' tag giving up 124 points per 100 possessions.  Its hard to be a bad defensive team in a really good offensive league like the OAC is the lesson.

more math

Hope's MIAA Week 6

Hope 108  Olivet 57
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They blew the roof off the Cutler Center

Games like this are sometimes hard to watch, there is always an element of one team being really bad and the other good.  Hope was good, Olivet was bad but I don't think it was quite that simple.  Hope was really good, the kind of good that made me say 'wow' several times, sometimes audibly.  Offense and defense was sharp, with ball movement and execution that put a lot of pressure on Olivet to keep up and defensive will that forced them into shots they couldn't execute.  This was a complete win in every sense of the word.  It was not hard to watch from my seat.

Calvin (you may have heard of them) destroyed this Olivet team 3 weeks ago by 42 so this isn't unprecedented territory.  When it goes bad for Olivet it goes really bad.  But among the 3 or 4 'really bads' are some games that make you question a lot of things, like staying within 7 points of Mt. Union, or leading Baldwin Wallace by 12 only to fall by 12.  Or how about losing to Hiram by 8, the same Hiram that on this very same night took Wooster to the wire.  Those are things Olivet has done, more recently they had won two games in row which followed two losses by 2 and 4 points.  This was not a team playing bad basketball right now.

click for more fun

Hope's MIAA Week 5

About 10 days ago or so Hope's week of 4 games in 8 days looked fairly daunting.  At Trine, hosting Kalamazoo, Calvin, Albion.  Three of those teams will likely be in the MIAA's half-tournament.  I would have been ok with Hope going 3-1 on the week, probably not happy about it, but ok with it.  The hardest part of the weeks adventure was the first part, 3 games in 5 days and no practice on Sunday, followed by 48 hours of preparation for your rival for the second time this year.

At least in my mind the most unlikely scenario was that Hope would win all 4 games by double-digits and spend a little more than 100 minutes of the 160 leading by double-digits.   It was a good week.


click for the fun

Hope 83 Calvin 65

Hope 83  Calvin 65
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If I haven't mentioned this before, Calvin games deserve their own space.  Monday's game vs Kalamazoo will appear along with the Albion game after the weekend.


Game summed up in one photo, of the two players in this photo, you're not looking at Van Arendonk

Frightening

Emotion can be an incredible thing sometimes.  In High School basketball the kids are too young to understand what emotion can do for them.  You'll find flashes of it every now and then but very rarely do you see kids able to fully harness and understand the concept of emotional lifts.  In the pros the athletes are too concerned with being 'professional', keeping emotions in check, they're almost walking zombies of efficiency and purpose but there's rarely any 'fun' in the game.  But put 18-22 year old college kids on a court with a few thousand people, a rival, and something to play for and things can boil over quickly into something that can be difficult to understand.  It is the reason college basketball is the most exciting brand of basketball played.

Last night emotion made a coach call a timeout 2 minutes in to this game that sent a Sophomore guard into a dancing, celebratory aneurism.  Hope harnessed its endless supply of emotional lifts to overwhelm their opponent, to collectively play defense in a way I'm not sure I've seen a Hope team do in several years.  The scoreboard didn't lie with 8:26 to play, Hope 72 Calvin 42.  This was domination in a way no one could have expected.

Before going to deep into the emotional explanation of what that was last night, this young Hope team has become pretty good at this game.  There comes a point in every season when young players, Freshmen especially, stop looking like young players, are no longer indecisive or timid.  They just go out and do what they've been coached to do.  Hope might still be young, still throwing 7 Fr. and Soph's out into the D3 world but they aren't playing like a young team anymore, at least they didn't last night.


Receive and you shall give:
A year ago Hope was on the receiving end of two of these kinds of beatings.  Calvin 75 Hope 49, Calvin 77 Hope 57.  Those memories tend to stick with you and the guys returning this year certainly thought about those games all summer.  Its been hard not to notice that in the two games thus far everyone who has played significant minutes for Hope has been able to come up with a memorable play in both games.  They have certainly looked 'dialed in'.

Since Alma:
I've made a lot, maybe too much, of Hope's 3-point shooting struggles.  Since the Alma game, or really the 2nd half of that game Hope has been 40-86 from beyond the arc or 46.5%.  If I take out the first half of that Alma game Hope is 39-79 or 49% from beyond the arc.  D3's leading 3-point shooting team is St. Norbert at 46%.  So for the last roughly 3 weeks, Hope's been shooting 3's like one of the best teams in D3.

That's a big improvement for a team that was languishing around the 30% mark for most of this season.  That doesn't happen by accident.  Shot selection seems to be part of this improvement, though I'm sure many extra shooting sessions probably factored in here.


Efficiency:

Estimated number of possessions:  Hope 74  Calvin 76
That's a pretty high paced game for Hope/Calvin.  I can't imagine this is the kind of game Calvin wants to play.  Maybe there's a reason Matt Neil is constantly encouraging his guys up the court.

Offensively Efficiency:  114.05

This is a really solid efficiency against a team that's been pretty good on defense for most of the season, and very good since the last time Hope/Calvin played.  Hope's first half was only 98, that 16 point lead could have been so much more.  When given the opportunity Hope buried the Knights with a second half efficiency of 125 and that was with much inefficiency at the end of the game.

Defensive Efficiency:  81.95

For the game this is impressive by itself.  The real impressive part was the first half defensive efficiency of just 51.  Calvin was getting 1/2 of a point every time down the floor.  That's a little insane especially when you consider Calvin had been the most efficient offense within the Great Lakes Region.   My offensive ineptness qualifier applies, but still holding this level of opponent to that?  Whoa!   Stunning first half defensive performance.


Rebounding Efficiency:

Hope:  40.7% of available offensive rebounds
Calvin:  30.3% of available offensive rebounds

2nd Chance points:  Hope 13 Calvin 8

This is twice Hope's won this battle and rather convincingly.  +8 up at Calvin, +10 last night.  If there's one major surprise in the two meetings, its this. 

Other Interesting Stats:

Free-throws:

How often does a winning team get out-shot at the line by 11 attempts.  Especially in a game that lopsided.  Calvin attempted 25, Hope 14

Assist Rate:

Calvin's assist rate on the year is around 60%.  In the two Hope games its only been 35%.  Hope might be forcing Calvin into being a little more of a jump shooting team than they're comfortable being.

Going Forward:

Obviously this gives Hope a big upper hand in the MIAA standings and at the moment the cushion of having the tie-breaker over Calvin.  More immediate thoughts dwell on the satisfaction of having turned around what were two dominating performances by Calvin a year ago into two pretty much dominating performances this season.

We're back where we were 3 weeks ago and that's wondering how Hope reacts to success against a team like Albion.  It didn't go well on the road and hopefully can go better this time around.  In the bigger picture its a very important game with some pretty big post-season implications if it comes down to an at-large selection for Hope.

Up Next:

Me vs hubris

Saturday Jan 8.   Albion at Hope   DeVos Fieldhouse

Hope's MIAA Week 4

Mother nature co-operated enough to allow some games to be played last week.  A normal week of sorts with two games on the normal Wednesday/Saturday slots.  Never mind that rescheduled/postponed game with Kalamazoo.


Hope 82  Adrian 56
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Adrian started out pretty hot and grabbed an early 12-6 lead 4 minutes into the game, 3 minutes later it was tied at 15 and they would be tied one more time.  By halftime it was a 15 point lead for Hope and there really wasn't much reason to believe a 2nd half Adrian rally was in the cards.  5 minutes into the second half we hit 20 points and it was just a matter of filling out the final stat sheet.

This will likely be Hope's easiest win of the conference season.  Hope's starting 5 collectively played less than half the game and the bench provided enough good play to expand on Hope's leads and never really be threatened.

Adrian has struggled offensively all season long and other than a brief early spurt of confident scoring they spent most of the afternoon missing shots.  Adrian made 5 of their first 8 attempts of the game and went 3-19 the rest of the first half.  Struggling on offense really isn't anything new for Adrian under Mark White, what is new is a defense that can't seem to stop people at the same rate they've been able to in previous years.  The only thing that's really keeping their statistical numbers from being a horror show is their ability to keep games at a slow pace.

Efficiency:

Estimated number of possessions:  Hope 63  Adrian 62
Fairly typical for a game involving Adrian

Offensively Efficiency:  130.06

Hope's highest efficiency game of the season, the fact this comes against Adrian should signal just how much Adrian is struggling even on defense.

Defensive Efficiency:  89.92

Another pretty solid defensive effort against a team that just can't score the basketball very well.  Statistically or efficiency wise this was a wipe out of a game.  A normal possession game and Hope probably wins by 35.

Rebounding Efficiency:

Hope:  51.9% of available offensive rebounds
Adrian: 31.4% of available offensive rebounds

2nd Chance points:  Hope 9 Adrian 2

Recent Adrian teams have been much better at rebounding.  I don't think Adrian is bad just more average as opposed to being excellent.  Hope had a pretty big advantage here with not much to show for it.  In a slower paced game maybe that 7 points is big.

Other Interesting Stats: 
Freethrows:  Hope ended up with a sizable free-throws shot advantage of 38 to 9.  From video I thought Hope was the aggressor attacking the basket.  Adrian seemed to attack the basket and pull up short and settle for 6-10 foot jump shots.  Those won't draw contact.  I think Adrian's difficult playing defense led to a lot of foul calls they probably didn't have last year.  They are a young team overall and young teams always seem to have difficulty with defense.



Hope 67  Trine 56
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Game two of the week was the return trip to Trine.  For the first time that I can remember Hope went down the night before and stayed in a hotel to make sure they could get the game played.  The Saturday forecast was pretty ugly, enough for me to not even consider making the trip, its been that kind of Winter.

Hope got off to a strong start and led 8-1 before giving up their first fg.  Hope would lead the entire game with the first half being played in the single-digits until Grant Neil's 75ft bomb at the buzzer gave the Dutchmen an 11 point cushion.  A second half Trine rally never really materialized and Hope led mostly comfortably by about 10-15 points for most of it.

With a little under 6 to play Trine held Hope without a fg until under 1 to play and whittled the lead down to 7 with a chance to get it to five.  A missed 3-pt shot by Trine's Nick Tatu followed by a key Alex Eidson layup plus foul put Hope up 10 and victory was assured.


Efficiency:

Estimated number of possessions:  Hope 65  Trine 65
A little slow, but not really

Offensively Efficiency:  102.45

This isn't great, but Trine's actually a pretty decent defensive team so I wouldn't worry about this too much.  It hardly felt like Hope was in much danger of losing this one.

Defensive Efficiency:  86.32

This is one of Trine's lowest performances of the year, but not the lowest.  They've had a handful.  From a Hope perspective its another really solid effort at slowing down another opponent.  At least for me its a pretty encouraging sign that this young team is paying attention to defense.

Rebounding Efficiency:

Hope:  25.0% of available offensive rebounds
Trine: 27.5% of available offensive rebounds

2nd Chance points:  Hope 4 Trine 5

There wasn't much to see here that decided this game, both teams cleaned up their defensive boards.  Given that Trine missed 40 shots to Hope's 24 I think you chalk this up as a Hope win.  But probably a statistical draw.

Other Interesting Stats: 

Leading scorer:   Trine's Tyler Good came into this game leading the MIAA in conference scoring at 19 pts per game and leaves it #6 in scoring.  Good had 4 points and was 0-7 from the floor.  In the first meeting Hope held Will Dixon well under his average.

Depth wins out:   Trine isn't a deep team to begin with, they've stuck with a rotation of 8 for most part.  On Saturday they were without F Tarvis Malone and played mostly just 7 guys.  Bench points was Hope 25  Trine 4


Going Forward:
Hope had two relatively comfortable wins for the week and spent all of 5 minutes trailing their two opponents.  Trine was leg 1 of 4 games against the 4 best teams in the league right around them.

Monday Hope completes its first rotation through the round robin when they host Kalamazoo.   Wednesday they host you know who followed by a Saturday date with Albion.  A look at the standings  should be enough to describe the importance of this weeks games for Hope.


Up Next:  me vs paralysis by over analysis

Monday:  Kalamazoo at DeVos Fieldhouse
Wednesday:  Calvin at DeVos Fieldhouse
Saturday:  Albion at DeVos Fieldhouse

It's a big week.