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.
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