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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:
Estimated number of possessions: Hope 82 Kalamazoo 79
High paced game. Kalamazoo was a pretty high paced team the non-conference part of the schedule. League play has slowed them down but Wednesday both Hope and Kalamazoo pretty much ignored the shot-clock.
Offensively Efficiency: 136.10
Hope's first half eff was 150 on the nose. If I counted right they made 15 of their last 17 shots to close the half. They slowed down a little in the second half, because you really have to from that high of an efficiency, and recorded a 120 eff. Kalamazoo just simply could not stop Hope which isn't a surprise, their season avg defensive eff is around 110. Key to a high efficiency, points in the paint. Hope 57 Kalamazoo 27. Lots of close ones.
Defensive Efficiency: 98.89
When your offense is humming along at a rate you know your opponent can't keep up with I'm not sure how much defense matters in games like these. Its just really hard to defend in high paced games. Kzoo had a pretty good first half eff of 116, which is pretty close to their season average. Second half 84.31, some of that is the lengthy garbage time, but Hope was better on the defensive end the second half.
Rebounding Efficiency:
Hope: 48.3% of available offensive rebounds
Kzoo: 21.1% of available offensive rebounds
2nd Chance points: Hope 18 Kzoo 5
That's really about as dominant as you can be. Final rebounding total of 47-28
Other Interesting Stats:
Assists:
26 assists on 43 made baskets, a rate of 60%. Seven Hope players had 3 assists in the game. Lots of extra passes being made to the wide open man on the interior.
Foul Trouble:
You'd never know it by looking at that score but Hope had to deal with some foul troubles that really could have cost them. Brock Benson only logged 6 minutes because of foul trouble, but the more serious trouble came at PG where Ben Gardner picked up his third foul early in the second half forcing Chad Carlson to play the point for what would be an extended time. Until Chad picked up 3 straight quick ones to give him 4. Cody Campbell was forced into playing the point for an extended time for really the first time this year.
Streaks:
34 in row now
Hope 73 Adrian 57
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| MIAA Championship Trophy presentation at Adrian |
On what felt like the only nice travel day of this entire awful winter, Hope ventured to Adrian and put the final touches on a really impressive 2014 MIAA Championship. For about 35 minutes this was a real battle as Adrian played with a tremendous amount of pride and determination. They made Hope work hard for their points and challenged the Dutchmen defensively. In the end Hope's bench consisting mostly of Caleb Byers, Corey McMahon, Chad Carlson, Brock Benson, Sam Otto and a starter or two interspersed provided two runs of defensive dominance that propelled them to this victory.
On offense it was Caleb Byers providing the majority of Hope's points, 19 on the day and 3 beautiful assits as Hope broke down Adrian's zone. Defensively he was a bigger body that limited Adrian's Ricky Jackson to just 4 second half points after a first half outburst of 19. Jackson scored Adrian's first 2nd half basket 1:10 into the half, the defensive switch to Byers was made and Jackson didn't score again until :44 remained. In between Hope suffocated Adrian's offense and expanded its lead to 19, playing the last 13 minutes with a comfortable feeling double-digit lead.
My first season of following the Dutchmen's efforts on the hardwood regularly was 1991. This is the 13th MIAA Championship I've watched Hope win, the 11th outright. I can't say I'm really surprised Hope won this because I think its always a possibility with the way Hope typically recruits and reloads annually. This Hope team is talented and deep and as I pointed out way back in November very young. There isn't a great history of young Hope teams doing what this one has done, from the youth angle, yes this might be a surprise.
Outside of this league I think people think this is easy for Hope and Calvin and that its just a matter of who beats the other to decide the title. I've watched too much of this league now to know that isn't necessarily true. You still have to go out there and perform, get the job done. Three weeks ago Hope was faced with a task of 4 games in 8 days, one against its rival, followed by 4 games to end the season with a one game lead after beating Calvin. They simply got the job done and did so in pretty impressive fashion winning 7 of the final 8 by double-digits.
Time will do a better job of placing this championship on my mental list of Hope teams I admire than I will now. For now I'm filled with a great sense of satisfaction for the players and coaches who make this thing go. From time to time I have to remind myself of how little of the bigger picture I get to see. Two maybe four hours a week of the many more hours of hard work that goes into making this thing called Hope Basketball. There's really a sense that the targets and goals for this team are bigger, maybe those goals are a little more in the future, maybe they're a lot more closer than I think.
Fourth Year:
This is Matt Neil's fourth year as the head coach and his third outright league championship. His MIAA record in the regular season stands at 51-5. Going back to 1953 when complete season/MIAA records exist on Hope's website this is only the third four year period of time with such an MIAA record. 1981-1984 Hope went 44-4, and from 1995 to 1998 Hope went 45-3. At home his teams are 26-2 in the league with currently 22 straight wins. On the road 25-3 that included a stretch of 17 road wins in a row.
This is all very impressive.
So, that trophy?:
The reason for the silly 'file not found' photo above is for whatever reason, and I'm not sure it matters Hope wasn't presented the season's championship trophy on Saturday night. Apparently this was all fine with Hope and so at some point, probably next week Dave Nielson who will retire as the commissioner of the MIAA this spring will hand the trophy to the Flying Dutchmen.
Efficiency:
Estimated number of possessions: Hope 60 Adrian 60
Slow. This is pretty much Adrian's game. Limit possessions, play tough defense, grind out a win in the final few moments. They accomplished 1 1/3 of those things.
Offensively Efficiency: 121.26
I don't have a breakdown by half but I'm sure these were pretty similar. This Adrian team tries really hard to be the Adrian of the last four years but eventually they tend to break down and give up a lot of easy baskets. Adrian just went an entire league season without holding a single team below 100.
Commentary: There is a lot of evidence here that Mark White's very good defensive teams the last 3 years were dependent on being able to play defense with your hands. Now that its out of the game, mostly, they have struggled. I can't disagree with this thought until I see further evidence. Its possible this is just a really young, undersized team struggling with defense the same way all young, undersized teams do.
Defensive Efficiency: 93.06
Again I don't have the halves breakdown but I'd be willing to wager the second half was in the 70s while Hope held the Bulldogs to 21 points. This final number is nearly dead on Adrian's offensive average for the year. For Hope this was really only a couple stretches of mediocre defense in the first half, the rest of it was very good.
Truthfully though the primary reason Hope appeared to struggle a little on defense was Adrian's Ricky Jackson was just flat out good in the first half.
Rebounding Efficiency:
Hope: 30.4% of available offensive rebounds
Adrian: 37.8% of available offensive rebounds
2nd Chance points: Adrian 14 Hope 2 Ew!
This will simply not get it done next week. Easily the most disappointing stat of the game. On the other hand they won by 17 while basically conceding the rebound portion of the game. This, is also what Adrian does, just not enough of it this year.
Other Interesting Stats:
Adrian assists:
Adrian had 10 assists on 20 baskets. I'm not even going to look this up but I bet its close to a season high for them in assist rate. Lack of assists has been an ongoing issue for Mark White's teams and for this season their assist rate will fall under 40% again.
Going Forward:
It might be nice to exhale a little bit, drink in the accomplishment of winning an MIAA Championship in a year where you weren't the odds on favorite. Those aren't necessarily rare accomplishments but they still feel awfully good when you prove the doubters wrong.
MIAA Tournament Week! Desperate basketball by desperate teams. The easiest and surest route in the NCAA Tournament is winning your AQ. Taking care of business Wednesday against Trine would give Hope a chance to do that at home in front of their fans.
Up Next:
Me vs turning 2 hour drives into 4
MIAA Tournament
Wed. Feb. 26 vs Trine @ DeVos Fieldhouse
Wed. Feb. 26 Albion vs Calvin @ that other place
Sat. Feb. 29 hopefully more basketball
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