NCAA Tournament Round One

Behrend 70  Hope 66  OT
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Everything I ever needed to learn in life really came from cartoons, because it really does feel like that

I came into this weekend with really no expectations of what I'd see.  Unknown opponents are just that, unknown.  Watching Behrend warmup it was clear they stressed fundamentals and defense when they ran at least 4 team drills without ever shooting a basketball.  It was actually kind of a neat thing to see in the year 2014.

As it turned out the game was a pretty good slug-fest of defense as neither team found much in the way of offensive momentum.  A couple of times both teams grabbed leads of around 5-8 points only to have the other team quickly rally and tie the game or seize the lead themselves.

For whatever reason Hope was sloppy with the basketball these last two weeks.  Against a team like Behrend that is fairly good at creating turnovers, being sloppy was ultimately going to be their downfall.

I give Hope a lot of credit for the way they battled the last 10 minutes, up against the wall and staring a near double-digit deficit in the face they fought hard enough, long enough to give them a chance to win.  In the end they had the ball in their hands with time ticking down and a chance to win.  You really can't ask for anything else given the way the game played out.


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Doing the Dance

Pool C Party, also possibly a Delta Phi spring break

They made it.  My wish at the beginning of this season was for this group of Hope players to get a chance to play in the D3 Tournament and I didn't care how they made it happen.  Guys like Ben Gardner and Brock Benson didn't come all the way to Hope to not play in the NCAA's.  Now they get that chance.

How they made it was to grab an at-large bid, one of just 19 available, also known as Pool C selections.  Past experiences with NCAA dealings probably made you sweat and even panic a little.  I don't really think it was close to not happening.  Hope was the #2 team in the Great Lakes Region going into last week and nothing happened behind them that could reasonably move a team ahead of them.  They had favorable criteria in all the major categories.  100% was my response when asked about our chances Saturday night and other than a brief Sunday morning panic of 'oh my God the NCAA is gong to screw us', it was going to happen.

Much credit here needs to go to Hope's staff for putting together a pretty incredible non-conference schedule.  The feedback they've been receiving for some time was they needed to A) play more regional games  B) strengthen the schedule.  Hope did both of those, on steroids.  There's a better time for a discussion on the why's this worked out for Hope this year and how the changes to what games count from what didn't count helped. 

Make no mistake though Hope played their way into this position, they won games against Centre and Thomas More that could have gone the other way, rebounded from a loss to Wheaton to beat Carthage and most importantly beat Calvin twice.  None of these wins were more or less significant than the others but any losses in any of these games changes the criteria Hope presents to the NCAA, possibly enough to change this outcome.

The reward for everything this season brought us is a bid to 'the big dance' and a chance to host these first and second round games in the beautiful DeVos Fieldhouse.

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MIAA Tournament Championship

Calvin 78  Hope 53
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...and we wait.

Alternate Title:  The last act of a desperate man

Four minutes twenty eight seconds into this latest chapter of this rivalry Calvin coach Kevin VandeStreak was forced to burn a timeout moments before the first media timeout.  It was getting away early, Hope had just made a 3 to lead 11-2 and things were looking very similar to the last time we got together.   Not many people knew it at the time, but many suspected, the rout was on.  What nobody probably realized was the team needing the timeout would do the routing.

Over the next 10 minutes Hope had the ball roughly 15 times, they missed 7 shots and committed 7 turnovers.  Most of these, both turnover and misses,  the result of a tenacious defense that Calvin seemed unwilling to display in the previous two games.  It was the moments this game turned.

Once the game turned there were very few moments that made you feel it would turn back.  This was still a game 4 minutes into the second half, then 3 straight Calvin 3's and it really wasn't anymore.  One more long stretch of good Calvin defense and really none by Hope and a reasonable margin turned into 25.

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