2014 Season in Review: Hope

(This was half written when Hope filled its vacant coaching position last week, rather than change what I'd already written, I just went with it)

2014  20-8,  13-1  1st
2013  18-9,  12-2  2nd
2012  27-2,  14-0  1st

Best win of the year:  @ Calvin 71-63
Worst loss of the year:  Calvin 53-78 MIAA Tournament Championship


Seniors:   Nate VanArendonk, Caleb Byers, Grant Neil, Cody Campbell


" 1st is really never out of the question."

That was the last sentence of my Hope review for 2013 previewing 2014.  Writing that was easier than believing those words as Hope struggled to find their footing against a very difficult non-conference schedule.

As Alex Eidson went, so went Hope, sort of.

By the time Christmas rolled around Hope was 3-5 with pretty convincing losses to Whitewater, Stevens Point, Wheaton and Illinois Wesleyan on the ledger.  It would be easy to say Hope's season turned at the tournament at Thomas More where they beat NCAA bound Centre and rallied to beat Thomas More in the final minutes.  A few days later a win at home over Edgewood gave Hope a 6-5 record and just enough confidence to tackle the MIAA.

Hope's MIAA season was somewhat simplistic. They caught Calvin early and shocked them on their floor by 8 which felt like more and validated that by beating them in Holland 3 weeks later by 18 which felt like a lot more.  In between and after Hope rolled up 9 double digit wins, suffering just one loss at Albion and held off Calvin by a single game to capture the MIAA Championship.

The season ended somewhat abruptly with Hope being taken to overtime by Trine in the MIAA semi-finals and being manhandled by Calvin in the Championship.  Hope received an at-large bid and hosted the first round of the NCAA Tournament where they lost to PSU-Behrend in overtime.

click to read more

Hope Makes Its Choice

Hope made its choice and selected Greg Mitchell to take the helm as the 11th men's basketball coach in its history and just about the 11th Hope grad to do so.   The clicks on my counter tell me people have been checking this page to see what I have to say.  Unfortunately, I haven't much to say as I wasn't really prepared for this even though I should have been.  So shame on me.

In the meantime the media outlets have been busy copy and pasting Hope's press release into something that can't be considered plagiarism.   That's a joke btw, as I'm sure most of these media guys were well into their July 4th weekend anyway, at least mentally, and even the ones who probably knew something was coming figured next week.  Like myself.

Hope Press Release
D3hoops.com
Holland Sentinel
MLive
Lansing State Journal -  Easily the most interesting of the five

I'll have something  next week or so, in the meantime enjoy your holiday weekend and be thankful we can put this behind us.  Hope hired themselves a good one.