Hope 66 Wheaton 55
box
recap
Saturday afternoon Hope beat Wheaton to take both of their games of the MIAA/CCIW Challenge, a first for a visiting conference team.. Hope moves to 12-10 in the 11 years of this event with the CCIW now leading 24-20.
On the court the story was Hope playing a zone for nearly the whole game. The brain cells that can remember things like how often Hope has played zones like this have long since closed shop, but I'm pretty sure it hasn't happened often. Up until Saturday Hope had used the zone very sparingly this year with mixed results.
Wheaton seemed very happy to shoot over the zone and launched a season high 33 3-point attempts and making only 9, well under the Thunder's 39% average coming into the weekend (they were 5-17 the night before against Calvin). The surprising part was Wheaton's either lack of will or ability to drive into the zone. They ended up with 5 fewer 2-point attempts for the game.
On Hope's side of the offense the Dutchmen were well short of spectacular and had stretches where they struggled to score points. You might say Hope's most effective play was to get fouled and make the free-throws, a perfect 20-20. The field goal shooting was spread mostly even with no player taking more than 8 shots.
A very good weekend for Hope all around.
More Zone
If you saw last year's Hope/Wheaton game you might understand a little better why Hope played so much zone this year. Hope couldn't guard Wheaton one v one in that game and although that was mostly Tyler Peters the Thunder are a quicker team than Hope at most positions.
This year the zone did 3 key things for Hope.
1. It kept Hope out of foul trouble which as has been pointed out here has been a problem
2. It kept Wheaton off the FT-line. The Thunder are an excellent FT shooting team but had only 7 attempts at the line in this one. Hope basically flipped a clear Wheaton advantage to a Hope advantage.
3. It kept Wheaton passive. The Thunder are typically more aggressive driving the lanes, but in this one they stayed back content to shoot 3-pointers, they didn't seem too willing or maybe able to attack Hope's defense.
The question is how much of a gamble was this for Hope. I think that's a little bit of a gray area, coming into the game Wheaton was shooting a respectable 39% on the year but that was largely built on 2 big nights against Olivet and Benediction where they combined to go 15-27. In four of their other games including the night before against Calvin they shot under 30%. Hope may have just said, 'we don't think you can beat us from out there but we'll let you try'. Wheaton never put Hope in a position to come out of the zone. Every time they were within a point or tied Hope would go on a minny run of 7 or 8 points, and they never really did hit more than a couple 3's in a row. There was no reason to change.
Then they changed. In the last 4 or 5 minutes Hope finally went to man-to-man and Wheaton looked perplexed by this madness. Wheaton missed 8 of its last 9 shots most seemed heavily contested and Hope ended up comfortably ahead as the clock ticked down.
In Challenges Past this game has always been the more important of the two for Hope with it being one of those 'in-region games'. With the much broader regional definition and the 75% rule pretty much everything counts now so these were two equally important wins in the biggest NCAA picture.
Wheaton's been an NCAA tournament team in 3 of the last four years. This team seems a touch short of that and will probably be in the final battle for the 4th CCIW tournament slot with Elmhurst. Augustana-IWU-North Central have all looked stronger than the Thunder, but that's always a race that's pretty hard to predict.
Efficiency:
Hope 103.94 Wheaton 88.25
This game won't win any awards for beauty. Hope's eff was enough to get the job done, miss a few ft's and Hope would have been below 100. Holding Wheaton below 90 was the key part, all Wheaton had to do was hit 3 more 3-point shots to be level in efficiency. Wheaton might have 1 or 2 more performances like that this year but this is probably going to be one of their lowest. Hope should feel really good about their defense this weekend. (Even if they did play a communist zone)
Pace:
64-62 Slow. Hope's zone meant Wheaton took a lot of time before finding the right 3-point shot to launch and Hope was pretty deliberate themselves. There was one fast-break fg in the entire game.
Rebounding:
Hope 32 Wheaton 36
Hope had 14.8% of available offensive rebounds
Wheaton had 38.7% of available offensive rebounds
Hope had all of 4 offensive boards in the game and it wasn't from a lack of opportunities. Wheaton is not a tall team but they really kind of dominated this area of the game. Second chance points was 10-7 to Hope so Wheaton couldn't cash in many boards for points, most likely because they were long 3-point misses. Hope has not shown itself to be a good rebounding team thus far, its certainly an area that could use work.
Free-Throw Shooting:
Hope went 20-20 against Wheaton which set the school record. Combine that with Friday's 24-29 and Hope had an excellent weekend at the line. Dare I say Hope is a really good FT shooting team? 79.2% on the year.
Up Next
 | |
| Not one person misses these after graduation |
Hope hits exam week and I presume its their NCAA mandated week off. Following the late nights, cramming and caffeine binge Hope will host its own
No comments:
Post a Comment