Hope 73 Carthage 55
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recap
For parts of this game Carthage looked every bit like the team picked to finish 7th in the CCIW this year. This was a night they were not very good, at least some of that can be attributed to Hope and its quickly improving defense.
For a change, it was Carthage and not Hope that had to deal with early foul trouble on their big man as Mike Kastel picked up two early fouls and spent much of the first half sitting on the bench. Making matters worse for the Red Men was leading scorer Reese Hearth having a really bad night shooting going 1-10 from the floor and 0-5 from behind the arc. For much of this game Carthage had little offensive punch and little rebounding presence.
Hope's Brock Benson and Harrison Blackledge were relatively free to roam the paint and capitalized by scoring 15 and 12 while drawing numerous fouls. Hope wasn't an offensive machine by any stretch and struggled from behind the arc at just 5-18 (this could have been a really big margin) but they shot over 60% from inside the arc, had good contributions from everyone and were exceptionally good at the free-throw line.
The next day Carthage took Calvin to the wire losing on a last second shot by Jordan Brink. I shrug my shoulders because sports doesn't make sense sometimes.
Efficiency:
Hope 114.46 Carthage 80.91
If I had a wish it would be a season full of 114 games. This is good and a team that is difficult to beat most of the time. I'm not fully sure what to make of holding Carthage to an 80.91, my usual caveats about it takes some good defense and awful offense to get numbers that low. Carthage flat out stunk for a large chunk of this game. They've played what I guess are 3 teams with NCAA tournament aspirations LaCrosse, WashingtonU and Hope. Their offensive eff in those 3 games was 80,77 and 80. They have been bad against good teams.
Pace:
64-67 Slowish. Not a lot of transition action for either team and much of the last 7-8 minutes was just trying to play out the clock.
Rebounding:
Hope 37 Carthage 26
Hope had 43.5% of available offensive rebounds
Carthage had 29.4% of available offensive rebounds
Losing Kastel to foul trouble certainly hurt Carthage here, but Hope was better all night long even when Kastel was in the game. He finished with just 3 boards. Benson and Blackledge combined for 10.
Turnovers: Hope 15 Carthage 14
So far this year this number is a touch higher than I'd like to see. It probably didn't matter in the game but Hope is getting close to one turnover per 5 possessions on the year and that is higher than you'd like. Remember the MIAA has been a really low turnover league for a couple years now, just being good lands you in the bottom 3 or 4 of the league in turnovers. On the other hand, so many of these seem to come from Hope's aggression and I really don't think those can be faulted. So play on I guess.
Random Thoughts:
Starting lineup
Chad Carlson started at PG for the 4th straight game, this is looking more like a finality than experimenting. Every time I seem to write something about the lineup it changes though so we'll see. In this game Chad was the only one who saw significant minutes to not score and missed all 3 of his 3-point shots. An off night because Chad might actually be the teams best 3-point shooter. He probably won't create much of his own offense and we've seen very little of him driving the lane like Ben Gardner but he'll camp out on the edges just in case the defense forgets about him. So far this seems like a positive move.
Bench Items
Cody Stuive looks much more comfortable than he did in the exhibition and Wisconsin gauntlet games. Unlikely he regains his starting spot from a year ago because Blackledge is playing so well, but consistent bench production like his is welcomed. Steve Wittenbach also played well in this one, unfortunately he left the game with an injury and didn't play vs Wheaton. Hopefully its just precautionary. Lastly Dante Hawkins is solidly the #3 pg and there might be moments later this year he plays more than Chad Carlson. Dante has clearly been pressing offensively but he scored his first points from the floor in this game and looked much more comfortable all around. His tough defense and overall quickness can really help a team that truthfully lacks a little of both.
MIAA/CCIW Challenge Future:
Next year we return to Holland for round 12 of this event. Carthage's video play-by-play guy says it will be their last. The CCIW expands to 9 teams next year so everyone loses two non-conference games Carthage apparently chose to drop these two. Hopefully they'll be replaced by another CCIW team because I've really liked this event and would like to see it continue. Early rumor is North Central will be that 4th team and that would be at least an equal to Carthage in quality. Todd Raridon has built a fine program in Naperville.
Up Next:
Wheaton write-up when I get around to it.
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