Hope 87 Ohio Wesleyan 61

Hope 87  Ohio Wesleyan  61
Box
Recap

This was sort of a weird game.  OWU started out making 5 3's in the games first 10 minutes which led to the Bishops holding a 24-13 lead.  From that point on OWU would make only 4 more and Hope would roll 74-37, only they didn't really roll because with 9 minutes to play it was a 3 point game and very much in doubt.  Then 2 minutes and 8 seconds later it wasn't a close game anymore and Hope would coast to a win that looks much more dominant than it was, yet it was pretty dominant.  Make sense?

Wesleyan plays a really tough bunch of offensive sets that are difficult to defend.  Its either 4 out and 1 in or all 5 out, get you to commit a second man on one and then find the open man, or get a mismatch and drive the lane.  Early on their offense had a terrific rhythm which seemed to leave Hope scrambling to find the ball and resulted in a lot of easy layups or wide open threes.  Hope seemed to adjust better as the game wore on and the difficulty of shot Hope allowed seemed to get tougher.  For awhile OWU was almost standing in place and chucking shots at the rim.

This game became close because OWU went to a 2-3 zone in the second half and seemed happy to let Hope have all the 3-point shots the wanted.  From OWU's perspective it worked until the wrong Hope guy got hot at the wrong time when Alex Eidson lit up 5 second half threes including 3 straight during the decisive run while they struggled to score themselves.  For Hope it was a combination of great offense, great defense at the right time and ballooned a close margin game into this 26 point win.




Bench Play:
Hope's bench turned out to be superior to OWU's.  Benchscoring was 39-9 led by Sam Otto's 14, Cody Stuive's 8 and Corey Mcmahon's 8.  Collectively the bench attempted and made almost as many FG's as the starting 5 along with nearly equaling their rebound total.  All in all a pretty comprehensive team win.

Number 10?
I had forgotten Ohio Wesleyan had climbed to number 10 in the last d3hoops.com poll.  There's been quite a bit of carnage among the top 15 early in the season.  OWU had won eight of its other nine games and had one of the best wins of the early season over Wooster, a game they led by 26.  But they floated up the poll rapidly based more on what other people failed to do than what they did.  Hope beat a #10 but probably not really a #10.  I think Wesleyan is good but probably more along the lines of a top 25 rather than top 10 team.  Within the region OWU should be one of the ranked teams so this win will help Hope when/if it comes down to NCAA selections.  It will probably remain Hope's best win of the year.

Having watched both Wooster and OWU in person I'd give the nod to Wooster, that doesn't mean OWU can't beat them (they did) but I think over the long haul Wooster might prove to be better.  It will interesting to watch.

Hope ranked?
Probably not, 7-4 doesn't usually get ranked.  Hope's best D3 wins are OWU, Mt. Union and Wheaton.  Wheaton is sliding and OWU was probably a little high in the last poll.  Hope's had a gauntlet of a schedule and come out in pretty good shape with 2 very close losses to Whitewater and Wooster.  At the very least they should start getting some votes.



Efficiency:

Hope 117.29  Ohio Wesleyan  83.25

I suppose a 26 point win should look something like that.  A couple things to point out, with 9 minutes to play Hope leading 60-57 the in-game efficiency at that point was 102-97.  The last 9 minutes was all Hope leading to the final game efficiency above.  OWU was winning the second half 105-114 at that point.

On the season, OWU's 83.25 is their lowest offensive output of the year, their previous low was 103 against Denison.  Overall a great defensive effort by the Dutchmen.

Pace:

74-73  A little fast and pretty much right on OWU's season average.  OWU going to zone slowed this down a little, to that point the faster pace seemed to favor Hope.  Good move by Coach DeWitt I thought.

Rebounding:
Hope 45  Ohio Wesleyan  26


Hope had 39.4% of available offensive rebounds
Ohio Wesleyan had 15.8% of available offensive rebounds

Second chance points was 16-4 to Hope.  If you read the preview I wrote you know OWU isn't a very good rebounding team and Hope certainly dominated this area of the game and not very surprising.  If anything holds Wesleyan back its this, but with them staying on the perimeter and spreading teams out so much its hard to rebound well.

3-point shooting:
Both teams took half their attempted FG's or more from behind the 3-point line.  65 in all between the two teams.  Its what OWU does but Hope's total of 31 was the surprise.  I'm not sure that was the pre-game intent but OWU stayed in a 2-3 zone for a long time in the second half and dared Hope to shoot and shoot they did taking 18 3-point shots in about 16 minutes of game time.  An effective zone, maybe, but it was gambling and Hope won that bet eventually.

A couple nuggets of statistical fact:   34 is the most 3-point shots attempted against Hope since Jan 4, 2012 when Alma took 34.  Hope only took 9 that day.

31 is the most Hope's taken in a game since March 1, 2008 when Hope beat Calvin 88-72 in the MIAA Championship game.  Pretty sure you have to go all the way back to 2004 and the two Trine games when Trine was attempting some version of Grinnell's offense to find more by both teams combined.  70 attempts and 62 but the 62 came in an overtime game.  Trine attempted 54 of the 70 in the other game.


Up Next:

Ramp it Up
League play starts in earnest for Hope as they travel to Angola, Indiana to face Trine, then host Calvin and Albion right off the bat. 

Wednesday Jan 7.  at Trine  7:30pm

Trine is 7-4 coming of a win at home over Ohio Northern.  Their best win of the year is beating #6 at the time Ohio Wesleyan on their home floor, next best a win over PAC favorite St. Vincent.  Of their losses Elmhurst, Case Western and North Park have one, two and three losses between them, Heidelberg is 5-6.  Of their wins, only St. Vincent has a winning record at 8-4.

Roster
Stats
Probable Lineup:
G  Will Dixon  6-0  So.
G  Ben Sykora  6-2  Jr.
F  Jake Bagley  6-3  Sr.
F  Tyler Good  6-3  Sr.
C  Jared Holmquist  6-5  Jr.
----------------------------------
G  Addison Daub  6-0  So.
G/F  Dustin Hall  6-1  Sr.
C   Ellis Cummings  6-7  Fr.
G  Tarvis Malone  5-10  Jr.
F  Joel Zwiers  6-6  Fr.

If the starting 5 is different it will be Bagley sitting on the bench for Hall or Daub.  Whoever starts you will likely see a lot of them as all 5 will likely log over 30 minutes without foul trouble.  Its possible Coach Miller will try to steal some minutes from his bench given Hope is much deeper but I wouldn't count on that.  Trine is not very tall and after Holmquist and Good in the post its two Freshmen I don't know anything about other than they don't play a lot.  Depth seems a little better than last year overall where they were almost strictly 7 guys at the end of the year.

This is as much of a 3 man offense as Hope will probably see this year.  Dixon, Good and Holmquist account for 70% of the offense and a steep drop in FG attempts after them.  If its anything like last year everything plays off Dixon and his ability to drive the lane.  Last spring Trine ran a ton of isolation plays for him in the MIAA Tournament game.  Most of the time its drive and dish or kick out to the wings.   Overall Dixon's stats are better than a year ago with a nice improvement from behind the arc, if driving the lane isn't there he'll pull up for the 2 or 3.

Overall the Thunder aren't a great 3-point shooting team coming in at 36% with Will Dixon carrying a heavy load of 54 of their 196 shot attmpts and shooting 44%.  The rest of the team is shooting just 33% with Bagley, Sykora, Daub, Malone and even Zwiers taking the majority of their shots from behind the arc. 

Trine does a few things well, including controlling the tempo.  I think this will be the most deliberate team Hope has face this year with avg. possessions per game of  62 per team.  They get to the line reasonably well and shoot a high percentage from the stripe.  Turnovers are pretty non-existent with less than 9 per game.  In short, the Thunder don't beat themselves.

For efficiency Trine comes in at 112 on offense 99 on defense.  I'm not sure what to make of their offensive number because a really big part of that is 4 good performances against Earlham, Franklin, Manchester and Illinois Tech with combined records of  4-41.  Against OWU they hit 130 but that's their only great performance against a good team.  Against the two best defensive teams they've played Elmhurst and St. Vincent they hit 100 and 89.    On defense they've been really good in number of games with Heidelberg, Case Western and OWU having the most success.  Hope will be another strong test for their defense.

If I had one thing to worry about its Hope's turnover rate.  If this is a low possession game turnovers could be key and Hope might just turn it over twice as much and that could be a problem.