Friday:
Wheaton 80 Hope 61
Carthage 74 Calvin 68
....then the world turned upside down, water flowed uphill, hot was cold, left was right, Michigan State went to the Rose Bowl
Saturday:
Hope 80 Carthage 58
Calvin 78 Wheaton 51
We've done this 10 times now and I think in most years all 4 of these squads came in with some question marks and in most years we left with a pretty clear or at least a more clear understanding where they all stood. This year, I don't know, did we really learn anything other than if you play well you win, if you don't, you lose?
This same kind of 4 way split happened in 2009-10, those games were quite a bit closer with only one decided by more than a few possessions. I don't remember what the overall conclusion was but it couldn't have been as perplexing as this past weekend.
What I think I saw was 4 pretty talented basketball teams in various stages of development. Two of these teams had disappointing efforts on Friday and came out determined to play better on Saturday. Two of these teams are probably going to the post-season without much trouble. Two others will spend large parts of this year with the dreaded "lots of potential" tag that at some point they'd like to reach. None of these teams should have blown anyone out but 3 of them did, none of them should have been blown out but 3 of them were. None of them should have worn 8 year old uniforms but one of them did.
The MIAA fanboy in me can't help but feel a little relieved that something was salvaged from what was looking like a pretty rough weekend that definitively was saying to the league, 'you guys suck'. We might still suck as a league, but it sure feels a lot better after Saturday than it might have.
click for so much more
A couple bullets on the 3 other teams not named Hope.
Wheaton-- On Friday Wheaton looked every bit the top 10 team they've been purported to be. They hit shots inside, outside, rebounded, defended well. When they grabbed a big lead they stuck the ball in Tyler Peters hands and said 'try and stop him' and Hope could not. On Saturday they looked like garbage with a large reason being the opponent on the other side.
Carthage-- On Friday played with amazing poise and confidence and out battled a much taller team on their home court. Saturday a bunch of Freshmen and Sophomores made them look silly and showed none of the poise and confidence they displayed on Friday.
Calvin-- Still look tall. For the weekend they played about 5 minutes of bad basketball which resulted in them looking up at the scoreboard and like me wondering how they fell behind by 8. They just never recovered and took a loss they probably shouldn't have. They also wore 8 year old uniforms and it was amazing how out of style 8 year old uniforms could really look. My closet is getting checked out this week.
Wheaton 80 Hope 61
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Lets start with the starters. Hope changed its starting five, going with Gardner, Eidsen, Neil, Benson, VanArendonk. I can only guess that this was to put a little better defensive and taller team on the floor specific to Wheaton and maybe take a little pressure off the Fr. Blackledge. Pure guesses. At the first substitution Hope was ahead 9-7 so it mattered little. Gardner wasn't 100%, Caleb Byers played very limited minutes for the first time, Chad Carlson made his first important minutes debut.
Hope had a couple stretches of missing 3 or 4 shots in a row in the first half and in both cases Wheaton capitalized and pushed their lead to double-digits. Other than those two or three stretches Hope was really step for step with the Thunder but could get very few defensive stops of their own. By very few I probably mean none. The result was a halftime deficit of 11.
The second half things really didn't change and Hope spent most it chasing Tyler Peters as he layup'd the Dutchmen to death with 18 2nd half points. That's not a joke he was 8 for 8. Peters also proved the best player on the court by stifling a hobbled Ben Gardner to 0 points on 0-4 shooting. By about 12 minutes to play Gardner was on the bench and never returned, afterwards he sat with an icepack on his ankle. Not much longer after Ben departed Nate VanArendonk picked up his 4th foul and about 23 seconds later his 5th with his sub at the table. At that point fate was probably sealed on a fate that was probably already sealed.
Wheaton got the lead to 20, won by 19. It felt like more, probably looked like more. Hope just couldn't find a way of stopping Wheaton. I probably expected a loss, but I thought they'd play better. It was disappointing.
Efficiency:
Estimated number of possessions: Hope 65 Wheaton 65
Kind of slow, I might start calling this the slow end of normal.
Offensively Efficiency: 94.35
Four out of five games Hope's hit 94 or 95. That's well below where they need to be.
Defensive Efficiency: 123.41
Wheaton shot 70+% the second half. They're another good offensive team but at some point you have to start providing better resistance. Its one thing to have a team shoot lights out on you from the perimeter, another to give up lay-up after lay-up. 42 of Wheaton's 61 points on FG's were considered points in the paint and that's really not a strong posting-up team.
Rebounding Efficiency:
Hope: 21.4% of available offensive rebounds
Wheaton: 26.7% of available offensive rebounds
Rebounding was completely inconsequential. There were 10 total rebounds classified as offensive. Second chance points was 8-6 Hope. Both teams did a really good job keeping the other off the glass.
Game Score:
3rd star- Corey McMahon, Hope 9.7
10 first half points off the bench, kept Hope from being blown out earlier.
2nd star- Brayden Teuscher, Wheaton 12.2
Most of his damage came at the line
1st star- Tyler Peters, Wheaton 16.7
Far and away the best player on the floor, quiet first half but dominated the 2nd with 18 of his game high 20. Quiet first half because he was wearing Ben Gardner's jersey.
Hope 80 Carthage 58
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Starting with the starters again. This time Gardner, Eidsen, Neil, Blackledge, VanArendonk. I shrug in your general direction because I don't know........anything really.
This game played much like all of Hope's games to this point. Close early with Hope trailing by 2 or 3 baskets for a lot of the half. Around 6 minutes to play Ben Gardner hit an innocent looking 3 to pull Hope within 2 at 25-23. A couple minutes latter another, then one by Eidsen, a tip-in by Neil off a missed 3 then a 3 by Neil himself. At the same time Carthage went the final 7 minutes of that half with only 2 fg's and found themselves down 36-31.
side note: This little 3-point barrage was 4-5, meaning for the rest of the game Hope went a pretty awful 2-14.
In the second half Hope seemed to have opened the flood gates of confidence and completely dominated the Red Men on the offensive end from the start to the finish. This was Hope's made shot sequence from the start of the 2nd half, the degree of difficulty on these shots was low.
19:21
BLACKLEDGE,HARRISON made layup
19:00
NEIL,GRANT made layup
17:27
EIDSON,ALEX made layup
15:15
BENSON,BROCK made layup
14:29
EIDSON,ALEX made layup
14:02
BENSON,BROCK made dunk
11:56
BENSON,BROCK made dunk
11:25
BYERS,CALEB made dunk
10:40
VANARENDONK,NATE made layup
10:17
EIDSON,ALEX made layup
09:19
CARLSON,CHAD made layup
09:00
VANARENDONK,NATE made layup
08:42
VANARENDONK,NATE made layup
In between there were a couple missed layups, a missed 3 and a missed
jump shot, otherwise they pretty much torched Carthage. Most of these
were the result of beautiful unselfish passing in the post.
While this was going on, Carthage had gone cold on their end settling for jump shots instead of the patient attack of the night before. A 4 minutes stretch of a 16-3 Hope run and this game had gone from 10 to 23 and it was pretty much over. Hope shot 61% for the half, played some defense and maybe most importantly had some fun doing it.
Efficiency:
Estimated number of possessions: Hope 66 Carthage 64
Slow end of normal.
Offensively Efficiency: 120.8
Hope's best performance of the year by far. Best part about this is that Hope recorded an assist on 22 of 34 fg's. That's an outstanding assist rate and its how you get a high efficiency number like this one. 50 of Hope's 74 points off fg's were considered in the paint.
Defensive Efficiency: 90.52
Carthage clearly did not have a good day shooting, but you really don't get numbers this low without someone playing good defense on you. Also Hope's best performance of the year.
Rebounding Efficiency:
Hope: 32.4% of available offensive rebounds
Carthage: 25.7% of available offensive rebounds
Hope won this skirmish with the result being a 12-4 second chance points advantage.
Turnovers:
Hope only committed 4 on the day, 2 when it didn't really matter anymore. Carthage only committed 10, but Hope cashed those in for 18 points off turnovers. Hope was able to run more in this game than in previous games.
Game Score:
3rd star- Marlon Senior, Carthage 13.2
Kind of held in check
2nd star- Harrison Blackledge, Hope 14.4
Very productive in only 17 minutes of game time.
1st star- Alex Eidsen, Hope 17.0
Was very active in finding shots all over the floor.
Going Forward:
Hope's 2-4, I think that was a reasonable expectation given the difficulty of these first 6 games and the youth etc. etc. Asking Hope to be better than that would have been asking them to beat either one of the top 15 teams in D3 or a very good Cornerstone team. Hope got its win over Carthage, a team that came into this weekend with the best win of the four teams over Washington-St. Louis. I think we leave this weekend like the last two thinking they have a lot of "potential".
It's two weeks off now until their next game on December 20 when they host their holiday tournament with Lake Forest, Wilmington and Illinois Wesleyan.
Up Next:
Me vs an unexpected invitation to Pasadena and the inevitable damage to my soul such a trip would bring.
Dec 20. vs Lake Forest, Dec 21. vs Illinois Wesleyan or Wilmington
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