Box Score
Hope started Gardner, Seiler, Eidson, Snuggerud, VanArendonk. It's the post-season so this isn't going to change much between now and Saturday is it? Grant Neil logged 22 followed by Denham, DeMaagd, Byers, McMahon, Benson around 9-14. Denham logged a couple extra when Gardner picked up his 4th foul. Josh Holwerda, Chris Ray and Colton Overway made one final appearance before the clock ticked zero in this one.
Game Recap:
I've done a terrible job preparing myself for this weekend, its hard to reconcile that this season has gone by so quickly. But the reality is it could all be over this weekend and that's what about 350 D3 programs face, the end of their season. It was just getting fun to, and so just like every year its time for my love/hate relationship with late February/March basketball, its good. Unfortunately just when it gets good, just when everything you've seen over the past 4 months starts to make sense, starts to gel into this thing you can explain, appreciate and look forward to, it ends.
But that is part of what makes this weekend fun, the prospect of 30 guys playing each other in a game that might be their last this year. For some it might be their last organized game forever. That prospect is always real, always seems a little harsh but the desperate nature adds to the flavor that is post-season basketball. Yesterday it happened twice, Saturday it will happen again. It used to happen in one gym, now its 2, now its only half the fun or half the aggravation.
Trine came to Holland to play last night and they were pretty good. An early stretch of good shooting, including making 5 jump shots in a row, gave the Thunder an early 6 point lead, at the same time Hope was a little less than good on their end of the offensive floor. Between Saturday and last night Hope forgot how much trouble Trine had with their interior, the ball didn't go inside enough and when it did, it didn't find its way to the bottom of the net often enough.
Ben Gardner kept Hope's offense from being completely dead, there was a real chance Trine could have built a double-digit first half lead had things continued to be the way they were going, but the wonder kid from Indiana just kind of took things into his own hands and ended up with 14 first half points, his previous career high for a game was 18. He set that this past Saturday. I tried really hard to think of Hope individual performance in the MIAA tournament like that in one half, the only names I could come up with were Cramer, Holstege, Muhlenberg, VanderHeide etc. But yeah, he was kind of good last night.
By the end of the first you could sense Hope had gained some control of the game, they were leading even though it had felt like Trine had played a really good first half, and they had, shooting the ball at 50% with most of those being mid-range jump-shots. Defensively Hope was denying Ian Jackson anything, and if not for two ft's in the final dying seconds of the half he would have been shut-out. In the end Jackson finished with 12, most of those he had to work very hard for.
In the second half it was again Ben Gardner seeming to spark the Hope offense along with a healthy dose of Nate Snuggerud. By the 5 minutes played mark, back-to-back Gardner baskets had put Hope up 10. The game floated right in the 6-13 point range until Trine, at almost the exact same point in the game as Saturday rallied with a 9-2 run to cut it to 6. Hope steadied things, even doing so through adversity with Gardner picking up his 4th foul, and outperformed Trine in the final minutes with baskets or points every time they needed them. Trine meanwhile kind of wilted under the pressure, a couple airballed ft's, and numerous other shots well off the mark kept their desperate rally from succeeding.
Survive and advance, all that matters now.
Ben Gardner! All Ben has done in his last six games is establish and break his career high 3 times. Against Trine he's scored 15, 18, 24. Matt Neil may want to consider scheduling more Indiana schools. What Ben has done in the last 4 weeks since Colton Overway's injury is one of the more impressive things I think I've seen from any Hope player in my time watching and there have been some pretty impressive things.
Ian Jackson only really had one big game against Hope, that came in his Sophomore season. Starting with his Fr. year his scoring line against Hope reads (11, 18, 17)-- (23, 9)-- (4, 8)-- (14, 10, 12.). For his career against Hope Jackson shot 50-130 for 38%, I'm sure that's below his average and the points average of 12.6 is well below his career average. Defense is always a team game but Hope's had some pretty good individual stoppers, one of them is Billy Seiler who's drawn the Jackson assignment. He has simply been in Jackson's jersey the last couple years. Jackson has been one of the most prolific scorers in recent MIAA history and one of the 5 or 6 best in all of Trine's great history.
Streaks? This win takes Hope's streak to 22 over Trine now, 20 since Trine joined the league. The other streak and the more important one is 8 straight appearances in the MIAA Championship game. Hope will be going for their 6th straight tournament title Saturday.
Scoring and Interesting Stats:
Free-throws: Perception is everything sometimes, during the game it felt like Hope was really putting on a clank-fest, in reality they were 23-31 which is a perfectly acceptable 74%. Inside that number though is that everyone not named Nate Snuggerud or Ben Gardner went 10-18, a not so acceptable number. Trine missed some big ones down the stretch going just 1-6 in the final 3 minutes, different finish with those points. Overall just 10-19 from a team that shoots 75% from the line normally. Win by 13 with 13-13 from the stripe from 2 guys. Practice your ft's kids.
(Also a pretty boring stat sheet like Saturday's)
Ben Gardner: 24 points, 6 rebounds.....4th career high in the last 6 games. I just don't even know what to say about this kid anymore.
Nate Snuggerud: 20 points, 7 rebounds.........the other guy Trine really couldn't stop, in contrast to Jackson, I think Nate had a very good career vs Trine.
Nate VanArendonk: 6 points, 8 rebounds, 2 blocks, 2 steals........seemed to be a frustrating kind of night for him at least offensively, this is better than it looked
Efficiency:
Estimated number of possessions: Hope 71 Trine 68
Only slightly higher paced than the first two, if you can tell the difference watching congratulations
Offensive Efficiency: 107.46
Not as good as the previous two Trine games, my perceptions must have been all screwy last night because I thought the 2nd half was better than the first, but it was the other way around. Four of the six halves played between these two Hope was over a 110 scoring rate.
Defensive Efficiency: 92.61
The difference between these two teams right now seems to be this. Trine hasn't been able to stop Hope this year while Hope has been able to stop Trine in at least 1 half of all 3 games. Last night it was a second half scoring rate of just 79 that did Trine in after a 108 in the first half. The good half/bad half thing for Hope has held steady through most of the season.
Rebounding Efficiency:
Hope: 45.9% of available offensive rebounds
Trine: 33.3% of available offensive rebounds
If there's another glaring difference between the two teams its also rebounding. Hope's just been so much better on their own glass. This particular game Trine did just a touch better keeping Hope off the glass, but not much. Second chance points was only 14-11
Moments or Key to the Game:
Staying composed in the face of a Trine team that played awfully well in the first half. It would have been easy to start pressing or forcing things but Hope really didn't do that.
Nick Tatu hit a 3 to bring Trine within 6 to cap a mini-run of 9-2. Trine really had a chance to rally at that point but it just didn't happen for them, prior to that it looked like Hope might walk away with it easily.
Any time Ben Gardner touched the basketball, not true, but it felt like it.
My Game Ball Goes To:
Guesses? Ben Gardner, he was just outstanding last night. A close second would have been Snuggerud.
Standings
Snuggerud - 6
Overway - 4
Gardner - 3
VanArendonk - 2
Eidson - 2
Seiler - 2
Benson - 2
Byers - 1
DeMaagd - 1
Neil -1
Everyone -1
Going Forward:
Last night Hope was good enough to advance in a game that has looked like a lot of MIAA semi-finals recently, one team just not having enough in the tank to fight to the bitter end. MIAA seasons have turned into long grinds for the middle of the league. The parity from anywhere outside Holland and Grand Rapids has been evident, there isn't a lot of difference between 3 thru 8. Its how 8 beats 3 and 7 beats 4 in the final two weeks of the season. Two more MIAA semi-finalists fell victim to the season that Hope and Calvin really don't face (save for Calvin last year). So once again we end up with this for the title, Hope vs Calvin.
Seasons are peaks and valleys and Saturday is another daunting and appropriate peak. The league champion, in their gym, who also happens to be your arch rival. Would you want anything else? So far we've seen a historic blow-out and a game where Hope did absolutely everything they needed to win and won by just 3. This is their shot, its all you can ask for.
There is no tomorrow without a win.
Up Next: Me vs. finding some kind of zen state of mind for Saturday
Saturday, February 23 Hope at Calvin, VanNoord Arena, MIAA Tournament Championship
Showing posts with label Trine University Basketball. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trine University Basketball. Show all posts
Friday, February 22, 2013
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Hope 81 Trine 72
Box Score
Hope started Gardner, Seiler, Eidson, Snuggerud, VanArendonk. Grant Neil and Brock Benson saw the majority of bench minutes, the importance of Benson's play cannot be understated. Denham had a nice short stint giving Gardner a rest, Ray, McMahon, Holwerda, Byers, DeMaagd all had short appearances on the floor.
Game Recap:
This game had a lot of the things you like to see in late season basketball. Two teams with something to play for, a nice size crowd, and frankly some pretty darn good high quality play from the guys on the court in a close game that goes down to the last few minutes.
There were a lot of similarities in this one to the first encounter with Trine back in Holland. Long segments of this game were played where both teams seemed pretty even in their play and neither could get much of an upper hand on the other. Hope ended up leading for most of the first half but never by more than a basket or two. On the defensive side of things Hope really bottled up Ian Jackson pretty good, for the last 32 minutes of this game Ian had one made fg. It was Seiler and Neil doing most of the tough work, Hope just didn't really give him much space to operate.
Todd Watkins of Trine really made a positive impression on me today, he was aggressive on offense in the place of Scott Rogers. Without Watkins' excellent first half play Trine could have been in some trouble but he helped keep his team close and gave Hope something to worry about on the interior, he was a little bit of a difficult match-up for Hope yesterday.
Hope's first half lead was five and early in the second ran into some trouble right off the first play with Nate VanArendonk picking up his 3rd foul. In stepped Brock Benson who went out there and had a hand in the next four Hope scoring opportunities with a basket +foul, assist on the next, drawing another foul w/ft's and finally another basket. Scored 7 quick points and accounted for 2 more with a pretty pass from the 3-point line to the post that 6-8 D3 Fr. Centers shouldn't be able to make.
Brock's play really seemed to spark Hope and over the next couple minutes they had some great transition baskets led by Gardner who provided a couple laser accurate passes. Within a brief window the lead had ballooned to 15, much like the game in Holland it was just a brief moment where Hope was able to go on a little scoring run to seize control of the game.
Trine didn't go away though as Nick Tatu got just enough space to launch a couple three's that splashed the bottom of the net, his shots seemed to spark the Thunder as they came roaring back and quickly cut down that lead to just 2 again and this battle was on. The rest of this game really seemed to become an interior slugfest. Hope continued to pound it inside to its big guys and were rewarded with either easy layups or trips to the ft line. Trine used Holmquist as their go to guy in the post with other drives to the basket by their guards or Todd Watkins.
In the end it was Hope's ability to convert all its offensive trips at the end of the game into points except 1 possession, while Trine missed a couple of opportunities and maybe had a bad shot selection trip or two which ended up costing them. Hope wins this highly entertaining and competitive game, while neither team actually had many defensive stops there was still some very good defense played, including 2 5 second counts and a couple shot clock violations by both teams. Both teams seemed to be very good at breaking the other down and getting high quality shots.
See you Friday? Wait, Friday? Despite the Trine students insistence that they'll see us Friday, Hope will meet Trine Thursday night in Holland. I highly recommend attending this game, for my money these two meetings have been very well played offensive games with some good defense sprinkled within. Having seen Trine twice now I'm pretty confused on how they're just 7-7 in the league, too many good players on that team for that to have happened. Trine should be back to full health with Sr. Scott Rogers presumably at 100%, he definitely was not yesterday despite playing some. Add in the do or die nature of tournament basketball and it seems like it should be a pretty good game.
Trine has lost 4 in a row and still gains the 3rd seed in the tournament. You probably just don't see that too often, certainly unusual. This is Trine's second straight year finishing 3rd. Tough to replace Jackson and Rogers but it certainly feels like Trine's going to be in this position more often than not as long as Brooks Miller is around.
Scoring and Interesting Stats:
Free-throws: 39 attempts, that's a lot. Hope is doing a great job attacking the basket. With 640 attempts this year they've eclipsed last season's total by over 250 attempts, that's pretty incredible when you think about it, almost 10 more per game. Only a couple of the last half dozen Hope teams attempted more.
(It's actually a boring box score)
Ben Gardner: 18 points, 5 assists, 4 rebounds......sets career high in first trip back to his home state. feels like Ben stopped being a freshmen and started being a junior about 3 weeks ago.
Brock Benson: 14 points, 7 rebounds......pretty outstanding day and much needed when NVA left the game with foul trouble.
Nate VanArendonk: 10 points, 5 rebounds......despite the limited minutes Nate was productive and a difficult match-up for Trine. Only gets credit for 1 block but altered at least 2 others.
Billy Seiler: 9 points........spent most of the day chasing Ian Jackson, he and Grant Neil did a terrific job on him
Nate Snuggerud: 8 points, 5 rebounds.......when I look at it now he had a pretty rough day shooting the ball from the floor and the line, drew a lot of defensive attention.
(let me take a second to reflect on the thought of two freshmen leading Hope in scoring in the last game of the regular season and how absurd that thought would have been back in November.)
Efficiency:
Estimated number of possessions: Hope 65 Trine 64
I won't call this slow just slowish. Lots of points for that kind of game.
Offensively Efficiency: 125.53
By now you should be able to guess that a low possession game with 80 points would equal a high efficiency, and so it was. More remarkable was that both halves were nearly identical in Hope's scoring rate. It was evident late in the game Trine didn't have much answer in the post but to foul, fortunately Hope converted those chances. Ends up being Hope's 3rd best performance of the year.
Defensive Efficiency: 113.39
Trine was good yesterday and its part of what made this a pretty entertaining game to watch. Trine made themselves difficult to defend with Jackson drawing attention, Watkins and Holquist playing so well in the post and a couple other guys sprinkling in shots here and there. This ends up being Hope 2nd worst defensive performance of the year, which is conflicting because I actually really liked Hope's efforts on the defensive end.
Rebounding Efficiency:
Hope: 54.5% of available offensive rebounds
Trine: 32.1% of available offensive rebounds
Hope was better on the boards though it only resulted in a 14-10 2nd chance points advantage. This is almost dead-on exactly like the first meeting.
Moments or Keys to the Game:
Brock Benson stepping in for Nate VanArendonk's foul trouble and performing very well. All 14 of his points came in the 2nd half and really seemed to lift his team.
Trine hit 4 straight 3's attempted at a point when they were down 15, it was part of an 18-5 stretch and completely changed the complexion of the last 7 or 8 minutes.
Hope being strong in the paint and at the line in the last few minutes. Trine had little answer.
My Game Ball Goes To:
I'm crazy to not give this to Ben Gardner, who was absolutely terrific on the day. But, I thought Brock Benson's 2nd half ended up being the difference in the game. With Nate VanArendonk having to sit with 3 fouls Hope needed Brock to come in and influence the game and he certainly did that as Hope jumped out to a 15 point lead.
Standings
Snuggerud - 6
Overway - 4
VanArendonk - 2
Eidson - 2
Seiler - 2
Gardner - 2
Benson - 2
Byers - 1
DeMaagd - 1
Neil -1
Everyone -1
Going Forward:
So this concludes the regular season, Hope ends up 17-8 riding an 8 game winning streak. There's not much doubt Hope is playing better basketball and I think all of their performances back that up. The time for gnashing teeth about losses that shouldn't have happen can come latter, for now we get to look forward to the MIAA's half-tournament. It sounds completely and utterly absurd to say you're the 5 time defending champion at anything but that is exactly what Hope is, the 5 time defending MIAA Tournament Champion. This annoys people.
Thursday night Hope sees this same Trine squad and they had probably prepare themselves for quite a battle. Between the 80 minutes in the two meetings, about 60 of those were pretty dead even. If Hope wants any shot at a post-season that involves the letters 'NCAA' they simply have to win this tournament because it probably isn't coming any other way and they should expect Trine's best swings Thursday night.
Up Next: Me vs I really should write something about Hope's excellent women's team but I really wouldn't know what to write besides 'woo we beat Calvin'.
Thursday February 21, MIAA Tournament Semi-Final: Trine vs Hope, DeVos Fieldhouse
Hope started Gardner, Seiler, Eidson, Snuggerud, VanArendonk. Grant Neil and Brock Benson saw the majority of bench minutes, the importance of Benson's play cannot be understated. Denham had a nice short stint giving Gardner a rest, Ray, McMahon, Holwerda, Byers, DeMaagd all had short appearances on the floor.
Game Recap:
This game had a lot of the things you like to see in late season basketball. Two teams with something to play for, a nice size crowd, and frankly some pretty darn good high quality play from the guys on the court in a close game that goes down to the last few minutes.
There were a lot of similarities in this one to the first encounter with Trine back in Holland. Long segments of this game were played where both teams seemed pretty even in their play and neither could get much of an upper hand on the other. Hope ended up leading for most of the first half but never by more than a basket or two. On the defensive side of things Hope really bottled up Ian Jackson pretty good, for the last 32 minutes of this game Ian had one made fg. It was Seiler and Neil doing most of the tough work, Hope just didn't really give him much space to operate.
Todd Watkins of Trine really made a positive impression on me today, he was aggressive on offense in the place of Scott Rogers. Without Watkins' excellent first half play Trine could have been in some trouble but he helped keep his team close and gave Hope something to worry about on the interior, he was a little bit of a difficult match-up for Hope yesterday.
Hope's first half lead was five and early in the second ran into some trouble right off the first play with Nate VanArendonk picking up his 3rd foul. In stepped Brock Benson who went out there and had a hand in the next four Hope scoring opportunities with a basket +foul, assist on the next, drawing another foul w/ft's and finally another basket. Scored 7 quick points and accounted for 2 more with a pretty pass from the 3-point line to the post that 6-8 D3 Fr. Centers shouldn't be able to make.
Brock's play really seemed to spark Hope and over the next couple minutes they had some great transition baskets led by Gardner who provided a couple laser accurate passes. Within a brief window the lead had ballooned to 15, much like the game in Holland it was just a brief moment where Hope was able to go on a little scoring run to seize control of the game.
Trine didn't go away though as Nick Tatu got just enough space to launch a couple three's that splashed the bottom of the net, his shots seemed to spark the Thunder as they came roaring back and quickly cut down that lead to just 2 again and this battle was on. The rest of this game really seemed to become an interior slugfest. Hope continued to pound it inside to its big guys and were rewarded with either easy layups or trips to the ft line. Trine used Holmquist as their go to guy in the post with other drives to the basket by their guards or Todd Watkins.
In the end it was Hope's ability to convert all its offensive trips at the end of the game into points except 1 possession, while Trine missed a couple of opportunities and maybe had a bad shot selection trip or two which ended up costing them. Hope wins this highly entertaining and competitive game, while neither team actually had many defensive stops there was still some very good defense played, including 2 5 second counts and a couple shot clock violations by both teams. Both teams seemed to be very good at breaking the other down and getting high quality shots.
See you Friday? Wait, Friday? Despite the Trine students insistence that they'll see us Friday, Hope will meet Trine Thursday night in Holland. I highly recommend attending this game, for my money these two meetings have been very well played offensive games with some good defense sprinkled within. Having seen Trine twice now I'm pretty confused on how they're just 7-7 in the league, too many good players on that team for that to have happened. Trine should be back to full health with Sr. Scott Rogers presumably at 100%, he definitely was not yesterday despite playing some. Add in the do or die nature of tournament basketball and it seems like it should be a pretty good game.
Trine has lost 4 in a row and still gains the 3rd seed in the tournament. You probably just don't see that too often, certainly unusual. This is Trine's second straight year finishing 3rd. Tough to replace Jackson and Rogers but it certainly feels like Trine's going to be in this position more often than not as long as Brooks Miller is around.
Scoring and Interesting Stats:
Free-throws: 39 attempts, that's a lot. Hope is doing a great job attacking the basket. With 640 attempts this year they've eclipsed last season's total by over 250 attempts, that's pretty incredible when you think about it, almost 10 more per game. Only a couple of the last half dozen Hope teams attempted more.
(It's actually a boring box score)
Ben Gardner: 18 points, 5 assists, 4 rebounds......sets career high in first trip back to his home state. feels like Ben stopped being a freshmen and started being a junior about 3 weeks ago.
Brock Benson: 14 points, 7 rebounds......pretty outstanding day and much needed when NVA left the game with foul trouble.
Nate VanArendonk: 10 points, 5 rebounds......despite the limited minutes Nate was productive and a difficult match-up for Trine. Only gets credit for 1 block but altered at least 2 others.
Billy Seiler: 9 points........spent most of the day chasing Ian Jackson, he and Grant Neil did a terrific job on him
Nate Snuggerud: 8 points, 5 rebounds.......when I look at it now he had a pretty rough day shooting the ball from the floor and the line, drew a lot of defensive attention.
(let me take a second to reflect on the thought of two freshmen leading Hope in scoring in the last game of the regular season and how absurd that thought would have been back in November.)
Efficiency:
Estimated number of possessions: Hope 65 Trine 64
I won't call this slow just slowish. Lots of points for that kind of game.
Offensively Efficiency: 125.53
By now you should be able to guess that a low possession game with 80 points would equal a high efficiency, and so it was. More remarkable was that both halves were nearly identical in Hope's scoring rate. It was evident late in the game Trine didn't have much answer in the post but to foul, fortunately Hope converted those chances. Ends up being Hope's 3rd best performance of the year.
Defensive Efficiency: 113.39
Trine was good yesterday and its part of what made this a pretty entertaining game to watch. Trine made themselves difficult to defend with Jackson drawing attention, Watkins and Holquist playing so well in the post and a couple other guys sprinkling in shots here and there. This ends up being Hope 2nd worst defensive performance of the year, which is conflicting because I actually really liked Hope's efforts on the defensive end.
Rebounding Efficiency:
Hope: 54.5% of available offensive rebounds
Trine: 32.1% of available offensive rebounds
Hope was better on the boards though it only resulted in a 14-10 2nd chance points advantage. This is almost dead-on exactly like the first meeting.
Moments or Keys to the Game:
Brock Benson stepping in for Nate VanArendonk's foul trouble and performing very well. All 14 of his points came in the 2nd half and really seemed to lift his team.
Trine hit 4 straight 3's attempted at a point when they were down 15, it was part of an 18-5 stretch and completely changed the complexion of the last 7 or 8 minutes.
Hope being strong in the paint and at the line in the last few minutes. Trine had little answer.
My Game Ball Goes To:
I'm crazy to not give this to Ben Gardner, who was absolutely terrific on the day. But, I thought Brock Benson's 2nd half ended up being the difference in the game. With Nate VanArendonk having to sit with 3 fouls Hope needed Brock to come in and influence the game and he certainly did that as Hope jumped out to a 15 point lead.
Standings
Snuggerud - 6
Overway - 4
VanArendonk - 2
Eidson - 2
Seiler - 2
Gardner - 2
Benson - 2
Byers - 1
DeMaagd - 1
Neil -1
Everyone -1
Going Forward:
So this concludes the regular season, Hope ends up 17-8 riding an 8 game winning streak. There's not much doubt Hope is playing better basketball and I think all of their performances back that up. The time for gnashing teeth about losses that shouldn't have happen can come latter, for now we get to look forward to the MIAA's half-tournament. It sounds completely and utterly absurd to say you're the 5 time defending champion at anything but that is exactly what Hope is, the 5 time defending MIAA Tournament Champion. This annoys people.
Thursday night Hope sees this same Trine squad and they had probably prepare themselves for quite a battle. Between the 80 minutes in the two meetings, about 60 of those were pretty dead even. If Hope wants any shot at a post-season that involves the letters 'NCAA' they simply have to win this tournament because it probably isn't coming any other way and they should expect Trine's best swings Thursday night.
Up Next: Me vs I really should write something about Hope's excellent women's team but I really wouldn't know what to write besides 'woo we beat Calvin'.
Thursday February 21, MIAA Tournament Semi-Final: Trine vs Hope, DeVos Fieldhouse
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