Spring Arbor 77 Hope 73 ot

Box Score
Hope started Overway, Seiler, DeMaagd, Snuggerud, VanArendonk. Both teams used fairly short benches and had 4 guys logging major minutes.  Alex Eidson further solidified the idea he's the 2/3 guy off the bench with 29 minutes.

Game Recap: 

Unfortunately due to a bout of food poisoning and an incredibly terrible audio connection I wasn't able to follow this game much.  I tuned in to follow the live stats with about 5 minutes to play and the overtime.

On the list of teams I figured Hope would have trouble with Spring Arbor was kind of in that gray area.  I saw them on Tuesday struggle with Olivet and had the impression they were not playing well as a team.  On Friday I saw them struggle to put away Grace Bible.  Their four guard offense presents match-up problems the biggest being not many teams have someone athletic enough to defend Chris Bellamy, throw in the very good looking Rob Hogans and its a tough deal for some teams, Hope would be one of those 'some teams'.  Bellamy had 32 Hogans 17.

Olivet played zone for most of their game Tuesday with great success, SAU went 4-12 from 3 that night and Olivet never had a reason to come out of the zone.  I understand Hope played some on Saturday, SAU went 8-13, doubling their season avg., enough to keep them close enough and give them a chance to win the game.

Spring Arbor is now 8-4 on the year but 8-1 outside the excellent NAIA Crossroads Conference.   This isn't much comfort to me as I had this game penciled in as a win.  For the weekend, Hope missed an opportunity to gain a little momentum heading to Orlando.  Instead they played two teams who pretty much beat their season averages in a lot of categories.  This was not the weekend Hope was looking for.

Series:  You have to go back to 2002, but Spring Arbor has now won 3 of their last 4 against Hope.

• 2001  Hope 102 Spring Arbor 78
• 2002  Spring Arbor 72 Hope 71
• 2010  Spring Arbor 63 Hope 55
• 2012  Hope 73 Spring Arbor 56
• 2013  Spring Arbor 77 Hope 73 ot 

Scoring and Interesting Stats:

Turnovers:  Hope had 20 in this game, 14 of those were logged as SAU steals.  This is too many regardless of how an opponent defends you.  In a close game you can't have 7 more turnovers than your opponent and expect to win.

3 point shooting:  For the season SAU was shooting just 32 % from behind the arc coming into this one and went 8-13.  Those are major points.  Hope actually had a pretty good day from back there themselves going 7-16.  I'm not sure these quite wash-out though.

Nate Snuggerud  23 points, 5 rebounds.......to be expected given SAU's front-line is one guy, I'm sure Nate had a guard on him most of the day

Billy Seiler  14 points.....pretty good considering the quality of guards on the other side

Efficiency:

Estimated Possessions:  Hope 67  Spring Arbor 71

Considering this was an overtime game this was a pretty slow paced game.  That probably plays into SAU's hands a bit.  The turnover difference of -7 is the difference in possessions.

Offensive  Efficiency:   109.53
Only slightly off where I'd like to see them.  Turnovers is probably the primary reason this wasn't better.

Deffensive Efficiency:  108.91
This is above Spring Arbor's season avg coming in and is becoming a pattern.  The defense needs to tighten up, I'm all for giving leeway on the quality of opponents but at some point you have to start stopping people and Hope's not doing that well enough.


Rebounding Efficiency:
Hope: 53.8% of available offensive rebounds
Spring Arbor: 41.9% of available offensive rebounds

Hope had a good day on their own boards, against a team playing mostly 4 guards it should probably look like that.   Against a team playing 4 guards 41.9 probably isn't too good.

Moments or Plays of the game:

Three point shots in overtime are just deadly, SAU's Rob Hogan's hit one 14 seconds into overtime and Hope was behind the whole period.  

SAU's scored points on every possession of overtime but one.


My game ball goes to:

Nate Snuggerud, having not seen this one I don't know who else should get it.

Standings
Overway - 2
Byers - 1
DeMaagd - 1   
VanArendonk - 1 
Seiler - 1 
Snuggerud - 1 


Going Forward:

It's going to take some time to figure out what a loss to Spring Arbor means, they have two more games with MIAA teams in the next couple weeks (Alma, Albion).  So there will be some score comparisons to go on, the one with SAU/Olivet is not favorable.  This may be a loss that looks pretty bad as the season continues, or maybe not so bad depending on what SAU does in its conference.

Hope got the in-region win they needed on Friday night but they missed out on gaining some much needed momentum going into their downtime and heading to Florida.  Its now 10 days until they play Mississippi College and I hope this loss burns a little bit.  Mississippi is another of the important in-region games and another opponent that's a complete unknown. 

The defensive performance this weekend was kind of troubling.  Friday they looked good at times but gave up too many easy baskets.  For the weekend both opponents shot above their season averages and scored at a higher rate than they had been.  These are things that can't really continue.

Up Next:   Dec 20, vs Mississippi College in Orlando at the DeVos playground.

Hope 87 Covenant 73

Box Score


Hope started Overway, Seiler, DeMaagd, Snuggerud, VanArendonk.  For the foreseeable future this is Hope's starting lineup.  I don't know when Steve Whittenbach is coming back and at this point my game by game updates and wishing/hoping seem like wishing and hoping.  The net effect is the young guys are getting a lot of good minutes and that's not a bad thing, speaking of....... Eidson, Benson, Gardner, Byers took the majority of the substitute minutes.  Lineups and rotations are certainly looking more clear-cut.

Game Recap: 

I'm never quite sure what to make of D3's wilderness programs south of the Ohio River.  Covenant certainly qualifies as one of those programs.  Last year Covenant went 8-18 those wins included two over Berry (one of D3's lowest ranked teams) and teams like Freewill Baptist, Boyce and Tenn. Temple.  Their actual record vs D3 was 5-16 and the middle of their season included a stretch of losing 12 in row.  Needless to say there wasn't a lot to go on that made me excited to see the Dutchmen playing this team, other than the in-region game.

Covenant took their warmups and I really thought it would be an incredibly long night for them, the Dew Crew was out in full force tonight and did their 'counting misses' chants and Covenant reached 100 before the 10 minute mark.  I don't know what kind of atmosphere's Covenant played in before but most of their home games bring in 50-250 people.  I can't imagine they've played in front of 3,000 people very recently and for the program itself this was probably their first big game against one of D3's couple dozen or so "big name" programs since making the switch to D3.

Once the game tipped though I was sort of pleasantly surprised.  I think Covenant played hard, played to win and didn't seem too intimidated by the surroundings.  They reminded me quite a bit of the Westminster team from last spring.   There was some quickness and athleticism I didn't expect.  Their early press gave Hope some trouble but gradually Hope figured it out and it didn't bother them much.

Offensively Covenant made some nice extra passes and really worked the ball inside well, their turnovers were their ultimate undoing.  Several of those were just pretty careless.  Defensively Covenant had a lot of trouble with Hope's size and strength and most of the second half they just couldn't stop Hope without fouling.

Hope had moments in this game where they played really well on both ends of the floor.  Defensively they looked much better and more active to me than against Cornerstone.  Progress has been made but at times it was just a little too easy to break the defense down.  This will get better, but I'm not sure Hope's going to reach the level of an elite defensive team.

In the end this ended up being a reasonably comfortable win over an opponent that's difficult to compare and difficult to process what it means exactly.


Freshmen:  I have to keep telling myself how many Hope's playing, this is odd.  What a story Alex Eidson is turning into though, he really looks like he's going to be the 2/3 guy off the bench.  Never would have guessed that 6 weeks ago.  Gardner played well with 8 points and 3 steals, its nice to have a sort of hounding defensive backup to Coltan.  It was also nice to see them playing together tonight a little.  At some point Fr. aren't Fr. anymore and we're getting closer.  I'm not sure we've established what an average night should be for any of them yet but I like that each has become pretty solid contributors so early on in the season.  Hope really needed that to happen.

Lineups:  Less experimenting, more playing.  As much as the first year guys are getting comfortable its looking like the coaches are as well.  I'd still like to see a game without foul trouble though, it was Van Arendonk's turn tonight.
 
 
Scoring and Interesting Stats:

Turnovers:  Covenant had 26 of them and Hope certainly had something to do with those but there were a handful of passes to the guy in the first row.  It wasn't pretty sometimes.  Hope on the other hand did a decent job in that department with 17, in a high possession game with quite a few fast breaks it wasn't bad save for the problems with the press.  The more they see it the more they'll work it out, tonight it seemed to catch them off-guard.

Freethrows:  45 of them.  I don't know what Hope's record for FT attempted is but we were near it.  Covenant just couldn't defend without fouling and Hope just kept attacking the basket.  Nice to see them make a good chunk of those as well.

Coltan Overway: 21 points, 6 assists, 3 triples..... set a nice tone early, active on defense, really felt like he got the team rolling.

Nate Snuggerud  18 points, 6 rebounds, 5 steals......pretty workman like effort, was kind of a pest on defense sometimes. 

Caleb Byers  11 points.......kind of limited minutes with just 15 but produced well

Alex Eidson  10 points.......included a very Joel Holstege/David Krombeen like reverse layup.  He seems to have nailed down one of the back-up 2/3 guard spots.

Billy Seiler  7 points, 9 rebounds......kind of a tough night shooting but I stuck him in here because of the rebounds which led the team

Efficiency:

Estimated Possessions:  Hope 77  Covenant 81

Kind of a high paced game, considering all the trips to the line it really didn't feel or look that way.  Given all Covenants turnovers I really can't account for the 4 more possessions they had.  I'm not sure that's actually real, something in the formula with ft attempts (which is a guess) probably.

Offensive  Efficiency:   112.44
Covenant actually came into this game with a pretty low defensive efficiency number, this might be the best anyone had done against them.   Certainly the most points they've allowed.  This wasn't a great night shooting from outside of layup range for Hope yet they still hit 87 points.

87 points was more than anyone's scored against Covenant by 18 and 28 over their season average.


Deffensive Efficiency:  90.04
I thought Hope was playing pretty well on defense yet they allowed Covenant to shoot 50% from the floor, so its a little surprising this number is this low.  The reason is turnovers and this probably shows just how costly those were, without them Covenant was scoring at a 132 rate.   Hope should feel sort of ok with this because they forced a lot of those turnovers, way to many easy baskets though.  Credit where its due, Covenant made some nice extra passes.


Rebounding Efficiency:
Hope: 38.5% of available offensive rebounds
Covenant: 37.9% of available offensive rebounds

Hope probably could have done a little better job keeping Covenant off their offensive glass, I'm not sure this is much to worry about.

Moments or Plays of the game:

Nothing that changed momentum or the result of the game really happened.  I did like Caleb Byers twice powering through contact and throwing the ball off the board at odd angles defying gravity and physics for two baskets.  

Nate VanArendonk had a mean, kind of scary dunk early in the second half where he hung on the rim a bit and the ref from way out at half-court decided it was too much.  It sure looked to me like he was protecting himself. 

Covenant's coach accidently called a time-out late in the game and then ended up setting up a play for Sparta's Matt den Dulk.  His teammates ran it to perfection and Matt knocked one in to give his large group of supporters a nice moment.


My game ball goes to:

Coltan Overway, he was really good tonight with one of his better offensive games.

Standings
Overway - 2
Byers - 1
DeMaagd - 1   
VanArendonk - 1 
Seiler - 1 


Going Forward:

The most important thing from last night's game was the in-region win which moves Hope to 1-2.  From a team perspective I think it was a good outing overall against an opponent that really was probably a pretty big unknown.  Hope just sort of put it in cruise control for much of the game.

I give Covenant a lot of credit for their effort, they played hard and didn't seem to overwhelmed with the environment and didn't seem to get down on themselves.  There was some quickness and athleticism I probably didn't expect.  Overall I think they carried themselves well.

Saturday Hope will play Spring Arbor a team I'm not quite sure about.  They seemed to play well against Olivet and Grace Bible yet beat the Comets on a last second shot and just scraped by the Tigers.  I think both teams will have a match-up problem, Hope matching SAU's 4 guard sets, and SAU matching Hope's bigger line-ups.  This might be a game where we see more Chase DeMaagd and Matt Parisi and maybe Hope playing some zone.

Up Next:  Saturday vs Spring Arbor at DeVos Fieldhouse

Spring Arbor 71 Olivet 69

or, killing two birds with one stone.

Every year I set a goal of seeing every MIAA team at least once before the conference season.  I never actually reach this goal but it at least gets me looking at schedules and trying to find games I can attend.  Last night it was too obvious I should be at the Olivet/Spring Arbor game since Hope will likely play the Cougars on Saturday in their own tournament and Olivet is obvious.  Olivet becomes MIAA team #5 thus far, the chances of seeing Trine, Alma or Kalamazoo are pretty slim so this may be it.

First, this was the coldest gym I can remember in a long, long time.  If you can remember coming back from winter breaks and how cold your high school hallways or gym was back then it was a lot like that.  There were 2 or 3 people who wore their winter coats the entire game.  I actually considered going to my car at halftime for my winter cap.  I'd like to say I'm exaggerating but I don't think so.

The game itself turned out to be a good one.  Olivet came out guns blazing and knocked down most of their early shots led by the tall, lanky and silky smooth shooting Garner Small.  Small made his first 4 attempts from the floor and had all 10 of the Comets points in the first 3 minutes.  Olivet and Spring Arbor both played a zone defense for the entire first half, I can honestly say its been a long time since I've seen that.  The MIAA has always been primarily man-to-man, I'm kind of interested to see if Chris Coles employs that strategy all season.

Olivet led throughout most of this game, for Spring Arbor it was periods of good plays followed by fits of turnovers.  Two or three times the Cougars would make a little run only to turn the ball over and find themselves down double digits again.  They definitely had trouble with Olivet's zone which nearly rendered the 6-8 Matt Howe useless but as the game wore on they seemed to start picking it apart led by guards Rob Hogans and Chris Bellamy who had excellent second halves.

Both teams switched to man-to-man in the 2nd half, after 5 points in two trips for SAU, Olivet went back to zone and stayed there.  Spring Arbor was much more active on the defensive end, creating turnovers, blocking shots and most importantly denying Garner Small open looks.  Olivet couldn't create enough offense without Small scoring and thus the lead continued to dwindle.

Spring Arbor finally grabbed their first lead with 5 minutes to play and what had been a very subdued, and cold, crowd suddenly came to life.  Over the next couple minutes it looked pretty likely SAU was going to pull this out but with 1:30 left Olivet's Marquis Childers hit a 3 to tie the game up again.  SAU hit a layup to lead by 2 with :30 seconds left and then the strategizing began.  SAU had only racked up 3 fouls so they had plenty to give.  On Olivet's first attempt to win SAU fouled as soon as the play went to the basket which wasted 10 seconds off the clock.  I was sure SAU would foul again and again but I think SAU's coach probably figured putting Olivet in a desperate shot situation was inviting a 3 point shot to beat you.   So they opted not to foul and let the play happen, which ended up being a foul on a shot but left 9 seconds to play.   Blake Krum knocked down both ft's which set up SAU's game winning shot which was Chris Bellamy taking the in-bounds and driving the length of the court and his running right hand'er from the lane bouncing around the rim before dropping as the buzzer sounded.


Thoughts on Olivet:
I probably need a little more data and would definitely like to see how Spring Arbor does this weekend vs Hope but my initial impression is this Olivet team is at least as good as last year, which might not be saying much.  However I'm not sure this particular game is a good one to judge a teams abilities, for whatever reason Olivet plays well vs Spring Arbor, also losing last years game on a last second shot.  That MIAA season didn't go well for the Comets.

Garner Small is a nice revelation, he could play and probably start for just about everyone in the MIAA.  Its going to be really hard to keep him off the all-miaa team I think.  Fr.  Jeff Cain is built solid, he played for Lansing Sexton's great high school teams I believe backing up Iowa's Anthony Clemmons.  He's well coached and I thought he played well.  DaunTrell Hill simply has the best beard in the history of the MIAA, this cannot be disputed.

Chris Coles had his team playing with a purpose, there were less moments of complete disarray I've seen in recent years, and less poor shot selection.  Three or four really well drawn-up in-bounds passes.  The 38 minutes of zone was kind of different, I'm terrible at x's and o's but it seemed to morph between a straight up 2-3 zone and a match-up zone.  I did note that Garner Small played the first half on the left side (looking towards the basket) and on the right the second half.  Coles is asking his guards to be pretty active.  The quick switch and abandonment of man-to-man was noted, Olivet hasn't been a very good defense for a long time perhaps zone is their safest route.

This team may go as Garner Small goes, there was a clear difference in their scoring rate when Small had a more difficult time getting shots in the second half.  Most of the players on this squad seem more like complimentary players rather than big scoring threats.  The going thought might be stop Garner, and if that happens Olivet will have trouble scoring.

Thoughts on Spring Arbor:
I asked an SAU fan why Chris Bellamy didn't start, he's clearly their best player, apparently he's been in the coaches doghouse the last 2 or 3 games.  On the year Ryan Cottingham has started 9 different guys, this felt like a team really searching for things.  He got almost nothing from his front-line in this game and really only played 4 guys 6-5 or taller.  This is a heavily guard oriented team and at one point had 4 guards in the game.

Those guards are pretty good ones led by Chris Bellamy, Rob Hogans and Matt VanPelt along with Fr. Greg Hamilton.  Between them they took 40 of their 50 shots and scored 61 of their 71 points.  Wow.  I'm not sure they're on the same level as Cornerstone, they just don't have the same firepower from behind the arc.  They did nothing to make Olivet come out of its zone and only put up 12 shots from out there, on the year they're a paltry 31%.   These guards spent most of this game trying to get in the lane and to the basket.


For Saturday
If Spring Arbor takes care of Grace Bible like they probably should they'll match-up with Hope Saturday afternoon.  Or rather, they'll have a very difficult time matching up with Hope.  Matt Howe and Matt Carden are big wide guys but I think Hope just has more depth on the interior.  The guards  will certainly give Hope troubles at times and a good shooting day could keep them in touch for most of it.  But I think Hope is too deep, too much more athletic to have much trouble with the Cougars.

It will be an interesting comparison with last nights game though.

Week in Review: Weeks 2 and 3

For these past two weeks the MIAA went 21-12, pretty good overall though a good chunk of those wins came against NAIA opponents and almost entirely bad ones.  Difficult to find a highlight win, maybe Calvin over Cornerstone,  Alma beating Baldwin-Wallace was a nice surprise.  Otherwise it was a lot of winning games you probably should and losing games you probably should.  The first weekend in December in-region record armageddon went better than expected at 3-4.

 

	Wk 1		Wk 2/3		Totals
OAC	1 – 2		3 – 2		4 – 4
NCAC	1 – 1		1 – 0		2 – 1
PAC	0 – 1		0 – 0		0 – 1
HCAC	1 – 1		5 – 3		6 – 4
CCIW	1 – 2		2 – 5		3 – 7
other D3	0 – 0		1 – 1		1 – 1
NAIA	0 – 0		9 – 1		9 – 1
other	2 – 0		0 – 0		2 – 0
D1	0 – 1		0 – 0		0 – 1
OVERALL	6 – 8		21 – 12		27 – 20
In-region	4 – 6		12 – 8		16 – 14

I found a couple errors from week 1 that have been corrected.  Once again not counting the Hope/College of Faith game.  Take note of the in-region record, I believe this to be accurate, more on that later.

Adrian   7-0

Adrian 62  Siena Heights 40
Adrian 80  Marygrove 55
Adrian 67  UM-Dearborn 42
Adrian 63  Mt. Union 48
Adrian 62  Carnegie-Mellon 51


The most obvious thing standing out here is Adrian has been difficult to score against vs these opponents.  I was at the Siena Heights game and filed this report.  I also watched the first half of the Carnegie-Mellon game online where Adrian held them to 11 first half points, it was kind of impressive.  None of these are quality opponents unfortunately and so far the only quality win is their win over Wooster.  Wooster will remain high quality all season.

Adrian received some national praise with what I think is their first ever ranking in the D3hoops.com Top 25 where they came in at number 20.  I'm pretty ok with that, I feel comfortable they're a top 25 defense and top 25 rebounding team.   For the foreseeable future Adrian will stay ranked, as they should.

This week:  no games
Next week:  no games

Albion 3-3

Franklin 76 Albion 70
Albion 91 Purdue-North Central 80
Heidelberg 66 Albion 58
Albion 67 Elmhurst 59

This looks like pretty much every Albion non-conference season for the last half decade.  The loss to Franklin hurt because it meant Albion missed out on an in-region game with DePauw, one they could have won.  Elmhurst and Heidelberg are probably bottom half of their conference teams, the PNC win really means nothing.

Without Kolin Kazen and Chris Hutton the Britons probably continue to be a little tough to figure out.  In the meantime they're getting minutes for their bench and when the MIAA rolls around should those guys return, they should be a better team than what they've been to this point.

This week:   vs Kenyon
Next week:  no games

Alma  2-4

Ohio Northern 99 Alma 71
Alma 69 Heidelberg 66
Defiance 76 Alma 60
Alma 75 Baldwin-Wallace 73

I'm still convinced Alma is playing a really difficult schedule for their talent level.  So far they've done ok.  Neither of these losses should be a surprise and they came up with a good win over Baldwin-Wallace.  I've tabbed BW as a contender in the OAC, which is just a real confusing mess.

So far it looks like Alma might be a touch deeper than past Alma teams and are not quite as reliant on one or two players like the last couple years.  I'm getting the sense these guys are going to end up a little better than anticipated.

This week:  @  Oberlin
Next week:  Spring Arbor

Calvin 6-2

Calvin 98  Anderson 56
Calvin 58  Aquinas 55
Calvin 70  Cornerstone 65
Calvin 87  Manchester 63
Wheaton 54  Calvin 37
Carthage 74  Calvin 63

Calvin got a good win at the GR Hall of Fame Classic against Cornerstone, and a lackluster win against the ever so confusing Aquinas program.  A mid-week trouncing of Manchester set the stage for their MIAA/CCIW Challenge weekend where they'd announce their triumphant return to national prominence.....thud!  Maybe a bit dramatic but it was surprising.  Everybody has bad weekends and maybe Calvin did, it wouldn't be hard to think the Wheaton loss rattled them and they played poorly the next day.  Wheaton is an awfully good team that's probably headed for a great season, the greater confusion of the weekend was their loss to a Carthage team that lost 2 players to injury the night before.

I'm not sure Calvin gets another quality test between now and Adrian on Jan 3.  Maybe Ripon or Wabash but I just really don't think either of those teams is as good as Adrian.  They're still in good position to have a good in-region record, its just that their MIAA title credentials may have taken a little hit.

This week:  @ Finlandia
Next week:  no game

Hope 2-3

Cornertone 87  Hope 80
Hope 63  Aquinas 60
Hope 82 Carthage 70
Wheaton 79 Hope 75
Game recaps available on the blog

Hope took two tough losses to good teams, the Cornerstone game was probably closer than the final score and the Wheaton game involved a big comeback from 15 down.  It was nice to get a win against Carthage, bottom line is I think we saw some improvement in Hope this week and no one's played a tougher set of opponents in the MIAA than Hope right now.

This week:   vs Covenant, vs Spring Arbor or Grace Bible
Next week:  no games

Kalamazoo 2-3

Manchester 95  Kalamazoo 83 2OT
Kalamazoo 68  Earlham 56
Kalamazoo 55  Oberlin 53
Chicago 76  Kalamazoo 73
North Central 72  Kalamazoo 57

Nothing like a double-overtime thriller in your first game as head coach.  Kzoo rebounded to win its next two over teams that frankly they should beat and wins that should impress no one.  On Saturday Kzoo had Chicago down most of the day and lost it at the end.  The records probably what it should be although it would have been nice to get that Manchester win.

Mark Ghafari has been off to a good start and is looking like the go to guy early on.  

This week:  @ Bluffton, vs Case Western
Next week:  @ Defiance


Olivet 2-3

Olivet 83 Union, Ky 80
Olivet 69 Purdue-Calumet 60

Olivet picked up its first two wins of the seasons by beating two lowly NAIA outfits.  There isn't much to be excited about here and the roster is already changing.  Up next is a couple more games they can win but I think the long term prospects are pretty grim.

The bright spot has been Garner Small who has been one the leagues top scorers.

This week:  @ Spring Arbor, @ Illinois Tech
Next week:  Lawrence Tech

Trine 3-2

Trine 88 Earlham 61
Trine 78 Manchester 61
North Central 64 Trine 47

Trine won the two I'd expect them to win.  Ian Jackson is kind of carrying this team right now.  So far they've used 3 or 4 different starting fives and the latest two Fr.  Nick Tatu and Jared Holmquist started.

Their schedule should allow them to get on a little run heading into the MIAA schedule, unfortunately I think this schedule is going to come up one or two good opponents short of really testing them.  The upcoming  Wabash game might be a nice comparison to Albion.

This week:  Wabash, @ North Park
Next week:  Mt. Vernon Nazarene


As we hit exam weeks things really slow down.  Just 15 games with only 4 of those played next week.  There are seven of those really important in-region games and it would be great to win 5 of those.  I think the two most important are Albion/Kenyon and Trine/Wabash.

With just over half the non-conference season finished the league's looking in really good shape to finish over .500.  Right now that requires winning 18 of the remaining 41 games which seems more than doable.  The schedule really isn't that imposing and  most of the league's really difficult games particularly against the CCIW are behind them

In-Region Analysis
I have the league 16-14 in-region to this point which is pretty good.  It would be great for everyone, especially the one or two teams that will be an at-large NCAA candidate to keep that record over .500. 

Here are the remaining in-region games: bold = wins, italic = 50/50, normal is either a loss or a game I'm just not sure about

Wabash @ Trine
Kalamazoo @ Bluffton
Covenant @ Hope
Calvin @ Finlandia
Trine @ North Park
Alma @ Oberlin
Kenyon @ Albion
Case Western @ Kalamazoo
Kalamazoo @ Defiance
Olivet @ Bethany
Trine @ Franklin
Olivet @ Baldwin-Wallace
North Park @ Albion
Kalamazoo @ DePauw
Miss. College vs Hope
Kalamazoo @ Rhodes    * If its played
PSU-Behrend vs Trine
Albion vs Chicago
Alma @ Case Western
Calvin vs Wabash
Trine @ Otterbein  *If its played
Chicago vs Alma
Mt. Union vs Adrian
Albion vs Case Western
Aurora @ Hope
Adrian vs Defiance or Finlandia

I count 54 in-region games total with the possibility of 56 with tournament results.  To reach over .500 the league has to win, let's say 29 just to be safe.  I conservatively count 6 the league should be a solid favorite to win and 12 toss-up games, win half of the toss-ups and we reach 28 wins.  It's probably going to be close and should come down to all those 50/50 games in the last week of December.  I'm actually pretty optimistic this can be accomplished.

The Neighbors

OAC

The last two weeks this league went 12-19 including being trounced by their Northcoast friends, logging a 1-8 record.  There just isn't much to be impressed about, the leagues best win is probably Baldwin-Wallace over Bethany still.   Three weeks into the season and everyone has at least 2 losses. 

In the last update I mentioned the league had several chances for perception redeeming wins against Wooster, Wittenberg, Ohio Wesleyan and Washington U.  They lost every one of these games, most by double-digits.   The league has only about a dozen non-conference games left and it looks nearly impossible to recover their overall or in-region records from below the .500 mark.  This league is just down right now.

	Wk 1		Wk 2/3		Totals
NCAC	0 – 2		1 – 8		1 – 10
PAC	2 – 4		1 – 3		3 – 7
MIAA	2 – 1		2 – 3		4 – 4
Overall	10 – 9		12 – 19		22 – 28
In-region	5 – 8		10 – 16		15 – 24

The OAC started league play this last weekend and will continue over the next couple weeks including two key games for Capital with John Carroll and Baldwin-Wallace.

NCAC

The league went 14-10 for these two weeks which included obliterating the OAC 8-1.  I'm not sure there are any Earth shattering wins or anything to take notice other than trouncing the OAC which was a top to bottom destruction.  There aren't many significant in-region games left, the NCAC shouldn't have much trouble staying above .500 in both overall and in-region records.

	Wk 1		Wk 2/3		Totals
OAC	2 – 0		8 – 1		10 – 1
PAC	1 – 1		2 – 0		3 – 1
MIAA	1 – 1		0 – 1		1 – 2
Overall	12 – 7		14 – 10		26 – 17
In-region	8 – 6		13 – 8		21 – 14

League play started and was marked by Wooster beating Wittenberg in the first of many showdowns this season.  League play continues this weekend with a handful of in-region games with the PAC.   Probably the most prominent non-league games are Kenyon/Albion, Wabash/Trine.

PAC

10-8 overall record including 3-1 vs the OAC, still though not much to get excited about.  The PAC began league play last week and already its looking like the same 3 team race as last year with Thiel, Bethany and Thomas More.  This league has a decent shot at .500 although the post-Christmas schedule has a couple tougher games and they have an equal shot at maintaining .500 in the in-region category.

	Wk 1		Wk 2/3		Totals
OAC	4 – 2		3 – 1		7 – 3
NCAC	1 – 1		0 – 2		1 – 3
MIAA	1 – 0		0 – 0		1 – 0
Overall	10 – 10		10 – 8		20 – 18
In-region	8 – 8		8 – 6		16 – 14

Regional Ranking
Its several weeks before they do this for real, I'll just do five for this week.

1.  Adrian
2.  Wooster
3.  Ohio Wesleyan
4.  Calvin
5.  Bethany

Adrian has the best win over Wooster, Wooster has next best over Wittenberg, Ohio Wesleyan next best over Capital and Marietta.  After that you're really picking between teams that really haven't beaten a top program.  I'm still confident Calvin's a good team.  There just isn't an OAC squad that's done anything worthy of ranking.

Five more to watch:  Wittenberg, DePauw, Thomas More, PSU-Behrend and Marietta.

From a Hope perspective its really going to take a streak of wins and maybe even include an early MIAA season win over Adrian to get back in this discussion, depending on what other teams do.  They just don't have the wins, certainly the talent.  With the OAC so down its hard to call this region strong, maybe average to below average.

Over on his Calvin blog, Matt Snyder is calculating his regional rankings for all of D3 which comes really close to predicting the NCAA field.  Regional Rankings.

 He also is trying to calculate RPI for D3.  D3 RPI.  Its worth a look just to get a feel for what's happening around the nation and for what the NCAA is looking for in tournament selection.

Wheaton 79 Hope 75

Box Score
this link isn't working, I'll fix it when it becomes available.  You can view the boxscore by going here and choosing it in the game results from Saturday

Hope started Overway, Seiler, DeMaagd, Snuggerud, VanArendonk.  Third time Hope's used this starting 5.  Gardner and Byers were first off the bench, Eidson and Benson followed about 1 minute later.  Nine guys saw the most action.  Once again the substitutions and lineups felt a little more settled.  We're getting there, until Whittenbach comes back then we can blow everything up again.  Btw, Whittenbach was dressed but didn't play.  Still next week?  (fingers crossed)

Game Recap: 

(sorry about the extra line spacing, if I could fix it I would)
 
Except for the part about falling behind by 15 I think this one went about as expected.  I was pretty impressed with what Wheaton has going for a basketball team.  Last year I felt Wheaton was the best D3 team I saw, they nearly and maybe should have won the CCIW and I'm not so sure I wasn't watching this years CCIW champion yesterday -on video.  We'll see of course but they looked pretty good.

Hope fell behind 6-0 early before gathering themselves after a timeout and rolled off 8 points of their own.  It was a pretty good early stretch of basketball for both teams.  Hope made 6 or 7 shots in a row and scored points on 9 straight possessions by my quick count.  It was enough to build a mini 3 or 4 point lead for a few minutes.  Right about the time it felt like Hope was taking a bit of control Wheaton hit 3's on 3 of 4 possessions in succession, 12 of their next 13 points came from behind the arc and a 5 point lead was a 2 point deficit.

Wheaton went in the locker room up 40-36 in a very entertaining and well played first half.  Once again Hope had to deal with some foul trouble, this time Nate Van Arendonk picked up two early fouls.  Hope's been working around this pretty ok thus far but I'd really, really, really like to see them make it a half without someone having to sit.  Just to see what a difference it makes, I think they're 0-5 in the non-first half foul trouble category.

Early in the second half Wheaton imposed their defensive will and it seemed to become more and more difficult for Hope to find open shots.  The deficit found its way to 9 before a couple big back-to-back threes put Wheaton up by 15 at 65-50 with a little over 9 to play.  Then all of the sudden the defensive light bulb went on.  Hope really started pressuring the ball and were rewarded with an incredible 4 straight steals which they converted to points.  Wheaton's prolific FT shooting kept Hope at bay however, Hope did a great job fighting back into this one and even had several other chances to cut the deficit further but just couldn't make the key shot.   

Overall I thought Hope played really well and played through some adversity, its good to do those kinds of things early.  I don't know where the sudden defensive energy came from at the end but bottle it up and bring it back as much as possible.  It was a stunning couple minutes that took a team from pretty much dead to suddenly right in the thing.  Wheaton ended with just 1 FG in the last 9 minutes, granted on only 3 shots because of trips to the line, but still, that's awesome.


random things

The last 3 Hope/Wheaton games have been pretty excellent. 

• 2011  Hope 80 Wheaton 74
• 2012  Hope 79 Wheaton 78
• 2013  Wheaton 79 Hope 75 

This one was a lot like last year, a frantic comeback at the end that falls a little short.......without the absolute theft of the game by the winner this year.



One quarter of Hope's minutes were logged by the Freshmen Gardner, Eidson and Benson.  So far each has had nice moments and some tough ones.  Today was a little tough for Gardner and Eidson, pretty good for Benson.  It should be pretty clear by now these 3 figure prominently in the plans so some inconsistency should be expected.  I think the next couple weeks of games is pretty important for them to gain some confidence.  Hope's going to need these guys.

In-region record troubles?     Possibly, I think what this loss does besides making them 0-2 in-region is it really makes the upcoming Covenant, Mississippi College and Aurora games must haves.  To be a really viable at-large candidate you need to have no more than 6-7 in-region losses.  If you are an at-large candidate it means you likely lost a few league games along the way.  I would feel a lot better if they could get to the conference portion of the schedule 3-2 in-region.  The MIAA is going to be a pretty interesting race this year with some fun games I think.  The upside is Hope's in-region strength of schedule should be crazy good.  Long way to go for that stuff.

 
 
Scoring and Interesting Stats:

Hope ended up taking 17 more FG attempts than Wheaton, the two primary reasons were Hope's advantage of 8 turnovers and Wheaton spending the last 9 minutes of the game mostly at the FT line.  They only attempted 16 second-half shots and only 3 in the last 9 minutes.  A little unusual.

Billy Seiler  18 points, 3 steals........the kind of game you like to see from a Senior, was really aggressive early and his defense was part of the catalyst for the big comeback. 

Coltan Overway: 14 points, 5 assists.....13 assists for the weekend, we're getting to a point where I'm comfortable enough to say his bench production from the last two years is translating nicely to a starting role.  Never had a doubt actually.

Nate Snuggerud  13 points, 7 rebounds......Wheaton didn't give him much room and really pressured him.  Looked visibly upset at some no calls a few times.  Just needs to get used to it.

Brock Benson  12 points, 5 rebounds....after one point Friday comes back with this vs a better team.

For the weekend 8 guys reached double figures at least once, for the year 9.  Spreading the wealth has always been a Hope offensive staple.  It's good to see this happen a little early in the year, perhaps a little earlier than last even.

Efficiency:

Estimated Possessions:  Hope 73  Wheaton 73

Normal, at times the game had a really nice flow and pace to it.  At other times there were many successive trips with FT's that slowed things down a little.  This is also about 6 or 7 possessions higher than Wheaton had been playing per game.

Offensive  Efficiency:   102.11
Against a team that has seemed to play pretty good defense on the year so far, this isn't too bad and its the best anyone's done against the Thunder.  Hope was actually a touch more efficient in the second half, I'm sure mostly due to that frantic last 10 minutes. 

75 points was more than anyone's scored against Wheaton by 12 and 25 over their season average.


Deffensive Efficiency:  107.00
After this weekend this is 1 point under Wheaton's offensive avg for the year.  I don't think Hope played a bad defensive game just not great and not quite as good as Wheaton's.  If there was one thing that hurt it was maybe not getting out or recognizing the 3-point shooters quick enough.  I thought they were better at that in the 2nd half.


Rebounding Efficiency:
Hope: 32.4% of available offensive rebounds
Carthage: 30.8% of available offensive rebounds

Both teams did a good job keeping the other off the offensive boards, however for the game Hope managed a 17-10 advantage in second chance points.

Moments or Plays of the game:

Middle of the first half when Hope had a 5 point lead Wheaton hit 4 three's on 5 straight possessions at a point when it looked like Hope might start to control the game a little.  It was a quick swing and ultimately led to a 20 point swing over the middle portion of the game.

 

With Hope rallying Peter Smith hit a three with about 6 minutes to play to push the margin back to 9 points.  This was Wheaton's only FG in the last 9 minutes of play.  Hope never got closer than 4 but this shot probably prevented those FT's from being a little more tension filled.

 

With the game on the line Wheaton made their last 10 FT's late in the game. 

My game ball goes to:

Billy Seiler, I really liked how aggressive Billy started this one.  He set a nice tone early after Hope had fallen behind.  It was also his defensive play that started the rally from 15 down.  He had a really good day

Standings
Byers - 1 
Overway - 1
DeMaagd - 1   
VanArendonk - 1 
Seiler - 1 


Going Forward:

Hope's played probably the two best CCIW teams and lost both games which were still in doubt with 5 minutes to play, both on the road.  They've really challenged themselves early with a team that experience wise just isn't quite ready to compete at that level.  The good news is they've done well given the circumstances and these games will hopefully pay off for them in the long run.  For the weekend Hope gets out of Illinois with a win and a loss, something they hadn't done on two other trips to Wheaton in this event with similar kinds of teams.

Next week the schedule eases up quite a bit with Covenant on Friday and likely Spring Arbor on Saturday.  Since Covenant is considered in-region that's the game that matters most and is a must win for post-season purposes.  Spring Arbor strikes me as something between Aquinas and Cornerstone but maybe a little closer to Cornertstone.  Its the kind of game they should win but they'll have to play well to do so.

Up Next:  Friday,  Dec 7 vs Covenant College at DeVos Fieldhouse

Hope 82 Carthage 70

Box Score

Hope started Overway, Seiler, DeMaagd, Snuggerud, VanArendonk.   Second time Hope's used this starting 5.  Alex Eidson was first off the bench, followed by Byers and Gardner.   For the most part Hope used 10 players, its the first time its felt like there was any stability to the rotations and substitutions.  Steve Whittenbach dressed but did not participate, I would doubt he plays Saturday vs Wheaton, still a target return of next weekend for me.

Game Recap:

Well that went well.

I don't how else to describe it but Hope's first half was a torrid one, so much so I had to do an efficiency calculation just out of curiosity, it was an insane 139 and change.  Yes please, more of that and thank you.  Hope really didn't establish a controlling lead until late in the half, it was really pretty back and forth throughout.  Of greatest concern was Nate Snuggerud picking up his 2nd foul around the 14 minute mark, predictably Hope didn't risk a third foul this time and left him on the bench.  Lessons are hard sometimes but fruitful.

Hope outscored Carthage 17-6 in the final 5 minutes of the half taking a pretty nice 13 point lead into the break.   Interesting to me is that the Fr. Gardner and Eidson were on the floor for part of this little run.

The second half was nowhere near as offensively spectacular as the first, by the 10 minute mark Hope had built a nice comfortable 20+ point lead. It stayed around there for much of the remaining time until Carthage outscored Hope 10-3 over the final two minutes to close the gap to 12.  I'm not sure this was really that close.


Carthage picked up a couple key injuries in this one, enough to maybe think twice about this being the dominant Hope win it looks like.  Marlon Senior their 6-5 F and Steve Jaskulske a 6-7 F left the game with injuries late in the first half, that's two of their top 7 or 8 players.  It was 33-30 or so around the time this happened and I don't think its surprising that's about when Hope started to control this one.  Nobody is very good when you lose 2 of your top 7 or 8, even more so in the middle a game.

I also thought it interesting Carthage's most dangerous sounding player was 6-2 G Reese Herth.  He scored 15 first half points, his last first half FG made it 33-30 and he didn't make another FG until there was only just under 7 minutes to play.  About 20 minutes of game time, by then Hope had built a 25 point lead.  Despite finishing with 23, only about 15 of those were really relevant and Carthage seemed to spend a lot of the game without much offensive punch. 

So Hope wins comfortably on a night Nate Snuggerud scores 6 points and plays only 20 minutes, I'll take it.  Amazingly, Hope becomes the first team in this little get-together to win a game on the road on Friday night. 

depth chart stuff

Very interesting to have Alex Eidson be the first off the bench in this one.   Before we tipped the season it kind of looked like Eidson would be the odd man out in the 2-3 guard competition but Whittenbach's injury kept Eidson practicing with the varsity and now he's out there playing a lot in game 4.   I'd say at this point the 2-3 spot (other than Seiler/Whittenbach) is still in flux and will be for awhile but at the moment it looks like Eidson has moved ahead of Parisi and McMahon, and since starting the first game McMahon really hasn't seen the floor much.

Chase DeMaagd has really stepped up his game thus far, a guy I had tabbed for spotty minutes has started two in a row and is starting to fill his scoreline with good stuff.  Easy kid to root for and simply works and plays harder than most on the floor.  Plus at 21 he's more of an adult than me, which is another story all-together.  If he keeps this up its going to be hard to not play him.

Josh Holwerda and Chris Ray played a little again, I still think its the injury recovery for both.  Brock Benson only played 9 tonight due to foul troubles, another reminder that being a Fr. isn't easy sometimes.

 
Scoring and Interesting Stats:

Not much difference in the stats between the two teams or anything glaringly obvious other than the FG%.  When you shoot 60% in one half you should have a nice lead....check.  When you shoot 53% to 37% you should win.....check.  Really, the 16-6 run to end the first half was pretty much the margin.

Nate Van Arendonk:  12 points, 5 rebounds........a couple moves that wow'd the radio guys and my imagination.  Once again asked to keep himself on the floor with foul trouble to Snuggerud, and did so.

Coltan Overway: 11 points, 8 assists.....not sure you can ask for more from your PG.  Great to get him a little extra rest with the big score and Gardner's good play

Caleb Byers:  11 points, 8 rebounds......I believe this is Caleb's first big rebounding day.  Nice bounce-back after a rough Hall of Fame classic.

Ben Gardner:  11 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists.......really seemed to be aggressive getting to the basket tonight.

Alex Eidson: 11 points....given an opportunity and seized on it

Efficiency:

Estimated Possessions:  Hope 73  Carthage 72

Healthy pace, believe it or not the second half had one more possession than the first.

Offensive  Efficiency:  112.44
I'd take this all year.  Obviously Hope came way down from their first half 139 efficiency.   There were a couple two or three minute stretches of not so good ball in the 2nd half.   I think this is 3 times now Hope's shot well over 55% in one half of basketball.

Deffensive Efficiency:  96.69
So far this appears to be right in the range Hope will play at this season which is fine as long as the offense comes through like tonight.  I'd prefer it lower though and it will get lower as soon as they stop playing CCIW teams or really good offensive teams.  Both teams might have tightened the defensive screw a little in the second half.


Rebounding Efficiency:
Hope: 44.4% of available offensive rebounds
Carthage: 42.8% of available offensive rebounds

Even steven except I think this one might lie a little a lot.  Twice Carthage grabbed 3 O-rebounds on one trip and the second chance points was 18-7 to Hope.  Those offensive rebounds for Carthage really didn't really help them.  This was more like 40-30

Moment or Play of the game:

I'm not sure any one single play did it, but the last 5 minutes of the first half and first 10 of the second seemed to be Hope's best stretch of basketball.

My game ball goes to:

I finally settled on Van Arendonk, 11 points, 5 rebounds and I think a tough ask to defend Luke Johnson who likes to play outside more than inside (at least I think he did, damn you no internet video).  This is really one I think I needed to see to be sure but its just for fun so lets role with it.

Standings
Snuggerud - 1
Byers - 1 
Overway - 1
DeMaagd - 1   
VanArendonk - 1 

I don't mind seeing 5 different guys through 4 games, I might have to rescind Snuggerud's because I'm not counting the Faith game.

Going Forward:

Hope got by this one and it sure sounded like their best performance of the year in several areas.  The Hope/Carthage boxscore looks a lot like the Whitewater/Carthage boxscore.  I'm pretty ok with this as long as its remembered Carthage lost a couple pretty important guys midway through this game and it went pretty far South for them soon after.

Early season games are so difficult to diagnose because you just can't be certain what kind of team you're playing.  Carthage could finish 6th in the CCIW  or 2nd, we just don't know how this win will look in February.

After Wheaton defensively manhandled Calvin Friday night Hope's facing a totally different animal Saturday afternoon than they've face thus far.  I'd say a combination between North Central and Cornerstone's offense with the ability to play some very good defense.  Defense I'm not sure Hope has really faced so far.  This is going to be a really tough game to win.

But its nice to have a confidence boosting win going in and feeling good about yourselves versus the alternative.  Its a good positive step tonight for a still relatively young and inexperienced team that tonight saw a couple Fr. step up and play their best games.

Up Next:  Saturday Dec 1. @ Wheaton