Early Look at Efficiency

I sat down and fired up the efficiency calculator this weekend just to get an early look around the Great Lakes Region.  First lets add the Heartland Conference which brings our total teams in the region to 59.  Second, this is pretty early and should be taken with a little grain of salt and maybe more of an 'in the ballpark' approach.  Meaning if your team is near the top now they'll probably be near the top at the end.

I haven't included pace of play or avg. possessions in the past for no good reason that I can think of so I thought I'd include it this time.  It is interesting to see who's playing the fastest and slowest.

Fast Pace 

1	John Carroll	82.25
2	D'Youville	79.63
3	Heidelberg	77.77
4	Pitt-Greensburg	77.75
5	Westminster	76.55

John Carroll probably leads this every year in this region.  Grinnell's system ball usually rates over 90 possessions, these are fast but not really outrageous.  Almost all of these teams have high turnover rates on both ends of the court as well.


Slow Pace

1	Earlham	55.25
2	Kalamazoo	57.26
3	Geneva	60.65
4	Defiance	61.03
5	Trine	61.26

The median for this region is 68 possessions, these are the teams really grinding out games and using the full shot clock.  You might notice 2 MIAA teams here which is interesting because one of them isn't Adrian a traditionally slow team and 5 of the MIAA's 8 teams fall at or below the median.  Its early but this is signalling the MIAA is going to be a real grind it out kind of league this year.

more after the break

MIAA/CCIW Hope 66 Wheaton 55

In The Zone

Hope 66  Wheaton 55
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Saturday afternoon Hope beat Wheaton to take both of their games of the MIAA/CCIW Challenge, a first for a visiting conference team..  Hope moves to 12-10 in the 11 years of this event with the CCIW  now leading 24-20.

On the court the story was Hope playing a zone for nearly the whole game.  The brain cells that can remember things like how often Hope has played zones like this have long since closed shop, but I'm pretty sure it hasn't happened often.  Up until Saturday Hope had used the zone very sparingly this year with mixed results.

Wheaton seemed very happy to shoot over the zone and launched a season high 33 3-point attempts and making only 9, well under the Thunder's 39% average coming into the weekend (they were 5-17 the night before against Calvin).  The surprising part was Wheaton's either lack of will or ability to drive into the zone.  They ended up with 5 fewer 2-point attempts for the game.

On Hope's side of the offense the Dutchmen were well short of spectacular and had stretches where they struggled to score points.  You might say Hope's most effective play was to get fouled and make the free-throws, a perfect 20-20.  The field goal shooting was spread mostly even with no player taking more than 8 shots.

A very good weekend for Hope all around.


More Zone
If you saw last year's Hope/Wheaton game you might understand a little better why Hope played so much zone this year.  Hope couldn't guard Wheaton one v one in that game and although that was mostly Tyler Peters the Thunder are a quicker team than Hope at most positions.

This year the zone did 3 key things for Hope.

1. It kept Hope out of foul trouble which as has been pointed out here has been a problem

2. It kept Wheaton off the FT-line.  The Thunder are an excellent FT shooting team but had only 7 attempts at the line in this one.  Hope basically flipped a clear Wheaton advantage to a Hope advantage.

3.  It kept Wheaton passive.  The Thunder are typically more aggressive driving the lanes, but in this one they stayed back content to shoot 3-pointers, they didn't seem too willing or maybe able to attack Hope's defense.

The question is how much of a gamble was this for Hope.  I think that's a little bit of a gray area, coming into the game Wheaton was shooting a respectable 39% on the year but that was largely built on 2 big nights against Olivet and Benediction where they combined to go 15-27.  In four of their other games including the night before against Calvin they shot under 30%.  Hope may have just said, 'we don't think you can beat us from out there but we'll let you try'.  Wheaton never put Hope in a position to come out of the zone.  Every time they were within a point or tied Hope would go on a minny run of 7 or 8 points, and they never really did hit more than a couple 3's in a row.  There was no reason to change.

Then they changed.   In the last 4 or 5 minutes Hope finally went to man-to-man and Wheaton looked perplexed by this madness.  Wheaton missed 8 of its last 9 shots most seemed heavily contested and Hope ended up comfortably ahead as the clock ticked down.


In Challenges Past this game has always been the more important of the two for Hope with it being one of those 'in-region games'.  With the much broader regional definition and the 75% rule pretty much everything counts now so these were two equally important wins in the biggest NCAA picture.

Wheaton's been an NCAA tournament team in 3 of the last four years.  This team seems a touch short of that and will probably be in the final battle for the 4th CCIW tournament slot with Elmhurst.  Augustana-IWU-North Central have all looked stronger than the Thunder, but that's always a race that's pretty hard to predict.


Efficiency:

Hope 103.94   Wheaton  88.25

This game won't win any awards for beauty.  Hope's eff was enough to get the job done, miss a few ft's and Hope would have been below 100.  Holding Wheaton below 90 was the key part, all Wheaton had to do was hit 3 more 3-point shots to be level in efficiency.  Wheaton might have 1 or 2 more performances like that this year but this is probably going to be one of their lowest.  Hope should feel really good about their defense this weekend.  (Even if they did play a communist zone)

Pace:

64-62  Slow.  Hope's zone meant Wheaton took a lot of time before finding the right 3-point shot to launch and Hope was pretty deliberate themselves.  There was one fast-break fg in the entire game.


Rebounding:
Hope 32   Wheaton 36

Hope had 14.8% of available offensive rebounds
Wheaton had 38.7% of available offensive rebounds

Hope had all of 4 offensive boards in the game and it wasn't from a lack of opportunities.  Wheaton is not a tall team but they really kind of dominated this area of the game.  Second chance points was 10-7 to Hope so Wheaton couldn't cash in many boards for points, most likely because they were long 3-point misses.  Hope has not shown itself to be a good rebounding team thus far, its certainly an area that could use work.

Free-Throw  Shooting:
Hope went 20-20 against Wheaton which set the school record.   Combine that with Friday's 24-29 and Hope had an excellent weekend at the line.  Dare I say Hope is a really good FT shooting team?  79.2% on the year.

Up Next

Not one person misses these after graduation

Hope hits exam week and I presume its their NCAA mandated week off.  Following the late nights, cramming and caffeine binge Hope will host its own tournament classic with Pitt-Greensburg, Mt. Union and Olivet.  Before then I'll have a small preview of some kind.

MIAA/CCIW Hope 73 Carthage 55

Hope 73  Carthage 55
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For parts of this game Carthage looked every bit like the team picked to finish 7th in the CCIW this year.  This was a night they were not very good, at least some of that can be attributed to Hope and  its quickly improving defense.

For a change, it was Carthage and not Hope that had to deal with early foul trouble on their big man as Mike Kastel picked up two early fouls and spent much of the first half sitting on the bench.  Making matters worse for the Red Men was leading scorer Reese Hearth having a really bad night shooting going 1-10 from the floor and 0-5 from behind the arc.  For much of this game Carthage had little offensive punch and little rebounding presence. 

Hope's Brock Benson and Harrison Blackledge were relatively free to roam the paint and capitalized by scoring 15 and 12 while drawing numerous fouls.  Hope wasn't an offensive machine by any stretch and struggled from behind the arc at just 5-18 (this could have been a really big margin) but they shot over 60% from inside the arc, had good contributions from everyone and were exceptionally good at the free-throw line.

The next day Carthage took Calvin to the wire losing on a last second shot by Jordan Brink.  I shrug my shoulders because sports doesn't make sense sometimes.


Efficiency:

Hope 114.46   Carthage 80.91

If I had a wish it would be a season full of 114 games.   This is good and a team that is difficult to beat most of the time.  I'm not fully sure what to make of holding Carthage to an 80.91, my usual caveats about it takes some good defense and awful offense to get numbers that low.  Carthage flat out stunk for a large chunk of this game.  They've played what I guess are 3 teams with NCAA tournament aspirations  LaCrosse, WashingtonU and Hope.   Their offensive eff in those 3 games was 80,77 and 80.  They have been bad against good teams. 


Pace:

64-67  Slowish.  Not a lot of transition action for either team and much of the last 7-8 minutes was just trying to play out the clock.


Rebounding:
Hope 37  Carthage 26

Hope had 43.5% of available offensive rebounds
Carthage had 29.4% of available offensive rebounds

Losing Kastel to foul trouble certainly hurt Carthage here, but Hope was better all night long even when Kastel was in the game.  He finished with just 3 boards.   Benson and Blackledge combined for 10.


Turnovers:  Hope 15  Carthage 14

So far this year this number is a touch higher than I'd like to see. It probably didn't matter in the game but Hope is getting close to one turnover per 5 possessions on the year and that is higher than you'd like.  Remember the MIAA has been a really low turnover league for a couple years now, just being good lands you in the bottom 3 or 4 of the league in turnovers.  On the other hand, so many of these seem to come from Hope's aggression and I really don't think those can be faulted.  So play on I guess.


Random Thoughts:

Starting lineup
Chad Carlson started at PG for the 4th straight game, this is looking more like a finality than experimenting.  Every time I seem to write something about the lineup it changes though so we'll see.  In this game Chad was the only one who saw significant minutes to not score and missed all 3 of his 3-point shots.   An off night because Chad might actually be the teams best 3-point shooter.  He probably won't create much of his own offense and we've seen very little of him driving the lane like Ben Gardner but he'll camp out on the edges just in case the defense forgets about him.  So far this seems like a positive move.

Bench Items
Cody Stuive looks much more comfortable than he did in the exhibition and Wisconsin gauntlet games.  Unlikely he regains his starting spot from a year ago because Blackledge is playing so well, but consistent bench production like his is welcomed.  Steve Wittenbach also played well in this one, unfortunately he left the game with an injury and didn't play vs Wheaton.  Hopefully its just precautionary.  Lastly Dante Hawkins is solidly the #3 pg and there might be moments later this year he plays more than Chad Carlson.  Dante has clearly been pressing offensively  but he scored his first points from the floor in this game and looked much more comfortable all around.  His tough defense and overall quickness can really help a team that truthfully lacks a little of both.

MIAA/CCIW Challenge Future:
Next year we return to Holland for round 12 of this event.  Carthage's video play-by-play guy says it will be their last.  The CCIW expands to 9 teams next year so everyone loses two non-conference games Carthage apparently chose to drop these two.  Hopefully they'll be replaced by another CCIW team because I've really liked this event and would like to see it continue.  Early rumor is North Central will be that 4th team and that would be at least an equal to Carthage in quality.  Todd Raridon has built a fine program in Naperville.

Up Next: 
Wheaton write-up when I get around to it.

Hall of Fame Classic

This happened awhile ago

Hope 77  Cornerstone 64
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Aquinas  72  Hope 68
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Last weekends action saw Hope split its Hall of Fame Classic games with Cornerstone and Aquinas but not in the way you probably anticipated.  Friday Hope played a terrific second half to upend Cornerstone 77-64, a score that is not indicative of the 4-5 point, back and forth game it was for about 30 minutes.

Saturday I watched Auburn-Alabama and dreamed of a world in which Nick Sabin or Gus Malzahn get tired of coaching in a good football conference and take the Michigan job.  When I woke up, Aquinas beat Hope and the first numbers that stood out was the nearly 20 turnovers and shooting percentage that dipped below 30% in the second half.

Its difficult what to make of Cornerstone and Aquinas.  Neither is going to win the WHAC, that will likely be their city neighbors Davenport.  Cornerstone is good but not as good or as deep as recent versions.  Aquinas is for sure better than the hodge-podge of players that have taken the court since their run of four WHAC titles that ended in 2009.

A split wasn't a bad thing, but it should sting a bit given the win Friday and the fact just a couple minutes of better basketball on Saturday results in a second win.  Overall the classic was split evenly with everyone getting a ribbon, something to feel good about and a loss to motivate for the future.

UW-Stevens Point 77 Hope 66

Not So Close
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I couldn't make it over to see this one and with no video I'm flying blind here.  But I think its safe to say this one went pretty similar to last years game up at Stevens Point with Hope having a hard time with Point's athletes and not being able to slow them down enough to keep a game within reach.  One or two 5 minute stretches and suddenly its a 20 point game and pretty much over.

The worst thing that probably happened last week was Point losing at St. Olaf.  What Hope played Saturday was a team mad about a loss and making a trip to a place they were probably really looking forward to playing, against a team that just played very well against Whitewater.  We had their attention.

The first 13 minutes certainly read like a team ambushed by a superior opponent playing at a higher level.  It wasn't over early but it was a hole Hope could never quite dig themselves out of.  Despite closing within 6 or 7 a couple times in the second half, it never felt like Hope was capable of overtaking the Pointers.  Not much later the deficit was 20 and humble pie was being served.

My post-game inquiries to a couple people in attendance used the word sloppy too often, but neither felt Hope had much chance to win this one, unlike the Whitewater game.  That's disappointing on some level but Hope just played two opponents very capable of winning the national championship come March.  I wouldn't be too down about this one, really all we've learned is Hope probably isn't among D3's elites so far and we probably already knew that.

UW-Whitewater 82 Hope 80

So, so close
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Within your grasp kind of losses can be hard to take.  Within your grasp kind of losses to defending National Champions are harder.  Hope was there, with the lead, the ball and so many chances but just couldn't quite close it out.  The champions displayed their pedigree in full making some really big shots down the stretch and grasping a game by the throat that Hope just missed out on.

For a November game this was high, high quality with only one brief hint either team could reach a double-digit lead when Steven Wittenbach's 3 missed and Hope leading 21-14.  Otherwise it was tight throughout with loads of important possessions each way for long extended periods of play.

For me this was the game:

With Hope leading 74-72

2:57   Turnover
2:17   Turnover
1:44   Turnover

This was 2 chances to expand on a 2 point lead, and one chance following a Whitewater 3 that grabbed the lead.  It ended up an 8-0 Whitewater run that could have been thwarted several times and the last minute or so would have been possession basketball rather than salting away FT's.

Transport this game to March and everyone in attendance is raving about what a great tournament game that was.  Whitewater may or not be D3's best team, but I sure felt like I was watching two teams that will have a lot to say about who wins their respective conferences and could be players come March.  We'll see.

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Exhibition Stuff

Hope played Grand Valley State last night in its one and only exhibition this year.  The Lakers are picked to finish 2nd in the GLIAC North.  Last week they played at D1 Valparaiso in their first exhibition and lost by 8.  (Valpo led by just 1 with 8 min to play)   Hope's only action to this point was last weekends scrimmage against themselves and a scrimmage up at D2 Northwood, with the word being Hope won both halves.  In the world of pre-season basketball, exhibitions should be taken with a grain of salt, scrimmages even less.  If you were handicapping this one you probably go with GVSU by 20 and call it a day.

Game Recap:   Grand Valley St. 82  Hope 64
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For about 30 minutes Hope outscored GVSU  60-55, unfortunately there was a very loud train wreck of 9 1/2 first half minutes that swung this one in the Lakers favor permanently.  A 27-4 run in which hardly anything went well for Hope and lots went well for GVSU.  But the bottom line is it was mostly GVSU being bigger and stronger and Hope not being able to match-up well enough at a couple positions.  It was easy buckets and fouls a plenty for awhile.

Hope offered a nice second half push back and was the more aggressive team for much of it, highlighted by its numerous trips to the free-throw line.  After nearly being shut-out in the first half Ben Gardner was able to create a lot of his own offense and offered up several nice defensive plays.  Overall Hope was a little more gritty in the second half and resisted being blown out completely.

Actually encouraging when you consider the number of Darren Washington's Hope will face the rest of this year is just about zero.


Efficiency:

GVSU:  103.8  Hope:  72.4

A bit of  a downer,  but I'll say Hope's number was dragged way down by that abysmal last 10 minutes of the first half.  That last nine minutes was an efficiency rating of 23, which makes the rest of the game a respectable 98.  The second half was in Hope's favor 102-95

Overall there were probably some clunky moments for two good teams and probably a little more attention to defense than most exhibitions.

Pace:

I came up with possessions of 78-79, which is pretty fast.  I figure this game should have had about 20-25 more points scored.  Most of those points can probably be found in the poor 3-point shooting, both teams combined for 8-26 and GVSU only attempted 8.

Rebounding:
.....was a massacre.  GVSU 46  Hope 28 

Hope had 27.5% of available offensive rebounds
GVSU  had 52% of available offensive rebounds

Second chance points was 16-7, so, surprise, the bigger team played big.

Turnovers:  Hope 18  GVSU 24

Hope started with some nice energy and a noticeable defensive energy that's been hit and miss for a few years.  It served them well and in the end helped force the Lakers into 24 turnovers.  The Lakers were a very good 11.3 TO's per game a year ago, they had 12 at Valpo.  Your grain of salt is the graduation of their excellent PG Rod Woodson last year.  Still, having a hand in forcing at least some of 24 turnovers even in an exhibition is encouraging that you are doing something right on defense.  GVSU won't have many turnover totals this year with a 20 handle.

Somewhere in here I should mention high turnovers for both teams in a high possession game, but I like the idea Hope did something good that might have been hard to see. 

Random Thoughts

Starting Lineup:

Hope started Ben Gardner, Alex Eidson, Sam Otto, Harrison Blackledge and Brock Benson.  Most likely Corey McMahon is the regular starter at Otto's spot, but he's got a 'thing' and that thing probably was the reason he didn't start, though he played a lot.  Just my opinion but Otto and Blackledge look to be the most improved players over a year ago.   The scuttlebutt out of practices was Harrison would start and sure enough he did.  I have to think there is still some competition here between Stuive and Blackledge for that 4 spot.  Harrison played well, Cody did not, but don't be surprised if Hope wavers here and starts who ever might be the better match-up on any given night.  Also don't be surprised if Harrison starts all year, or if Stuive comes on strong the second half of the year like last year.

Bench:
Guards, guards and more guards. Hope has a heck of a lot of choices and combinations to work with.  We'll see a lot of 3 guard play and it might take some time to work out what works well with who.  The pecking order is probably something like Gardner-Carlson-Hawkins-Denham at point, Eidson-McMahon-Otto('ish)-Wittenbach-O'Brien-Littlson at the two/three, even though Otto is listed as a forward.  Denham-O'Brien-Littleson played sparingly last night.

A couple notable guard things:
Wittenbach and Otto are very similar and interchangeable at the wing positions, and can also play together to provide a taller lineup, Witt can also play the two.   I think one or the other was forced to play the 4 for a bit and it was right during the big train wreck, against most D3's though this should be ok, for a bit.

Dante Hawkins is going to play its just a matter of figuring out how much and where.  With Gardner the point and Carlson a very good defensive sub it might be tough to find adequate minutes, but I think it will happen one way or another, he looks too quick to keep off the floor.  The multiple point guard look showed its face, including a rare 3 PG lineup, which might have been a mistake towards the end.

Off Nights:

Two guys Hope relied on a lot last year, Eidson and Stuive had pretty bad nights.  Eidson hit his first shot and then just plain struggled the rest of the night.  This was just about the worst possible game for Stuive to find anyone to match-up against.  He was outsized by nearly 40lbs regardless who was defending.  Offensively he seemed very passive.  And of course Brock Benson spent a lot of the game sitting on the bench.  So Hope played this one with minimal contributions from 3 key guys.


Giant Elephant:

Hope's thin inside, that isn't a state secret, one look at the roster says so.  When Brock Benson picked up foul number 3 with 6 minutes to play in the first half the rest of the air went out of the balloon and Hope struggled with a capital 'S'.  Before I could even get home Brock was being quoted about the need to stay on the floor and playing smarter.  So the team recognizes this.

Solutions:
One, play smarter.

Two is for Keith Brushwyler to become a regular, reliable part of the rotation.  He played 13 minutes with mixed results last night.  Being able to play about that many would really help and give Hope 4 players to fill 2 positions that are natural spots for them.  Hope might be able to get away with that.

Three, and I'm not sure how crazy Greg Mitchell is about playing zones but Hope should probably learn one or two, both to protect Brock specifically and to protect the interior in general.  Finding a decent time and decent opponent to experiment against might be hard.  Hope really hasn't been a good zone team for about 3 years.

How creative Hope gets with protecting this part of the court is going to go a long way to determining if this is at least an MIAA Championship team or just another contender.  Against a lot of Hope's D3 schedule this won't matter much, but against a good portion and important portion of it, it will.


Made my day:

I caught a glimpse of a brother and sister talking with their mom after the game.  I imagine it was the first time in a couple years the mother was able to watch her son play basketball.  It was easy to smile at that moment when you realize it was possible that moment might never have happened.  That was enough for me to make the drive worthwhile.  I don't know the family but it made me feel good just seeing them together in that setting.

Everything above this is pretty inconsequential with that perspective.