Calvin 88 Hope 64

I Got Nothing

Calvin 88  Hope  64
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Recap

I've been really fortunate to have been able to see  these games going back to about 2005.  That's around 30 contests +/- the various post-season games.  I cannot think of too many I was so disappointed in an outcome as this one.  Hope's a much better team at this point than last year, Hope's better than they showed Saturday.  So I got nothing.

My analysis and thoughts on this one won't be very in-depth, deep, or frankly very good.  Probably not worth reading which is kind of the point because its really not worth reviewing this game and more important to just move on.

To be truthful this probably qualifies as the highlight

Trine 65 Hope 62

Famous Last Words

Trine 65  Hope 62
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Recap---from Trine


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

Those were the last words on my preview a couple days ago and its the primary reason Hope walks out of Hershey Hall with its first loss to Trine since they joined D3 and the MIAA.  The difference in turnover margin, taking away Hope's offensive rebounding advantage in this game of 3, allowed Trine about 11 more shots at the basket.  In a close game like this, those are almost free points.

Turnovers were really everything in this game.

Trine's trio of  Dixon, Good and Holmquist were really good.  On offense they combined for 19-44, the rest of the team were just 3-8 and the bench took one FG attempt, a breakaway layup.   Defensively it was Good who took Gardner and I'm pretty sure Will Dixon was on Eidson.  Combined Hope's guard duo were just 4-15 with almost no shots inside of 15 feet.  Trine won the defensive battle in slowing down the other teams guys, Hope didn't.

Foul trouble bit Hope again with Brock Benson picking up 2 really tough fouls early in the game and then a 3rd midway through the 2nd that put him on the bench a few more minutes.  This game might be on the extreme end of this but it was 34-20 with Brock on the floor, 23-45 with him on the bench.  Trine had Holmquist get in foul trouble themselves but he was able to stay on the floor for 31 minutes compared to Brock's 19.  If  Hope has one regret it might be maybe leaving Brock out there a couple minutes more and trying to protect him with a zone, it worked at the end of the first half but they didn't try that in the 2nd, unless I missed it.

This was a little eye opening for me, before tonight I had seen Albion, Hope and Calvin all in person and I thought all 3 were pretty close.  I think Trine is right with those 3 and it should produce a really tough grind between those four teams.  Win at home, steal a couple on the road if you can and for goodness sakes don't lose to Adrian, Alma, Kzoo or Olivet or you're dead.

Trine deserved this win and its been a long time coming, Hope's escaped from Angola at least a couple times I attended and 1 or 2 others I didn't.  Big win for Coach Miller and the Thunder.

Hope 87 Ohio Wesleyan 61

Hope 87  Ohio Wesleyan  61
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Recap

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

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

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

Wooster Mose Hole Review

Hope 77  Spalding  58
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Recap

I wasn't able to watch as much of this one as I'd like, which was a total of about 6 minutes of game action.  By then it was pretty apparent Hope was going to have little trouble and I could enjoy my prime rib sandwich and company without having to refresh my phone too often.  Hope did what it needed to do by holding Spalding's two leading scorers Brandon Goeing and Brandon Gabriel to just 17 points on 7-30 shooting, and 7 of those points came after the margin had crossed 30.  With their two leading scorers struggling Spalding was pretty punchless and Hope was able to grab a 23 point lead at halftime, expand that to 30 in the 2nd and rest its starters and key bench players. 

The next night I was able to watch Spalding/UW-LaCrosse and I was sort of impressed Hope was able to make such light work of the Golden Eagles.  Spalding trailed by as many as 15 but fought back in the 2nd half to make a game of it and forced LaCrosse to have to win it at the FT line.  They at least showed they could compete against better teams something I wasn't really sure about going into this tournament.

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Wooster Mose Hole Preview

Hope returns to action Monday and Tuesday at the Wooster Mose Hole Tournament.  This will be Hope's first games played in the State of Ohio since the 2006 NCAA Sectional at Wittenberg, it will be their first regular season non-conference game in Ohio since 1991 when they played Capital and Wooster.  Before the scheduling torch and pitchfork society gets too carried away I'll point out the number of NCAA Ohio teams to play Hope in Holland in the regular season during that time is 3,  Wittenberg, John Carroll and Mt. Union(twice) spread out over 24 seasons.  This is not a well traveled road in either direction.

Monday Hope will play Spalding University(Ky.), Tuesday the winner or loser of the Wooster/UW-LaCrosse game.  If I had a pick I'd want Wooster on Tuesday for a lot of reasons but mainly because these two schools haven't met on the court since the second round of the 1997 NCAA Tournament.  Given the prowess both schools have displayed within the Great Lakes Region over the past two decades, its almost criminal the two haven't met at some point along the way.


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Holland Sentinel/Russ DeVette Classic/Challenge/Tournament/Championship

Woooooo!   Maybe too much of an inside joke

Run, Run, Run, Run, Run, Run
Hope 121  Pitt-Greensburg  73
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recap

Once or twice a season Hope takes an opponent behind the woodshed.  Greensburg was the victim Friday and it was spectacular.  I wasn't at this game or able to watch on video (because its DeVos) and there isn't much point in rambling on about this one.  It was never a close game.


Efficiency:

Hope 139.76    Pitt-Greensburg 84.52

That's pretty much what a woodshed looks like.  I was filling in the numbers during timeouts and Hope was over 140 and Greensburg under 80 the entire game until the last few minutes.   These are two teams on opposite ends of my efficiency charts and the game played out that way.

Pace:

87-87    Very fast.  In the preview of this weekend I pointed out Pitt-Greensburg games were averaging 77 possessions though it was difficult to tell if that was them or their opponents.  Turns out it was them.   Two coaching changes in 5 years yet it remains a poor idea to try and run with Hope when you don't have those kinds of horses.


Rebounding:
Hope 44   Greensburg  28

(slight change to my calculation on this, numbers will look lower to past numbers)
Hope had 26% of available offensive rebounds
Greensburg had 21% of available offensive rebounds

About as important as the shot-clock in this game.


Mt.Union and more

Preview: Pitt-Greensburg/Mt. Union

This weekend Hope hosts its Holland Sentinel/Russ DeVette Classic.  Participating this year are Olivet, Pitt-Greensburg and Mt. Union.

In 'the internet is weird' category, a surprising number of photos referring to Hope College or our mascot 'Dutch' show up when googling "Pitt-Greensburg mascot".

Friday

Friday could probably be dubbed 'mismatch day'.  Mt. Union plays Olivet in the early game, Pitt-Greensburg plays Hope in the night cap.  Mt. Union should be heavy favorites in my opinion, at least on paper, a year ago the Comets lost by only 7 at Mt. Union but this Comets team is not last years Comets team.

8pm Hope hosts Pitt-Greensburg.  Greensburg, Pa is 465 miles miles from Holland tucked in the hills East and South of Pittsburgh.  Chapman Gym at Greensburg holds 400, there will be nearly as many people sitting in the section behind them on Friday night.   They are known as the Bobcats and play in the AMCC which overall I know little about.  In the last 8 seasons they have not had a wining record, topping out at 12-14 twice including last season. 

The Bobcats will enter play 3-5 on the year.  All 3 wins have come in AMCC play over probably the 3 bottom teams in that conference.  They have two losses to Carnegie-Mellon and 3 other losses to PAC teams Grove City, Geneva and Waynesburg.  If you like playing the score comparison game about all we have is the loss to Waynesburg, 83-63.  Waynesburg lost to Calvin by 18, beat Alma by 4 and lost to Marietta by 42.

links
Roster:
Stats:

Lineup:
W  Castritano  6-3, Jr.
W  Heinle  6-5, Sr.
W  Thomas  6-6, So.
W  Figuerora 5-10, Jr.
G   Shannon  5-11, Jr.
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G   Connelly  6-3, Jr.
G   Darby  5-11, Fr.
G   Anderson  5-11, Jr.
W  DeWitt  6-3, So.
G   Kezmarsky  5-10, So.

The first 4 guys have started all 8 games and will probably all play at or over 30 minutes.  Shannon has started the most but they've started 3 other guys at that guard spot as well.  Connelly has averaged more minutes than Shannon.  I would guess 3 of the first 4 will be on the floor at all times.  After Heinle and Thomas there is no other player on the roster taller than 6-3. 

Figuerora is the leading scorer at 16ppg, followed by Costritano,  Heinle,  and Thomas.  As a team the Bobcats are shooting 42% but these 4 guys are shooting 46.6%.  There appears to be a pretty steep drop-off in production after them.  On the year they're shooting about 25 3-point attempts per game, but keep in mind they've been behind a lot so that may be a lot of desperation attempts.   They've launched at least 18 in every game.

Pace wise Bobcat games have averaged out at 77 possessions per game, whether that's them or their opponents is tough to tell but expect something over 70 unless Hope is able to really control the tempo.   Defensively they're allowing opponents to shoot nearly 50% from the floor at 49%, that's Alma from last year level.  The only real defensive success they've had came against Altoona, D'Youville and Geneva.  Hope is most certainly not like those 3.   Offense its much the same story, great success against D'Youville and Altoona but everyone else has kept them under control for the most part.

On paper this a game Hope should win, probably comfortably.  On paper Hope should have beaten fellow AMCC rival PSU-Behrend last spring.  Admittedly this is no PSU-Behrend type opponent as Greensburg is unlikely to be an NCAA tournament candidate.  Hope hasn't played in 2 weeks, it might be a little rusty early but I think if we were honest this is probably the weakest opponent Hope will have faced to this point in the year.



Saturday

Olivet plays Pitt-Greensburg at 1pm.   This should be an entertaining game if nothing else and I have no idea which way it will go.

At 3pm Hope hosts Mt. Union the Main Event of the weekend.  Mount Union is coming off its first regular season OAC Championship in about 4 decades, return nearly everyone from last years team and were the pre-season pick to repeat as OAC Champions this year.

So far the Purple Raiders are 5-2 on the year, 4 of those wins from the OAC.  Out of conference they started the year by blitzing Bethany and then suffered two close losses at Wooster.  One to Wooster by 7 and one to St. Vincent by 6.  They are in desperate need of a signature Great Lakes win, and Hope would do just fine thanks.

links
Roster:
Stats:

Lineup:
G  Jacubec  5-11,  Sr.
G  Jackson  6-0,  So.
G  Dillon   6-4,  Jr.
F   Griffin  6-4,  Sr.
F   Ruffin  6-5,  Jr.
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F   Moore  6-6,  Jr.
G  Kukura  6-3,  Fr.
G  Scelza  6-1,  Jr.
G  Duerr  5-11,  Jr.
G  Shull  5-10,  Jr.

The starting 5 has been the same for all 7 games thus far and that group will play the majority of the minutes with Griffin seeing the fewest of the bunch, mostly because Griffin is a foul machine recording 28 in their 7 games.  In both losses foul trouble on the interior was a contributing factor.

You'll get the picture everyone on this team can shoot or has license to shoot.  The first seven take the vast majority of the shots but no one has taken more than 66 and all have attempted over 40.  Jackson, Dillon and Kukura are the first options but after that pretty much anyone will take the shot.   Only subs Scelza, Duerr and Shull rarely shoot.  From beyond the arc its really the same story, most everyone can shoot it, except the 'big' guys Ruffin and Moore.  Another team that likes that shot and has averaged 21 attempts on the year.  Jacubec, Kukura and Griffin are all shooting over 50% from behind the line, so twitch a little when one of these guys is wide open.

Mt. Union has tended to like a slightly higher than normal pace, less so this year but this one should get up over 70 possessions as well.  In games involving Mount last year I watched they frequently pushed the ball up the court and fired off a shot before the defense could really get set.  Overall its a fun style of play to watch.

For the year the Raiders are shooting 47% from the floor and allowing opponents a slightly less 45% They are much more likely to try and outscore you than out defend you and in their two losses to capable defensive teams Wooster and St. Vincent they were held to 40% FG shooting and below in both games.  How well Hope is able to defend the Raiders is really the key.  The rest of the stats are fairly even with only slight advantages over their opponents in all categories.  There are no glaring weaknesses or glaring strengths.  The Raiders are just a good basketball team and will likely be challenging for the OAC title again this year. 

This would be a nice win to have on your resume for both teams.