Quote from: pointlem on March 01, 2025, 11:04:55 PMAn exciting game, with no discredit to Hope players and coaches for taking favored Calvin to the wire, and holding them to 62 points. After a great first half, coaching wasn't responsible for the missed point-blank layups at the start of the second half, for the missed free throws, or the 1 of 12 3-point shooting. Nevertheless, when Hope went ahead by 12 with less than 16 minutes to play, I was feeling optimistic and I daresay the inestimable Mrs. OldKnight was growing pessimistic.
Varnado for Calvin and Wourman for Hope were both pretty sensational. I'm looking forward to watching them (well, one of them) again next year.
Kudos to the seniors for all they've invested in developing their talent and gifting us with it, with a special shout-out to Zach Hawes for ending his career so impressively the last four games. Both Hope and Calvin are graduating some players that will be greatly missed, but bring back a lot of talent as well.
I'm back by popular demand. Well, maybe not popular, but at least there was some demand.

The inestimable Mrs. OldKnight did register some concern. Her less estimable husband's major concern was whether the turnaround he expected to see would come in time for Calvin to register a comeback that would cover the deficit. From long experience in Rivalry games, and from watching the 2024-25 version of Calvin's men's basketball, I was pretty sure that the Knights would make a run, but didn't know whether it would come on time and last long enough. By the sweat of my brow, it did.
Hope's first half was superb, featured good shooting that was fueled by solid ball movement and excellent defense that largely kept the home team at bay by forcing turnovers. Mrs. OldKnight perceptively noted that it's tough to score when you don't get a shot off. The turnaround came at the 16 minute mark of game when Hope took a 48-36 lead. From there, Calvin outscored Hope 26-11 to close out a hard fought 3 point win. Hope played the entire first half at high energy and I was wondering (Hoping?) they would start to run out of gas. Slowly but surely, the fuel started to show signs of leakage, a quality that I think was simultaneously the result of playing 3 games this week along with having to finish that stretch against a never-say-die Calvin defense that has just gotten better and better over the season.
The longer the game went, the tougher it got for Hope players to get off a good shot with their feet in position to comfortably leave the floor as they launched the ball. You could see it in the body language, and it seemed pretty much every shot Hope took the final 10-15 minutes was forced late in the shot clock. That explains Hope's shooting disparity between the first half (51%) and second half (24%). It wasn't just bad luck for Hope, nor poor decision making. Calvin's defense went into lockdown mode.
Of course, it helped that the Knights stopped turning the ball over. I looked at livestats early in the second half, and Calvin had committed 12 turnovers at that point. They finished the game with 14 TO's. Didn't hurt that with Hope up 56-53 with 5 minutes left, Daane Harvey banked in one the ugliest 3 point shots ever taken at Van Noord Arena. But as someone helpfully pointed out, it went in.