MBB: Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

[tommiegun]

Nicolai is throwing daggers - gustavus has a sweet webcast - tom wheeler is a southern minnesota legend.

[John Gleich]

Nicolai is throwing daggers - gustavus has a sweet webcast - tom wheeler is a southern minnesota legend.

Do you have video or just audio?

Score?

[piperinsider]

HAM 88, SJU 75 - Pipers only trailed once in the game
Pipers: Brown 26, Hipp 21, Carroll 10, Schmidt 10, Anderson 8
Johnnies: Burtzel 25, Burns 13

A few observations
* Carl Hipp faced up to the basket every chance he had compared to spinning and shooting. The results were much better. Hipp had three blocks and two of them he didn't jump.
* As the Chairman said, Brown cut down on his No. of threes, but his productivity was the same. Then again, the Hamline offense got contributions from so many other people than it did Saturday at GAC so it wasn't needed tonight. Is Brown or Aaron Burtzel the toughest guard in the league right now?
* Hamline has offensive liabilities at point guard. Weinrich and Easter are having troubles even shooting free throws now. Late in games, I think Brown and Carroll need to handle the ball.
* Burtzel is tough. He really uses the pump fake well to create open looks. He is definitely the best player on the court for the Johnnies right now. Andy Burns was a sharpshooter but the Johnnies didn't get much else from the perimeter. Todd Herman didn't look very comfortable.
* Two weeks away from Hutton Arena - UST (at Mac) on Monday, at Auggie Tech, at Mac (at Mac) the next three for Pipers

I might find myself at Macalester on Monday. We'll see how the weekend goes.

[John Gleich]

54-51 GAC leads with 1 FT coming, missed the second.  UST boards, then there's a steal by Van Sickle, foul by Healy with :13

[John Gleich]

Van Sickle makes the first FT, missed the second.  UST rebounds and misses, GAC boards, McPartland fouled with :06, on the line for 2, makes the first.  misses the second.  56-51  Nicolai misses a 3, game over, GAC wins.

[gacbacker]

Still think the Gusties aren't one of the top two teams in the league PiperInsider?

Couldn't have been a better night for Gustavus with their win over the Tommies coupled with Hamline's win over St. John's.

Seth Anderson was a machine tonight. The Gustie defense did a number on Joe Scott too...he was as ineffective as I've ever seen him.

Healy and Nicolai made their share of three pointers, but the lack of an inside game was really evident tonight for the Tommies.

[Drake Palmer]

Preposterious statement of the year - Hamline announcer after a Brown alley-oop
"It's so loud in hear I can't even hear myself think."
Great minutes from Andy Voigt as Hamline is starting to pull away. 11:47 to play - 65-54 HAM

I'll follow up with more later after I read boxscores, but that was a pretty impressive dunk!  And while it might not have been ear deafening, it was pretty high up there on the decibel scale. Made me drop my mask of neutrality! Hot damn!    

Burtzel is a post.  And right now he is easily, hands down MVP of the league.  I thought the dude was left-handed, but the cat is ambidextrous.  He shoots FTs left-handed & jumpers right-handed. Hunh?? He gets my vote for MVP, & All-defensive team too.  STUD.

Ray Brown is a nice contributor (smirk).  Heck yeah STUD 1A.  He & Burtzel had a couple of nice mano-mano matchups in the 2nd half. .  
***
I've told everyone outside of the Gustie followers- Seth Anderson from the Gusties is a stud. Possible dare I say, Doug Espenson jr. in the making?

[miacsuperfan]

wow!! what a finish in st. peter!!  congrats to hanson and his defensive warriors!
ust appeared absolutely stymied (videocast); am looking forward to hearing what it looked like in person.   

seth anderson is now my new favorite player in the miac.  this kid looks VERY good!!  his reverse layup with about 1:30 to go was a monster move.  huge defensive stops for gusties and 19 turnovers forced!! pretty impressive.

joe scott laid yet another egg tonight.  you have  to wonder what is going on in his head. maybe too much pre-season expectation pressure for him.   nicolai hit some amazing shots down the stretch, but give the gusties credit.  wirtjes, mcpartland, and vsickle all made big plays in what was truly a team victory.

in other web games, aug over the royals; hu bumped sju.  it was hard to watch those games when you knew you were missing the game in st. peter.

whoever (piperinsider?)  called the vipes 5-5 at the turn is looking pretty smart.  how about a tommie upset and 6-4?   

[ChairmanYao]

gacbacker, I don't want to put words in PI's mouth, but it was just an opinion and a warranted one at that point. How could you really separate Gac from St. Johns before tonight? Great win by Gac tonight. Can't wait for the rematch back in St. Paul.

[piperinsider]

GACbacker-

I meant to put this in my observations post an hour ago. After now seeing both teams (SJU on webcast), GAC is a more balanced team and with the emergence of Mr. Maple River they are better than the Johnnies. I have yet to see UST (maybe Monday), AUG and CON....

But we are in store for one of the best post-seasons in the MIAC in a long time. I have the MIAC fever again. I haven't been this active in posting/watching games since Sean Sweeney was wearing the white T-shirt under his home jersey.

And, yes, that was me that said the Vipers would be 5-5 at the turn when we were 1-3. I just had a feeling that we'd see the team that played in California come back and play well this month. I wouldn't drive 75 minutes to Macalester on Monday unless I though the Pipers could be 6-4 at the turn (it would be my first time at MAC not in "The Cage").

Hipp is hip again. There's no Lonnie to hold down Ray ray. And I'm feeling a big game from Aggie, DA and Schmidty. Let's play!

[AO]

The Purple Reign is Over!!!

Let's keep it going!!  How can you not like the Pipers chances Monday with the game Brown and Hipp just put together!!  Looks to me like a 2 bid league this year - Maybe 3 if the Pipers steal the tourney championship?  Only 1 non-conference loss a-piece (that counts) for  Gustavus and St. Thomas- both to ranked wiac schools. The SOS has to be pretty good this year with the strong non-conference showing (by my count 29-14 in-region).

[Buddo]

Glad to see UST lose.

[MiacLostProphet]

Its as good of a day for hamline as you could ask.  Pipes flex at home against the johnnies and gain some momentum running into STU.  although i don't like playing STU after a loss, they will come out with some fire.  Good to see the pipes are looking like a playoff team once again. 

[Willy Wonka]

Lots to discuss, but I just got back home and it's 2 a.m. I'm going to do a (semi) rapid-fire segment before I hit the sack.

• Has a bandwagon ever gone from empty to overflowing any faster than what just happened? I've been hyping Anderson since he took 3 charges in about 10 minutes against Carleton. Scott is going to have nightmares about his defense and Nicolai is still trying to figure out how to stop him (without falling down). The freshman looked like he was on cruise control going about 35 MPH against the vaunted Tommie pressure...and his dad still couldn't crack a grin in the stands.

• Speaking of Nicolai...somewhere Neal Anderson has got to be smiling. 33 minutes, 14 points, 0 boards, 0 assists, 0 blocks, 0 steals. I've said it before and I'll say it again, he's a one-dimensional gunner. That's worked fine in previous years, but the Tommies need him to be much more if they want to justify the lofty national ranking.

• The Tommies have the most talented individual players in the league, hands down, but they are a terrible team in the truest sense of the word. If I were Fritz, I'd splice together highlights of last year's squad and then run the last game on side-by-side TVs for easy comparisons. It's almost like the current guys consider it a personal loss to pass the ball, especially if it might lead to a teammate's basket.

Four starters combined for 93 minutes and zero assists. The Buri boys must be rolling over in their graves. This ain't Rucker Park, fellas. It's okay to make a simple pass that leads to an open look. I'd be just sick if I were a UST fan having to watch that every night after what they've enjoyed the last 4+ years.

• Anderson and the GAC guards controlled this game and its pace from the opening tip. When was the last time a MIAC opponent could say that after playing the Tommies? It may have happened, but I can't recall a single turnover that led to a transition basket. And Paulson with zero turnovers? Can't wait to see the black feathers protruding from Moses' mouth tomorrow...

• The UST posts were bound to cost that team at least one game this year. They are just very unproductive on both ends of the court. Peltier, Hannon and even the All-American football guy that Moses has a man-crush on all seemed to turn into offensive liabilities tonight as the Gusties just sagged back into the paint against them. And it's gross to see how much Peltier whines. I'll admit that it made me extremely happy to have his turnover seal the end of UST's billion game conference winning streak.

• GAC didn't have to play even close to perfect in order to win this game, which surprised even me. Outside of the 11-0 run late in the first half and the two triples Nicolai hit in the closing minutes, I felt like the Gusties were the better team for about 90% of the game. They shot 41%, were outrebounded by 7 and shot poorly from the perimeter — particularly TGrey, who missed a number of wide open looks — but still managed to win the game. And they did so while shooting a frigid 11-19 on FTs with 3-4 missed front ends. It's not much of a stretch to say this could have rather easily been a convincing double-digit victory.

• Van Sickle had two steals in the final 64 seconds to prompt a court-storming session. No big deal, right? Wrong. The senior 3-year starter, who has never been noted for his defense, had managed just 48 steals in his 93 career collegiate games entering Wednesday's game. He effectively quadrupled his per-game average on two of the biggest defensive possessions of the year. Kudos!

• I really didn't want to do it...but was papahoops' preseason All-Universe selection even suited up tonight for the Purple?  

[Gacman]

A very nice crowd like I thought there would be led to a fun night and fun atmosphere and a good game. As I stood up in the hallway behind the east basket, I realized I was watching a Tommie team that I wasn't scared of. Clearly they have talent, but after a few minutes I didn't think that we would have to play a perfect game to beat them. After watching this game, I have no doubt that UST will lose another game or two before this conference season is done and I really think that this is going to be a 3 team race for first.

On monday I pointed out a few key matchups that would determine this game. One was how would the gustie guards handle the tommie pressure. Two was how would the battle of the benches shake out, and three would the size of the gusties be a clear advantage.

As far as matchup one is conscerned, the gustie guards outplayed the Tommie guards in almost every facet of the game. With Wirtjes, Schmidtknecht, and Anderson the gusties have quality guards who can handle any type of pressure. This negated the undersized Tommies one clear advantage. Also, the three gustie guards all can initiate the offense and help it run smoothly. The same cannot be said for the Tommie guards.

The bench play was pretty even. 24 points for UST's bench and 25 for GAC's bench and the rebounds for the benches were pretty even as well. You could argue that the most impactful players in this game both came for the each team's respective benches in Healy and Anderson. Healy looked like the best player on the floor for the Tommies as he had a nice well rounded game getting assists, points, steals, and rebounds. Anderson in the second half and especially down the stretch was the difference in this game. One important difference in the bench play was that UST's bench had 11 turnovers and GAC's only had 5.

The last matchup was the bigs. Although GAC got outrebounded, it doesn't concern me too much nor does it show that GAC's bigs didn't play well. The four GAC big men had 20 out of the 27 rebounds. They took care of their job on the glass. The majority of UST's rebounding was done by the guards. Healy had 6 himself. You could just tell that UST's big men were overmatched. The few points they did score inside were off wide open layups do to miscommunication on GAC's part. Anytime they got the ball with their back to the basket, the tommie posts did nothing with the ball. Halvorsen didn't even score a point with an 0-2 night.

Going forward, who knows how the conference will shake out because it is hard to beat teams a second time, but one thing is for sure, UST has a true challenge to get knocked off from being conference champion for the first time in four years. This GAC team is continuing to get better, and winning those close games earlier in the season have really helped them grow. Should be a fun month and a half.