WBB: Michigan Intercollegiate Athletics Association

[WWWRHH]

It should be pointed out St. Mary's was missing a couple girls in this one, most noteably Nichole Beier who put 25 up the first time, and also starter Erin Newsome who scored 14 the first time.  Both go 6-2, 6-0.

They were alot more shorthanded than I thought even at the game.

With that said, Hope was pretty sharp for most of the game.   Philana Green had 0 points and Hope won by 25.  That says something.

A rematch in the MIAA tournament with both at full strength would be nice to see.

A minor correction....Erin Newsome did start and play, but she was held in check by Hope's starters.  Knox was able to play defense on the starter without picking up early fouls.  The Dutch established their inside dominance early against the Belles starting front line.  Beire's absence did hurt St. Mary's (she averages 11 pts. and 3 rbs.), but I do not think she would have made a major difference in the outcome.  Most of her points in South Bend came in the second half against Hope's zone which they did not employ yesterday.

However, starting guard #15 Patsy Mahoney did not play and she scored 18 in the first match.  Her replacement Maggie Ronan only scored 2 yesterday vs. 11 in the previous game.  If both missing players had been available, it is likely that the score would have been closer and Hope's starters would not have spent most of the second half on the bench.

I do agree that a full strength rematch would be a great game and I am happy that it will likely take place in Holland.  However, if Knox and Snikkers control the inside and the team plays defense with yesterday's intensity, I think the outcome will be similar.

[Flying Dutch Fan]

The rebounding displayed by the ladies yesterday was absolutely amazing - especially Knowx on the offensive side.

[sac]

It should be pointed out St. Mary's was missing a couple girls in this one, most noteably Nichole Beier who put 25 up the first time, and also starter Erin Newsome who scored 14 the first time.  Both go 6-2, 6-0.

They were alot more shorthanded than I thought even at the game.

With that said, Hope was pretty sharp for most of the game.   Philana Green had 0 points and Hope won by 25.  That says something.

A rematch in the MIAA tournament with both at full strength would be nice to see.

A minor correction....Erin Newsome did start and play, but she was held in check by Hope's starters.  Knox was able to play defense on the starter without picking up early fouls.  The Dutch established their inside dominance early against the Belles starting front line.  Beire's absence did hurt St. Mary's (she averages 11 pts. and 3 rbs.), but I do not think she would have made a major difference in the outcome.  Most of her points in South Bend came in the second half against Hope's zone which they did not employ yesterday.

However, starting guard #15 Patsy Mahoney did not play and she scored 18 in the first match.  Her replacement Maggie Ronan only scored 2 yesterday vs. 11 in the previous game.  If both missing players had been available, it is likely that the score would have been closer and Hope's starters would not have spent most of the second half on the bench.

I do agree that a full strength rematch would be a great game and I am happy that it will likely take place in Holland.  However, if Knox and Snikkers control the inside and the team plays defense with yesterday's intensity, I think the outcome will be similar.

Thanks for the correction.

[gohope]

Congrats to Carrie Snikkers on being named this week's Player of the Week!

[cmlundy]

Has anyone seen the schedule for the finals in March.

Semis 4/6
finals 10 and 1.

Seems like bad scheduling to me?

[sac]

Has anyone seen the schedule for the finals in March.

Semis 4/6
finals 10 and 1.

Seems like bad scheduling to me?

Hmmmm, can't say a reason but it does put the  D3 women's and men's Championship games back-to-back, so perhaps Television was a factor?

[hope81]

Television is indeed the reason for the weird starts.  CSTV (or the NCAA) is trying for "championship Saturday".  They want to run the 2 women's games, the two men's games, and I think hockey finals all back to back as live events.  Thus the strange times on Saturday.  Those strange times drive the earlier games on Friday as well.

[oldknight]

It's just an amazing story about Calvin's Marcia Harris, who saw her first action in nearly 6 weeks to spark the Lady Knights to an 88-81 win over Adrian yesterday. Despite the fact that Harris only completed one full practice since her December 30 injury, she pumped in 28 points against the Bulldogs in only 16 minutes of action. Here's a link to the story:

http://www.calvin.edu/sports/news/comments/return-by-harris-sparks-womens-basketball-team-to-win-at-adrian/

The Lady Knights entertain Hope for a Homecoming game at VanNoord on February 22 and I expect it will be quite well attended. If Harris is healthy and in game shape by then, it could be an entertaining afternoon.

[WWWRHH]

I am glad to see Harris back in the line up.  It is never good to see someone lose their senior season to an injury.

I agree that Calvin with Harris will provide Hope a better game than the first match up.  She will certainly provide a credible inside threat and keep either Snikkers or Knox occupied.  (I suspect that Snikkers will draw the assignment and Knox will remain on Van Eck.)

I still expect Hope to win since they have more offensive options, are stronger on the boards, and are deeper than the Knights .  However, if both Harris and Van Eck are playing well nothing can be taken for granted. 

Hope needs to be challenged and the bigs need to face good inside play.  Easy 30 - 40 point victories are not good preparation for the post season.

[section7]

Congrats to Marcia Harris on her return.  Always like her as a player.

What was amazing, assuming the stats are correct, she scored 28 pts on 16 shots in 16 minutes.

Appears foul trouble may have been a factor, but either way, that is fillin it.

[sac]

http://www.hollandsentinel.com/news/x84119828/Leadership-of-Hope-basketball-player-inspires-Chicken-Soup-for-the-Soul-story

"Story" from the sentinel, sound like an interesting book to thumb through.

[WWWRHH]

In spite a relatively weak strength of schedule ranking (est to be 323 out 424 by D3hoops) Hope is ranked #2 in the region behind DePauw.

http://www.ncaa.com/auto_pdf/p_hotos/s_chools/ncaa/sports/w-baskbl/auto_pdf/Rankings-DIIIWBB-21109

This being an odd numbered year, where women's team have home court preference over men's teams, Hope may finally have the opportunity to get the first two rounds of the NCAAs at home.

Of course, they have some real gamies to get through first with Trine playing better and Harris back for Calvin.

[Darryl Nester]

Pardon the intrusion to your board ... I've been working on a program I wrote a couple of years ago to analyze scenarios for the HCAC standings, trying to extend it so that it could do a similar analysis for any other conference.  I posted results to the CCIW board yesterday, and thought I'd now submit the same to the MIAA.

The first table below summarizes current standings and remaining games.  The second table lists--as a percentage of all possible outcomes for the remaining games--the final seeding for each team.  These are not probabilities (unless you believe that each team has an equal likelihood of winning each game).

I assumed in making this table that your conference's tie-breaking procedure was the same as those of the HCAC (the MIAA page does not have an obvious discussion of tie-breakers).

Team	Overall	Home	Away	Remaining Games
Hope	12-1	7-0	5-1	vs. Adrian, @ Olivet, @ Calvin
St. Mary's (Ind.)	12-2	6-1	6-1	@ Albion, vs. Kzoo
Trine	8-6	4-2	4-4	vs. Alma, vs. Calvin
Calvin	7-6	4-2	3-4	vs. Olivet, @ Trine, vs. Hope
Adrian	6-7	4-3	2-4	@ Hope, vs. Kzoo, @ Alma
Albion	6-7	3-3	3-4	vs. SMC, @ Alma, vs. Olivet
Alma	6-7	3-3	3-4	@ Trine, vs. Albion, vs. Adrian
Olivet	3-10	2-5	1-5	@ Calvin, vs. Hope, @ Albion
Kalamazoo	0-14	0-8	0-6	@ Adrian, @ SMC

Team	#1	#2	#3	#4	#5	#6	#7	#8	#9
Hope	55.88%	44.12%	--	--	--	--	--	--	--
SMC	44.12%	55.88%	--	--	--	--	--	--	--
Trine	--	--	43.38%	32.20%	16.89%	7.23%	0.29%	--	--
Calvin	--	--	39.33%	23.66%	20.61%	11.67%	4.74%	--	--
Adrian	--	--	4.30%	17.72%	27.64%	28.71%	20.46%	1.17%	--
Albion	--	--	2.27%	13.21%	19.78%	32.03%	31.64%	1.07%	--
Alma	--	--	10.72%	13.21%	15.09%	19.97%	41.02%	--	--
Olivet	--	--	--	--	--	0.39%	1.86%	97.75%	--
Kzoo	--	--	--	--	--	--	--	--	100.00%

[WWWRHH]

The first table below summarizes current standings and remaining games.  The second table lists--as a percentage of all possible outcomes for the remaining games--the final seeding for each team.  These are not probabilities (unless you believe that each team has an equal likelihood of winning each game).

Thanks for the update....it is interesting to see how competitive the race still is for the third and fourth seeds.

Which leads to my next thought - Trine is an obviously much improved team over last year, but also over the beginning of this year.  Based on what I saw Wednesday night, their recent run of conference victories was no fluke.  The new coach has them playing well and doing the right thing at an intensity level that previous Thunder teams did not exhibit.  They pushed Hope and in the end were just overwhelmed by the size and strength of Snikkers, Greene and Knox.  If they are able to recruit some size over the next couple of years they could become real contenders.

Recent coaching changes at Trine and St. Mary's are changing the conference landscape and will make things more challenging for the Dutch and that is a good thing.  Easy 25 point victories make it hard to prepare for the post season.  On the other hand, with the graduation of Harris and Van Eck I believe that Calvin will spend some time away from the upper half of the conference unless the next recruiting class is very strong.

After the first Calvin game, oldknight said "This is the first game I've seen Hope's women play this year and their starting five is every bit as good as last year's. However, the Hope bench is not as strong as last year when the second team seemed every bit as good as the starters. As long as Morehouse has 2 or 3 subs he can regularly count on it won't make any difference. You can only put five on the floor at one time anyway."

At that time, I tended to moderately disagree with him.  I didn't think this year's second rotation had quite the scoring punch as last year's team (you won't find scorers like Snikkers, Cowen and Knox or a point guard as strong as Kopke playing second unit on most teams) but after seeing the lack of scoring against Trine's tough D by the second rotation I am beginning to see what he meant.

For those that missed the game, the score was deceiving.  Trine pushed Hope for 33 minutes and Hope basically won because the three mentioned above scored 70% of the Dutch's points and were just so much bigger and / or stronger than anyone on the Thunder roster.

Last year Hope's first unit averaged 36.5 points per game and the second unit was close behind with 33.4.  This year, the first five put in 48.9 per game compared to the second units 22.4.  All of the starting five average more than 20 mins. a game and last year just three did.

This year's second rotation is very good defensively, but as a group do not have as much offensive punch.  Bruinsma and DeKuiper are fairly reliable scorers and Geers is a very good defender. Cerone, Phillips and Kutney show a lot of promise, but overall the group  just is not yet as experienced and polished as their counterparts from last years team.

When games are tough in the tourneys, I think Morehouse will be less likely to substitute five at a time and more likely rotate in the second unit a couple at a time to play along side starters.  This approach will work fine and most teams will be less talented, but foul trouble could make for some tense situations if two or more starters have to sit out for long periods together.

[Darryl Nester]

Updated with today's results:

Team	Overall	Home	Away	Remaining Games
Hope	13-1	8-0	5-1	@ Olivet, @ Calvin
St. Mary's (Ind.)	12-3	6-1	6-2	vs. Kzoo
Trine	9-6	5-2	4-4	vs. Calvin
Calvin	8-6	5-2	3-4	@ Trine, vs. Hope
Albion	7-7	4-3	3-4	@ Alma, vs. Olivet
Adrian	6-8	4-3	2-5	vs. Kzoo, @ Alma
Alma	6-8	3-3	3-5	vs. Albion, vs. Adrian
Olivet	3-11	2-5	1-6	vs. Hope, @ Albion
Kalamazoo	0-14	0-8	0-6	@ Adrian, @ SMC

Team	#1	#2	#3	#4	#5	#6	#7	#8	#9
Hope	89.06%	10.94%	--	--	--	--	--	--	--
St. Mary's (Ind.)	10.94%	89.06%	--	--	--	--	--	--	--
Trine	--	--	50.00%	50.00%	--	--	--	--	--
Calvin	--	--	50.00%	29.69%	17.19%	3.12%	--	--	--
Albion	--	--	--	17.19%	45.31%	31.25%	6.25%	--	--
Alma	--	--	--	3.12%	12.50%	26.56%	57.81%	--	--
Adrian	--	--	--	--	25.00%	39.06%	35.94%	--	--
Olivet	--	--	--	--	--	--	--	100.00%	--
Kalamazoo	--	--	--	--	--	--	--	--	100.00%