WBB: Michigan Intercollegiate Athletics Association

[WLCALUM83]

Final volleyball result just in:  Wittenberg 3, Calvin 0. 

[Dark Knight]

Final volleyball result just in:  Wittenberg 3, Calvin 0. 

How sad. The knights fell behind early, and then it looked like they were off their normal game, playing tight perhaps. Witt had some excellent blocking, and that also put the knights off their game.

Still, a great season. Congrats to the knights.

[hawk'ster]

2006 AVCA NCAA Division III All-America Volleyball Team

AVCA DIVISION III FIRST-TEAM ALL-AMERICA
Kristen Kalb   Calvin College   OH   Jr.   5-9   Stow, Ohio

AVCA DIVISION III SECOND-TEAM ALL-AMERICA
Molly Krikke   Calvin College   MB   Jr.   5-11   Greenwich, Ohio

[Dark Knight]

Basketball season!!

The Calvin women play Johnson and Wales. (?? whoever that is ??)

Hope plays Davenport. (Do they even have a basketball team? I guess they must.)

Albion plays Defiance, 6-20 last year.

[Flying Dutch Fan]

Actually the Davenport womens team is very good.  They made the NAIA national tournament last year with a record of 28-6.

[Harrier]

Thanks for the volleyball posts .... but I'd like to see a lot more women's basketball info on the board.

[hope1]

the hope girls won  tonight    the line up looked really good they are going to be really tough this year  1-0

[WLCALUM83]

Just to close out the volleyball talk, the Wittenberg team that beat Calvin got down to the Final 4-- only to lose to Juniata for the second year in a row. It'll be a Juniata/Washington-St. Louis final. Heard both of those squads had only one loss each all season. (Just put that in for the volleyball Border Battle fans out there).

[admittedlydutch]

the hope girls won  tonight    the line up looked really good they are going to be really tough this year  1-0

With two solid starters graduating this past year, I was interested to see what would happen in terms of starters and such.  This women's team is deep -- that was pretty apparent last year as well.  Everyone got off the bench last night against a pretty decent Davenport team (28-5 regular season last year).  The box score says it all: http://www.miaa.org/wbb/stats/0607/1117hodv.htm.  Strong scoring across the board, and no Hope player over 30 minutes of play.

Should be a terrific year...

[Flying Dutch Fan]

What I found most impressive about the Hope game last night was the fact that the first 4 off the bench were a junior and 3 freshman.  A really talented and really deep team.

[hope1]

what a good  game today for hope  now  2-0

[SKOT]

The thing that scared me about the Hope games was the 44 turnovers in two games!  They committed 20 against Davenport and 24 against BW.  They will need to clean that up to try and repeat what they did last year!

[WWWRHH]

SKOT the turnover number does give one pause, but I think there are reasons to expect that number to improve.

A lot of players are still learning the system and getting to know each others game.  Three freshman saw extensive action and in the BW game 2 sophmores and three freshman played the final 5 or 6 minutes of the first half.  (The Dutch shoud be fun to watch for the forseeable future).

The Dutch played very aggressive offense and constantly pushed the ball up court.  Some of the long passes were just out of reach.  The timing will improve with each game.

Something tells me that Coach Morehouse will not except the factors above as reasonable excuses and turnovers will be an issue at practice.  I do not think Hope will alter their style.  We should expect to see a lot of players getting minutes and aggressive offense and defense all the time.

In spite of the turnovers, Hope got past an elite eight team when other ranked teams such as Wheaton and Scranton fell to unranked foes.

[Flea]

Thanks for the volleyball posts .... but I'd like to see a lot more women's basketball info on the board.

Then post it.  I liked having some volleyball stuff while basketball is slow.

[Dark Knight]

Last night's home opener for the Knights was a big game, against NAIA #14 Aquinas, who already had played 6 games. Both teams came out playing intense defense. In the first 10 minutes of the game, Calvin held Aquinas to 11 points. Unfortunately, in the same time period, Aquinas held Calvin to zero. I don't know that I've ever seen a team go 10 minutes without scoring. And I'm not sure I'd really attribute it to Aquinas' defense, at least not all -- there were several good shots, but nothing was dropping -- literally. 3-point attempts, mid-range jump shots, layups, free-throws, it didn't matter, nothing went in. Calvin missed their first 11 shots, and added 8 turnovers in the first 10 minutes for good measure. Their defense kept them in the game, which was 11-0 at the 10-minute mark.

During the second part of the first half, the knights started to find the mark offensively and it went back and forth for a couple of minutes. Then Calvin went on a 13-2 run for the final 7 minutes of the half, ending with a 3-pointer just before the buzzer, to end up trailing by 3 at the half, 22-19.

In the second half, All-American Lisa Winkle quickly picked up fouls #3 and 4, and she sat most of the rest of the game. Aquinas built their lead back up to 41-30. Then the knights' offense started to get in sync, with good efforts by various knights including freshmen Brook VanEck and Allison Griswold, and transfer Rachel Willet ably filled in for Winkle, playing good defense, scoring 8 points, and pulling down 10 rebounds. She had a couple of nice Aultman-like post moves. The knights scored 51 points in the second half, to Aquinas' 36, and the game ended with the knights on top 70-58.

After starting with 11 misses, the knights ended up hitting a very respectable 22 of 50 field goals, for 44%, including 7 of 14 treys. They made 25 turnovers, but many of them resulted from an apparent attempt to push the ball up court as fast as possible against a full court press. There were numerous half-court passes, many of which didn't find the mark. I'd guess the accuracy of such plays will increase as the season progresses.

Next up is an even bigger test, at DIII #5 Wheaton.