WBB: Michigan Intercollegiate Athletics Association

[pointlem]

Looks like Calvin had a scrimmage on their calendar with Cornerstone last weekend.  Anyone see it?

Hope had a scrimmage against Cornerstone on 10/28 but no news on that either.

Hope played Cornerstone to a virtual draw . . . losing the first 20 minutes, and then winning the second by nearly the same margin.
Hope played without point guard Angelique Gaddy, who should soon return from her ACL a year ago. And Hope's two frosh both appear to be significant future contributors.

[oldknight]

D3hoops Preseason Top 25 is out - link below.  Thomas More unanimous #1 - well duh!!  Calvin at #10, Hope at #11 - separated by 3 points.

http://www.d3hoops.com/top25/women/2015-16/preseason

I'm a little surprised the poll has those two teams that close. Hope seems to have more back than Calvin but maybe I'm underselling the Knights. I had both on my ballot but Hope was a surer thing to me than Calvin.

One might argue whether 10/11 is too high of a national ranking for Calvin/Hope but it seems to me ranking them next to one another is about right at this stage. Both coaches have the same number of holes to fill in their lineup, and right now I don't know who will be able to do a better job of that. Both teams lose three starters of similar quality. One unknown is Hope's Angelique Gaddy who is trying to recover again from a serious knee injury. I feel badly for the young lady who is a fine ball player when healthy. I think Calvin has a pretty good entering class, although knowing John Ross, I'm sure he will tell you that the newcomers' heads are spinning and that they have a lot of catching up to do in order to be contributing players on this year's team.

[gordonmann]

Good input. Thanks.

[Roundball999]

D3hoops Preseason Top 25 is out - link below.  Thomas More unanimous #1 - well duh!!  Calvin at #10, Hope at #11 - separated by 3 points.

http://www.d3hoops.com/top25/women/2015-16/preseason

I'm a little surprised the poll has those two teams that close. Hope seems to have more back than Calvin but maybe I'm underselling the Knights. I had both on my ballot but Hope was a surer thing to me than Calvin.

Seems about right to me.  Both teams lost a lot (especially Breanna Verkaik and Kayla Engelhard for Calvin and Rebekah Llorens, Britanny Berry and Hannah Doell for Hope) but both have some solid, experienced players returning.  I give Hope the edge primarily because of inside-outside balance of the returners and they have a star returning in Maura McAfee, a preseason 1st team All American and a double-double machine.  Barring injury she'll finish as Hope's all time rebounder and near the top for career scoring.  They also have their starting PG returning in Autumn Anderson, though she could play at 2 in favor of either Paris Madison or Angelique Gaddy.  Gaddy may be the wild card, it's been a while but she was a budding star as a freshman including 18 in her first Rivalry game at Calvin.  Deadly 3 point shooter Mandy Traversa also returns for Hope.  Calvin lost its top 3 scorers but bring back yet another very talented Verkaik sister (Kally) and Anna Timmer and Abby Springer are also very good.  So I believe Hope brings back more firepower but the difference could very well be which team brings their defense to the highest level.

[bballforever]

McAfee/Hope first team all american.  This is probably the first player Mo has had since Carrie on that list.  Good for her!

[Flying Dutch Fan]

Coaches poll is out:

1 Calvin  63  (7)
2 Hope  58  (2)
3 Trine  42
4 Albion  38
5 Kalamazoo  37
6 Olivet  31
7 Adrian  30
8 Alma  16
9 Saint Mary's  9

[Roundball999]

Didn't see them, but heard that Hope looked OK in scrimmages against Cornerstone and Ferris.  Hard to tell much from a scrimmage but heard that they played fairly evenly with Cornerstone and outscored Ferris comfortably.

[jspiii]

Hope JV score: Hope  JV 84 Kellogg CC 59

Starters: Carter, Williams, Swartz, Freberg, Dornoff (all Sophomores)

Leading scorers: Dornoff - 30, Freberg - 10, Williams - 8

[Dark Knight]

Calvin opened the season against North Central. I don't know anything about them other than that last year they were #23 according to Massey and they are in the ORV category of this year's d3hoops preseason poll.  Calvin won 106-80.

I was too busy watching soccer and volleyball to follow the game, but I seen that Anna Timmer picked up 25 points and 16 rebounds. Last year she had a very nice year as a non-starting sophomore, averaging 10.5 points and 5 rebounds.

I also see that Calvin turned the ball over 35 times. How that meshes with a 26-point win I'm not quite sure, unless it's the +34 rebound margin and the 51% shooting to NCC's 27%.

North Central had 95 (!) shots and 27 (!!) free-throw attempts. Must have been lots of running going on!

Massey says Calvin should beat Il Tech tomorrow by 64 

[wiz]

Nice start to the season for the lady Knights.  Only saw last 4 minutes on live streaming.  Was surprised to see them up by 30 and the starters still getting so many minutes.  Not sure what that was about unless coach Ross just wanted them to get more practice breaking the press.  Anyone know differently?

[gordonmann]

I watched a large part of the Calvin/North Central game and the Knights looked very sharp. Even at 26 points, the game wasn't as close as the score indicated. Calvin was up by close to 40 late in the game.

Despite having 35 turnovers, Calvin ran through the Cardinals' press at will and looked very good in the half court offense. It's hard to know how much of that was Calvin and how much was North Central being completely discombobulated in its half court defense with two or three players chasing the ball handler and leaving people wide open all over the court. Spaydt hit a handful of threes in the deciding third quarter and had a couple nice runners inside the arc. She has nice touch on her shot.

North Central runs the same System offense as Grinnell so they purposefully take a ton of threes. They didn't make nearly enough tonight to keep the game close.

[bballfan13]

I was at the game tonight. Calvin looked really good for this type of game. As Gordon mentioned, North Central plays the Grinnell system so it's just run run run. They jack up threes which creates a lot of rebounds, force a lot of turnovers and just try to create chaos. Calvin handled it well. Having run their own press the last 2 years really helped them here. North Central is such a weird game to prepare for as it's not a normal press team. Good start to the season for the Knights. Great shooting as well.

One thing that was nice to see is it looked like Calvin outran North Central and had more gas at the end. North Central tries to wear opponents down and that didn't happen tonight.

As for leaving the starters in so long, North Central can score quickly and be right back in a game. A 30 point lead in this game is different than others.

[Captain_Joe08]

Calvin suffers their first loss of the season in Milwaukee.

Wisconsin Lutheran 86
#10 Calvin 80

[Roundball999]

Congrats to the Hope Flying Dutch for winning their own tip off tourney.  They completely dominated both nights though I think both opponents were quite overmatched, making it difficult to draw many conclusions from the Dutch's performance.  Congrats also to Maura McAfee for scoring her 1000th point.

[Roundball999]

Very nice win for the Hope Flying Dutch over a strong #6 ranked Wheaton, playing on Wheaton's court.  This is almost the identical Wheaton team that came into Devos and beat the Dutch last year.  The Dutch led only 31-30 at the half but pulled away steadily throughout the 2nd half and won 68-49.  Wheaton shot only 25% to 40% for the Dutch.  Most of the other stats were fairly even except notable that the Dutch bench outscored their counterparts at Wheaton by 30-12.  McAfee was big as usual with 15/15.  After the better part of the last two seasons lost to injury, Gaddy looks to be rounding in to form with 14 pts, 2-3 from beyond the arc, and she still has that sweet pull up jumper in the lane.  Lots of other solid contributions, the freshmen Buchanan and Swift are developing quickly.