MBB: Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association

[sac]

Hope will probably win the MIAA with an 11-3 record or perhaps 12-2.
Calvin will struggle to get to 10-4 or possibly 11-3 if bounces go right.
Albion, and Olivet should finish 9-5, but 10-4 is possible for either or both.
Adrian is next along with Trine.

This was your prediction from the MIAA pick'em page...........I think thats an o'fer.

[oldknight]

I felt like I was watching the team from the beginning of the season, not the team that has earned tournament consideration.

While I agree the Knights' offense was uneven, I think that assessment is excessively harsh. The Calvin team we saw the first six weeks of the season would never have won this game. Calvin's defense the last 14 minutes of regulation was as good as we've seen this year. A look at the play-by-play shows that Thaler made his only triple at the 13:18 mark just as the shot clock expired to put Alma up 49-41. That basket occurred after an excellent defensive stand by Calvin and was the ugliest looking three ball to ever go in a basket at Van Noord Arena. By my count the Scots had 17 possesions from that point on to the end of regulation. During that span Calvin forced 6 turnovers and Alma only went 2-11 from the floor.

Some of Calvin's offensive struggles can be traced to Mantel's injury. As already noted, it is the same hip pointer he first suffered in Arizona and has flared up again the past week. He's barely practiced and was far from 100% on either end of the floor. Kudos to Schuster for stepping up his play when his team most needed him. When Brent scored the first 5 points of overtime he had Alma playing a less familiar game. I think part of Calvin's apparent flatness can be traced to Alma's playing style combined with the Knights' decision on how to meet it. Most of the game Calvin chose to allow Alma's offense to hold the ball near mid court for 20 seconds rather than forcing the issue. I will be curious to see if Calvin employs the same tactic Wednesday night.

[almcguirejr]

Albion is up on Adrian 58-42 with a minute and a half to go.

[ziggy]

I felt like I was watching the team from the beginning of the season, not the team that has earned tournament consideration.

While I agree the Knights' offense was uneven, I think that assessment is excessively harsh. The Calvin team we saw the first six weeks of the season would never have won this game. Calvin's defense the last 14 minutes of regulation was as good as we've seen this year. A look at the play-by-play shows that Thaler made his only triple at the 13:18 mark just as the shot clock expired to put Alma up 49-41. That basket occurred after an excellent defensive stand by Calvin and was the ugliest looking three ball to ever go in a basket at Van Noord Arena. By my count the Scots had 17 possesions from that point on to the end of regulation. During that span Calvin forced 6 turnovers and Alma only went 2-11 from the floor.

Some of Calvin's offensive struggles can be traced to Mantel's injury. As already noted, it is the same hip pointer he first suffered in Arizona and has flared up again the past week. He's barely practiced and was far from 100% on either end of the floor. Kudos to Schuster for stepping up his play when his team most needed him. When Brent scored the first 5 points of overtime he had Alma playing a less familiar game. I think part of Calvin's apparent flatness can be traced to Alma's playing style combined with the Knights' decision on how to meet it. Most of the game Calvin chose to allow Alma's offense to hold the ball near mid court for 20 seconds rather than forcing the issue. I will be curious to see if Calvin employs the same tactic Wednesday night.

That's fair. I was thinking more about the offensive end. You're definitely right about the vast defensive improvement. Early in the year Calvin gave up far more lay-ups. Today, Alma was able to nearly pull the upset because of their hot shooting from outside which is a credit to the Scots rather than a criticism of the Knights' D.

[almcguirejr]

Albion 64               
Adrian 46
Final

[sac]

Albion 64 Adrian 46


The Bulldogs put a real stinker out on the floor tonight........with 10 minutes left in the game they had 6 total  FG's made and were shooting under 20%.  The only reason it was mildly close at around low double digits most of the way was Adrian's 23-25 FT performance.

Coming off Wednesday's big win, this has to be disappointing...........if this were golf, the Bulldogs didn't validate tonight.

JC Cruse with 26 points on 11-12 from the field for the Brits.......a late push for 1st team honors.

[almcguirejr]

JC Cruse with 26 points on 11-12 from the field for the Brits.......a late push for 1st team honors.

I'm not sure I've seen 5-6 guys consistent enough to really warrant a full 1st team this year.

[Mr. Ypsi]

I felt like I was watching the team from the beginning of the season, not the team that has earned tournament consideration.

While I agree the Knights' offense was uneven, I think that assessment is excessively harsh. The Calvin team we saw the first six weeks of the season would never have won this game. Calvin's defense the last 14 minutes of regulation was as good as we've seen this year. A look at the play-by-play shows that Thaler made his only triple at the 13:18 mark just as the shot clock expired to put Alma up 49-41. That basket occurred after an excellent defensive stand by Calvin and was the ugliest looking three ball to ever go in a basket at Van Noord Arena. By my count the Scots had 17 possesions from that point on to the end of regulation. During that span Calvin forced 6 turnovers and Alma only went 2-11 from the floor.

Some of Calvin's offensive struggles can be traced to Mantel's injury. As already noted, it is the same hip pointer he first suffered in Arizona and has flared up again the past week. He's barely practiced and was far from 100% on either end of the floor. Kudos to Schuster for stepping up his play when his team most needed him. When Brent scored the first 5 points of overtime he had Alma playing a less familiar game. I think part of Calvin's apparent flatness can be traced to Alma's playing style combined with the Knights' decision on how to meet it. Most of the game Calvin chose to allow Alma's offense to hold the ball near mid court for 20 seconds rather than forcing the issue. I will be curious to see if Calvin employs the same tactic Wednesday night.

I saw Andy Draayer play - that statement cannot possibly be true!

That guy had more 'ugly' 3s per game than most get in a career (by which point, of course, they are no longer 'ugly' but a sign of an amazing talent).

[sac]

So that wraps up the league standings

Calvin 12-2
Hope 11-3
Adrian 9-5
Olivet 8-6
Albion 8-6
Kzoo 5-9
Trine 2-12
Alma 1-13

The difference between winning the Championship and finishing 2nd comes down to protectiong home court.  Calvin goes 7-0 at home, Hope 6-1.......or you could say it came down to winning on the road vs the 3rd place team Adrian, Calvin did, Hope didn't.


I had pretty low expectations for this MIAA season for many reasons.  I'm still not quite certain where the top teams in this league fit with the rest of our region or D3.    However the conference play has been very interesting to follow all around.  Thats not unusual for me because I can usually find something interesting about anything.........but back in early January, it looked like a long, long winter for the Hope fans on this board.  Two games back so early in the year is just maddeningly difficult to recover from, but Hope did so and made it a very interesting race to follow.  Its too bad I had to 'see' the crucial games at the very end from afar, but they held my interest more than I expected.

I think I come away from this season with pretty positive feelings about the future of just about every team in the league.  Everyone seems to have some really good young players to be excited about.......I think most everyone returns a good core of players to start with, I just hope the league can get some non-conference wins next year to get us more excited about what should be a really good MIAA race next winter.

Hopefully we get an exciting weekend of MIAA tournament play next Fri and Sat, its always my favorite basketball weekend of the year.

[sac]

JC Cruse with 26 points on 11-12 from the field for the Brits.......a late push for 1st team honors.

I'm not sure I've seen 5-6 guys consistent enough to really warrant a full 1st team this year.

I agree.......half the guys I had pegged as 1st teamers at the midpoint didn't really do anything special the 2nd half of the year.

JC Cruse started the year  slowly.  He was Albion's leading scorer in 5 of their last 8 games and finished the last 3 with 21, 24 and 26 while shooting 27-41 from the floor.  He ended up as the #3 scorer in league play and led the league in FG% at 60%

[oldknight]

I felt like I was watching the team from the beginning of the season, not the team that has earned tournament consideration.

While I agree the Knights' offense was uneven, I think that assessment is excessively harsh. The Calvin team we saw the first six weeks of the season would never have won this game. Calvin's defense the last 14 minutes of regulation was as good as we've seen this year. A look at the play-by-play shows that Thaler made his only triple at the 13:18 mark just as the shot clock expired to put Alma up 49-41. That basket occurred after an excellent defensive stand by Calvin and was the ugliest looking three ball to ever go in a basket at Van Noord Arena. By my count the Scots had 17 possesions from that point on to the end of regulation. During that span Calvin forced 6 turnovers and Alma only went 2-11 from the floor.

Some of Calvin's offensive struggles can be traced to Mantel's injury. As already noted, it is the same hip pointer he first suffered in Arizona and has flared up again the past week. He's barely practiced and was far from 100% on either end of the floor. Kudos to Schuster for stepping up his play when his team most needed him. When Brent scored the first 5 points of overtime he had Alma playing a less familiar game. I think part of Calvin's apparent flatness can be traced to Alma's playing style combined with the Knights' decision on how to meet it. Most of the game Calvin chose to allow Alma's offense to hold the ball near mid court for 20 seconds rather than forcing the issue. I will be curious to see if Calvin employs the same tactic Wednesday night.

I saw Andy Draayer play - that statement cannot possibly be true!

That guy had more 'ugly' 3s per game than most get in a career (by which point, of course, they are no longer 'ugly' but a sign of an amazing talent).

As it turns out, Thaler's 3 ball was the only triple he made the entire year in 3 attempts covering 485 minutes of playing time for Isaac. When he got the ball around the arc you could see he didn't want to put it up but at the last moment realized he had no choice. Thaler simply shot putted the ball which seemed to catch the left crotch, simultaneously hitting the backboard and rim, bouncing high in the air and then falling through. I still am trying to figure out how it went in.

[almcguirejr]

I felt like I was watching the team from the beginning of the season, not the team that has earned tournament consideration.

While I agree the Knights' offense was uneven, I think that assessment is excessively harsh. The Calvin team we saw the first six weeks of the season would never have won this game. Calvin's defense the last 14 minutes of regulation was as good as we've seen this year. A look at the play-by-play shows that Thaler made his only triple at the 13:18 mark just as the shot clock expired to put Alma up 49-41. That basket occurred after an excellent defensive stand by Calvin and was the ugliest looking three ball to ever go in a basket at Van Noord Arena. By my count the Scots had 17 possesions from that point on to the end of regulation. During that span Calvin forced 6 turnovers and Alma only went 2-11 from the floor.

Some of Calvin's offensive struggles can be traced to Mantel's injury. As already noted, it is the same hip pointer he first suffered in Arizona and has flared up again the past week. He's barely practiced and was far from 100% on either end of the floor. Kudos to Schuster for stepping up his play when his team most needed him. When Brent scored the first 5 points of overtime he had Alma playing a less familiar game. I think part of Calvin's apparent flatness can be traced to Alma's playing style combined with the Knights' decision on how to meet it. Most of the game Calvin chose to allow Alma's offense to hold the ball near mid court for 20 seconds rather than forcing the issue. I will be curious to see if Calvin employs the same tactic Wednesday night.

I saw Andy Draayer play - that statement cannot possibly be true!

That guy had more 'ugly' 3s per game than most get in a career (by which point, of course, they are no longer 'ugly' but a sign of an amazing talent).

As it turns out, Thaler's 3 ball was the only triple he made the entire year in 3 attempts covering 485 minutes of playing time for Isaac. When he got the ball around the arc you could see he didn't want to put it up but at the last moment realized he had no choice. Thaler simply shot putted the ball which seemed to catch the left crotch, simultaneously hitting the backboard and rim, bouncing high in the air and then falling through. I still am trying to figure out how it went in.

Alma banked in 2 3's.  Schnyder's banked in 1 FT.  Advantage Alma

[sac]

As best I can tell the only player to fall onto the MIAA single season record list was Matt Veltema and his .938 FT%

BEST FREE THROW SHOOTING PERCENTAGE
.967      Doug Austin, Alma, 1997-98 (29-30)
.944   Jim Kramer, Alma, 1982-83 (34-36)
.944   Dirk Rhinehart, Kalamazoo, 2000-01 (34-36)
.938 Matt Veltema, Calvin, 2009-10 (45-48)
.935   Tom Crawford, Kalamazoo, 1965-66 (43-46)
.933   Mike Winkle, Calvin, 1981-82 (28-30)
.933   Ken Dietz, Olivet, 1984-85 (28-30)

*note he shot more than anyone else on this list.

[sac]

Michael McClary had one of the finest seasons in recent memory.  Best two season I can think to compare his to.......  Brandon Crawford was league MVP in 2006 for 3rd place Albion.......  Isaac Smith was not the league MVP in 2007 for last place Alma.

Isaac Smith 22.9 pts, 7.0 rebs, 6 blocks, 5 league double-doubles
Brandon Crawford 21.4 pts, 10.6 rebs, 9 blocks, 8 league double-doubles
Michael McClary 21.9 pts, 11.0 rebs, 25 blocks, 10 league double-doubles

Brandon did it as a Sr, McClary as a Jr.

McClary becomes the first Comet since Jeff Bell in 1997 to lead the league in scoring, and just the 3rd different Comet player to do so.

Congratulations to Michael on a great season.

[realist]

Hope will probably win the MIAA with an 11-3 record or perhaps 12-2.
Calvin will struggle to get to 10-4 or possibly 11-3 if bounces go right.
Albion, and Olivet should finish 9-5, but 10-4 is possible for either or both.
Adrian is next along with Trine.

This was your prediction from the MIAA pick'em page...........I think thats an o'fer.

All I can say in my defense is at least I made a prediction, and it turned out better for Calvin than I thought it would.  I think the real surprise in the mix has to be Adrian.