MBB: Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association

[KnightSlappy]

Good luck to Hope and Calvin Wednesday night, may the best  .............  well everybody just have a good time.

This contest will carry a lot of weight for being just the third of the conference slate. It feels like a game that Hope needs to win more than Calvin, but, either way, the loser is going to have to climb themselves out of a hole. They'll be two games down on the Adrian-Trine winner.

[Flying Dutch Fan]

Dante Hawkins needs just 17 points to reach the 1000 point mark for his career.  I'm sure he would love to do that tonight.  More importantly, I'm sure he and the rest of the Hope squad would like to avenge the two late season home losses last year versus those guys from the beltline.

Rivalry day - gotta love this!!!!

[Bulldog30]

Halftime - Adrian 31 to Trine 25

A game of runs in the 1st half. Each team struggled early. Adrian's offense was stagnant and finally they started to attack, and that opened up the offense big time. They went on a run and controlled most of that 1st half. But Trine made an important run in the last 2 minutes to bring the game from (about) a 13 point deficit to a 6 point one at half.

Adrian's defense is swarming, including on the boards. I know the stats don't show it, but they knocked a lot of rebounds away from bigger/longer Trine players.

Jeremy Kolonji is explosive and has a surprisingly soft touch from 3. He made some key drives when the offense was stagnant (including one super strong baseline jam) and went 2 of 3 from 3.

I haven't mentioned Sam Colbert much, but he's Adrian's best shooter. Went 3 of 4 from 3. The solid Adrian frontcourt should serve him well.

[MaroonKnighty]

Refs at DeVos are horrible.

[Bulldog30]

Adrian wins in OT, 74 to 67 to go to 3 and 0 in the MIAA. It turned out to be very exciting, but more so in closeness because the execution was poor on both sides. (Though to be fair, especially to Trine, it's harder to see the amount of defensive pressure on a video feed)

Adrian really escaped with this one, but neither team really looked to take this. Adrian had a solid lead and though Trine made some good plays, largely led by Langston Johnson, they also performed poorly on offense. Justin Webster (and Tra'shon a few times)  forced a lot of tough shots. He, along with a few others, really didn't make the next pass that would've made for a far better shot in many instances.

Adrian also went away from Colbert and Kalonji in the 2nd half after their great starts. They still finished with 17 and 25 respectively and a combined 10 of 15 from 3.(!)

Though Webster and Heard forced some shots, they each did make some big baskets late that got them to overtime and won it there. And Jordan Harris who shot poorly again, did come up real clutch from the stripe with 4 for 4 in the final seconds of the game, and both on one-and-ones.

It's still early, but Adrian is in a real nice position right now.

Some notes: -What a great looking facility Trine just introduced! Look forward to that trip.

-Along the same lines, Trine's broadcast was also pretty solid despite the (unsurprising) homerism. Loved his shouts of "pure!" on some big 3's (Gus Johnson!). But make sure you show the score/time on stoppages.

-Adrian 15 turnovers to Trine's 21. Defense or sloppiness?

-Hope on Saturday at home. Gonna be their biggest test of the young season.

Go Bulldawgs!

[GoKnights68]

Quite an ugly showing for Calvin to close out the game .  Not sure about the offense at the end of the game consisting of  Amoros chucking up long shots, or why he got so much playing time in the first place?  Any reasoning why DeVries barely played in the 2nd half?   Hope got some wild shots to go in at the end but it is what it is , and a Calvin started rebounding poorly when it matter at the end .  Nice win, Hope.

[calvin_grad]

Why does Luke Morrison plan only 19 minutes in that game when he only had 1 foul?  And 4 minutes for Derrick DeVries in the second half?    Sometimes I just don't get his substitution patterns.

[Young Knight 14]

Boy it feels like we have watched that game before this season.  Calvin plays well and then forgets how to finish a game with the lead.  I leave the game wondering about player rotation choices, shot selection, why we stopped feeding Bykerk, and how to break a press.  Extremely disappointing to walk away with a loss and fall farther behind in the MIAA race.

[shknowsbest]

Calvin should of won this game, but didn't finish well at the end.  2 big stats stick out, hope 24-29 ft to calvin 4-8.  Hope had 19 ft to 1ft for calvin in 2nd half.  Terrible one sided officiating.    Calvin still should of won in spite of the officiating,

[oldknight]

When Hope's press began to close the gap early in the second half, I turned to the inestimable Mrs. Oldknight and said, "I've seen this movie before and I know how it ends. Calvin will lead the whole game, show increasing leakage the last five minutes, give up the go-ahead basket with under a minute to play, and lose by five." If you missed the action at DeVos but saw Calvin lose to UW-Oshkosh in December, then you already saw tonight's game. It was a carbon copy of that game and is a recurring theme this season. Some of that is due to the fact that too many Calvin defenders really struggle with dribble penetration, but the more I watch, the more I think this team of Knights will continue with late game issues until they figure out who is in control of the offense down the stretch of close games. This team has more scoring pop than last year's team but with so many young scorers playing minutes of importance, no one seems to know who should have the ball at those moments. It's normally done by a wing so that eliminates a post player like Bykerk. And Canonie--for all his importance to the team--simply isn't suited for that task. Sometimes I think Amoros might become that guy but he tends to make mistakes at inopportune times and his shot selection obviously needs some work. I believe Morrison has the look of a player who will eventually fill that bill and I would play him down the stretch of these games, live with the results, and expect that sooner or later, he will become what Jordan Brink once was. Other game notes:

--Preston Granger was the difference maker in this game. His strength and confidence was a huge boost to Hope's inside play. In a game where Calvin's bench generally outplayed Hope, the home team doesn't win without him. He will need to learn to play without using his off-hand and forearm to clear space though. Granger got away with it a lot tonight but won't in many other games if he doesn't learn to use it less and disguise it better.

--a terrific game from Bykerk who single-handedly kept Calvin in the lead the second-half, using an array of moves to score in the paint, finishing the game with 15 points.

--Jason Walter showed a defensive side to his game heretofore unseen, as the young man from Coloma swatted away an amazing 9 shots to go along with the 14 points he scored. That may be the most blocks for any Calvin player since Mark Veenstra.

--great job by Hope to get Derrick DeVries out of the game. When Mitchell made a change to the press at the start of the second half that left DeVries as a player without a position. It was jarring to see Derrick so effective in the first half (14 points) and then play only 4 meaningless minutes the second. In retrospect, would Calvin have been better off rolling the dice with the erstwhile Covenant Christian Charger? Inquiring minds want to know.

[almcguirejr]

Walter has 9 blocks tonight, played a great game, not on the floor in the last minute.

Byker had a great second half, not on the floor in the last minute.

Derrick De Vries, excellent scorer, not on the floor in the last minute.

Amoros struggled shooting, shoots a team high 16 times, takes an ill advised 3 in the last minute.

Alex Bos, not an offensive threat inserted into the game, with 58 seconds to go with Calvin down 2.

Wilkes, Canonie, Amoros, Bos, and Morrison were the guys that KVS chose to go with down 2 with 58 seconds to go.  That's hard to understand.

[sac]

Calvin should of won this game, but didn't finish well at the end.  2 big stats stick out, hope 24-29 ft to calvin 4-8.  Hope had 19 ft to 1ft for calvin in 2nd half.  Terrible one sided officiating.    Calvin still should of won in spite of the officiating,

Prior to the game, Hope was one of the best teams in  D3 at getting to the FT line,  Calvin was one of the worst.  Nothing in this game regarding fouls or free-throws should have been very surprising.

--Preston Granger was the difference maker in this game. His strength and confidence was a huge boost to Hope's inside play. In a game where Calvin's bench generally outplayed Hope, the home team doesn't win without him. He will need to learn to play without using his off-hand and forearm to clear space though. Granger got away with it a lot tonight but won't hasn't in many other games if he doesn't learn to use it less and disguise it better.

Fixed



Weird game, take away first 5 minutes and last 5 minutes of the first half and Hope won the rest of the game 69-47.   Those two tough stretches made it a very long uphill battle all night for Hope who were running on fumes at the end.

Huge win, big game Saturday at Adrian.

[almcguirejr]

Late in the first half KVS went after official, Brent Wegenke, while Hope was shooting free throws.  The foul count at the time was 8-2.  I believe Wegenke gave KVS a warning.  Over the last 2:32, Hope was whistled for 6 straight fouls and the foul count was even at 8 at the half.

Calvin opened with a 13-0 run, still led by 12, 63-51, with 8:30 to play.  Calvin outscored 26-9 to finish the game. 

[HOPEful]

Refs at DeVos are horrible.

I agree. Calvin got away with way too many fouls that DIDN'T get called and a couple blatant traveling violations. Calvin came out extremely aggressive. From my angle, there were a lot of "blocks" that looked like pretty clear fouls that didn't get called.

But despite the foul discrepancy, the only player that was ever really in trouble was Gutierrez, who in my opinion got way too much playing time anyways. But they still should have won! DeVries and Walter went a combined 9 for 11 from the field in the first half, 4 for 5 from 3. They stayed on floor a combined 24 minutes. In the second half, they went 2 for 5, 0 for 1 from 3, and Derrick only played 4 minutes! Instead Wilks, who did close to nothing in the first half, played 17 minutes in the second half and went 0 for 5 from the field. I would blame kvs before the refs on this one.

[pointlem]

Game summary: Hope "Winkled" Calvin. With the score tied and the shot-clock on its last second in the last minute, Dennis Towns threw up a long-range desperation shot that was bad enough to be good—missing the basket by a foot but caroming off the backboard and cleanly through the net.

Perhaps OldKnight will remember a similar desperation 40-foot shot by Aaron Winkle some years ago, that likewise was bad enough to be good . . . leading to a similarly unlikely Calvin win . . . and causing some Hope fans to muse that it was as if God really preferred the CRC, and to refer to an unintended backboard basket as "a Winkle."

Ergo, we feel your pain, OldKnight . . . a really tough game to lose after playing so well until the last 5 minutes (including those blocks . . . ouch!). Still, what a great game and atmosphere . . . DIII basketball atmosphere gets no better.

An endearing moment: After then air balling his first free throw as the clock was winding down, the hero Dennis Towns banged his head and seemed to smile at himself. Then, after missing the next, during a dead ball situation a moment later, he looked over at the Dew Crew and seemingly mocked himself by grabbing his neck to signal "choke" while laughing at his own miscues. If only we all had the humility to own and laugh at our own mistakes in life.