MBB: Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association

[FyteOnne]

I'm having no success logging into any Albion web address (perhaps Greek austerity measures have taken their toll on Parthenon technology) so getting anything from Albion might be a chore tonight.

I started working at about half time.

44-38 Albion with 7:20 left.

[FyteOnne]

57-49 Albion

Go Brits!

[calvinite]

KEVIN VANDE STREEK CALVIN COACHING CORNER INSTALLMENT #1: http://www.calvin.edu/sports/audio/11/MensBBall/KevinVandeStreekCoachingCorner121410.mp3

[sac]

Albion 57 Spring Arbor 49

Good win, but it has to be noted that Spring Arbor's second leading scorer and leading rebounder 6-7 Sr. Willie Pickvet did not play in this game.  About a 15 points per game average.

JC Cruse 19, Kolin Kazen 12

Albion heads to Texas for two games this weekend.

[GoKnights68]

Twenty years ago, Tony Gugino plays for Hope.  20 years ago David Kool plays for Calvin.

Indeed, its a different era.

And Kirk Walter plays for Calvin and Calvin wins the 2005 NC 

[GoKnights68]

There was still a bit of the national championship euphoria left in '01-'02, and the new arena bump in '08-'09.  Other than that, last year was the best attendance year in the past decade.  I'd be interested to see what the attendance looked like in the decade of the 90's too to see if there are any long term trends.  I definitely feel a dropoff in student section support now vs 15-20 yrs ago.  I hate to admit it but the Dew Crew puts Calvin's student section to shame and it's not even close.   

I think a lot of the students still show up, but they are very very quiet. Dew Crew definitely puts them to shame. No bones about that.

I was at the home opener this year and was surprised to see that the student section was nearly full.  Normally, Calvin studends don't start to show up untill after interim, February.  So, maybe we have a new trend being established.  With five freshmen on the varsity perhaps some new interest evolved with underclassmen.

In the home opener in November, the student section has always been full.

[GoKnights68]

There has been some real good discussion on attendance the last few days that I am just catching up on. As someone who just graduated from Calvin this past spring, I'll add my quick chime-in on the attendance discussion.  I feel like I am one of the youngest Calvin posters here, so I feel like I should add my tidbit on the student attendance especially.

Student attendance and student participation/cheering are two separate things.  Calvin student attendance hasn't been as bad as some make it out to be.  I noticed a bigger drop-off in adult attendance compared to student attendance last season when comparing it to the inaugural 2008-2009 season.  I do believe that, for some reason, students prefer attending Wednesday games more than Saturday afternoon games.  If my memory serves correct, a majority of the home games last season were Saturday afternoon games.  Perhaps it was because off-campus students are on campus already on Wednesday evenings, where as they may not have desired to drive over to campus on a Saturday afternoon...perhaps after a night of partying? 

Hope's advantage with student participation/cheering is due to a couple factors.  Hope has established an organized tradition of a superb student section.  They have a section on their college's website dedicated to how the student section is run every year.  They also promote it with things such as "3-point kid" that gets freshmen interested in it.  Handing out free mountain dew during games doesn't hurt either.  Calvin's, on the other hand, is not very organized ever.   For starters, everyone is spread out (with the way the stands our designed helps this cause).  Most people are not standing (other than in Hope, home openers, and miaa tourney games).  There isn't ever an official "leadership" team that gets everyone to stand up and cheer for every game like Hope has.   And I shouldn't name names, but someone whose last name starts with a "Z", hands out these ridiculous cheer sheets for every Hope game that nobody follows and Hope fans love to mock us about.  Also , a lot of Calvin students, mainly the ones that aren't from West Michigan, come into Calvin not knowing what a good basketball tradition Calvin has.  I have some friends that did go to some games while they were in college, but they had no idea who Steve Honderd or Mark Veenstra was.  Most of them knew that Calvin won a national title in 2000, but some of them I had no idea that they won one in 1992 as well.  I do, though, like the "Tradition" promo video that Calvin has on the big-screen before the tip-off. 

This being all said, I think a majority of the nation's d3 schools would be glad to have the student support Calvin (and obviously Hope) have.   ...And one thing I do think has helped  the past two seasons was the free student section t-shirts.  I remember in 2007-2008, there was no official sponsored free t-shirt to wear.


Coming from someone (myself) who was being around the administration a lot throughout these past four years as a student, I can tell you that the administration, especially President Byker, care a lot about Calvin basketball, and they care about it much more than any other Calvin sport.  I guess you know you have a great program when people are questioning the status of the program that has won the past two MIAA championships outright (And yes, I do have my gripes with KVS, but I am not going to post about it now)



And thank you Sac, for bringing up about the old format that would have gotten Calvin in the NCAA the last two seasons.  I truly believe that Calvin could have made a little run last season in the NCAA tourney if they would have gotten in at-large bid.  They had all the pieces, but just went cold in the last few minutes of the miaa finals.

[Civic Minded]

gk68 -- thanks for that post.  Well thought out, well reasoned.  I appreciate your insight!

[sac]

Another loner game in the dull-drums of mid-December/exam filled world of D3 basketball.

Adrian @ Defiance

Old friend Defiance comes in at 3-4 and seem to be in rebuilding mode, not one Sr. on the roster and 10 underclassmen.   Should be an interesting contrast in styles, Defiance likes to score points, Adrian likes to....not. 

In-region game, and if Adrian wants to enter the MIAA season with at least a .500 record, they probably need to win this one.


stats and video available from the Defiance website:  http://www.defianceathletics.com/mbasketball/schedule/

[realist]

KS:  "Woe is me. 19-9 is so terrible."

That depends.  If you were expected to be a 15-13 team it might be viewed as a great year.  However, if you had the talent to be a 25-3 or even a 23-5 team it might be considered disappointing.  Each of us has an opinion.  For the 8 years you used IMO  2 years Calvin was very disappointing, 4 years they disappointed, 1 year as expected, and 1 year exceeded expectations.  
Just because the administration may be satisfied with 19-9 doesn't mean that I have to find it acceptable.    

U of M football fans got sick of 8-4 and 9-3 seasons as well.   

They got sick of those 8-4 & 9-3 seasons because they really believe the U of M is a better school, and a better football program than that.  Fortunately the adminstration agreed with them, and had the courage to make the attempt to avoid unacceptable seasons in the future (not to mention losing to an archrival).  Unfortunately the change did not work as well as the administration had hoped it would.   The decision to make the change was the right one as opposed to sticking with a program in decline without a reasonable hope of improvement.  My guess is counting on extremely weak MIAA teams to beat, and thereby salvage a season started poorly is about to end.  Considering how some MIAA teams have played this fall I can picture Calvin struggling to finish 3rd or 4th. 

[Busted Stuff]

KS:  "Woe is me. 19-9 is so terrible."

That depends.  If you were expected to be a 15-13 team it might be viewed as a great year.  However, if you had the talent to be a 25-3 or even a 23-5 team it might be considered disappointing.  Each of us has an opinion.  For the 8 years you used IMO  2 years Calvin was very disappointing, 4 years they disappointed, 1 year as expected, and 1 year exceeded expectations.  
Just because the administration may be satisfied with 19-9 doesn't mean that I have to find it acceptable.    

U of M football fans got sick of 8-4 and 9-3 seasons as well.   

They got sick of those 8-4 & 9-3 seasons because they really believe the U of M is a better school, and a better football program than that.  Fortunately the adminstration agreed with them, and had the courage to make the attempt to avoid unacceptable seasons in the future (not to mention losing to an archrival).  Unfortunately the change did not work as well as the administration had hoped it would.   The decision to make the change was the right one as opposed to sticking with a program in decline without a reasonable hope of improvement.  My guess is counting on extremely weak MIAA teams to beat, and thereby salvage a season started poorly is about to end.  Considering how some MIAA teams have played this fall I can picture Calvin struggling to finish 3rd or 4th. 

Considering how some MIAA teams have played this fall, I can picture Calvin easily finishing 1st or 2nd.  It's kind of an arbitrary argument, don't you think?

[sac]

NCAA stats are out and Olivet's Michael McClary is #2 in the nation at scoring...25.8 pts.

[sac]

Also, Hope is #1 in 3 point FG%, at 47.4, Trine is #4.

Hope is #4 in assist/turnover ratio.

[KnightSlappy]

Anyone know what the deal is with Adrian and Jovon Mosley? Is he injured?

He hasn't started the past three games (but still played significant minutes). He's only played 12 minutes so far tonight versus Defiance.

[sac]

Defiance 67 Adrian 51

Adrian trailed by only 2 at the half, but a miserable 2nd half shooting let Defiance run away.  No one scored in double figures for Adrian.  Mosley finished with only 16 minutes logged.

http://www.miaa.org/mbb/stats/1011/1215addc.htm

1-4 Millikin comes to Adrian Saturday.