MBB: Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association

[alexj35]

Nice win for the Knights today as the league's best big man was Kruis'n with 20 points and 11 rebounds.

Rietema, DeBoer and Powell also with double figures.

It was nice that they won, but I would not classify it as a "nice win" as they let an inferior team hang around until the last minute.

38 free throw attempts? Mmhmm...
12-4 first half fouls? 25-13 total fouls? Mmhmm...
Olivet deserved this win. The MIAA wasn't about to allow that to happen and rob themselves of another Calvin/Hope game on Wednesday. Everyone conveniently gets what they want

[Dark Knight]

Nice win for the Knights today as the league's best big man was Kruis'n with 20 points and 11 rebounds.

Rietema, DeBoer and Powell also with double figures.

And the guy he was guarding (a freshman starting the 8th game of his career) had 16 points and 12 rebounds. I'd call that a draw.

Lombard took 18 shots to get his 16 points; Kruise got his 20 on 9 shots. I think I'd call that a big win for Kruis. 

[hoopdreams]

Whitby hurt for Adrian or was it his turn to crawl into White's doghouse?  Not in boxscores last couple games.  Yep, huge conspiracy to see Calvin get lit up at the Devos...oh, you mean pertaining to ticket sales?  Possibly

Biggest Hope
1. LN shooting 17% from behind the arc in conference play
2. BS shooting 36% from the FT for the SEASON
3.  4 year varsity letter earner playing a total of 99 minutes, even with all the large margin of victory games--------20+ I believe, I read on here

Hope by 28 tonight

[wiz]

Hope is off to a great start.  If they keep this up they will get to host the Knights on Wednesday unless the commissioner sees it differently, if you know what
I mean.

[Knight2Day]

Can't say I'm looking forward to the Knights playing the Dutch. This doesn't seem to be the season that the bad luck will end for the Knights in the MIAA tournament....

[monsoon]

Final:
Hope    65
Trine    46

[realist]

Congrats to Hope for making it to 14-0.  Yes, it is a pretty big deal especially when you consider some past 13-1 teams that couldn't complete the sweep. 

[GoKnights68]

Can't say I'm looking forward to the Knights playing the Dutch. This doesn't seem to be the season that the bad luck will end for the Knights in the MIAA tournament....

True.  I was thinking this was the year finally where someone else other than Hope would end Calvin's season.

On a side note, this will be the first time since 2005 that it won't be a Calvin vs Hope MIAA tournament final.

[wiz]

Does anyone know how many seats there are in the Merillat Center and when tickets will go on sale for Saturday's final?

[AlwaysHope]

Nate Snuggerud scored only six points for Hope tonight, but still beat out Trine's Ian Jackson for the MIAA scoring title by seven points.  Snugs only shot seven times, making three baskets, while Hope's Logan Neil and Bill Seiler took turns guarding Jackson, holding him to 8 points on 4 for 12 from the field, and not even letting him get to the line.  Incidentally, Ian's teammate Scott Rogers was held to two points on 1 for 10 shooting.  The two are Trine's top scorers.

Snugs is Hope's first scoring leader since Jesse Reimink in 2009.  He finished with a MIAA average of 17.4 points after tonight's game.  He gave credit to his teammate Dave Krombeen, stating, "It's much easier to make layups when David gets by three people."  The Hope junior began tonight's game with a .596 FG shooting percentage on the season.

[sac]

I see quite a few comments about Kruis v Lombard.  I'll point out a couple things.

First, Tyler Kruis had himself a very solid game.  His strong finishes at the end are what ultimately resulted in Calvin's win.

Second, he and Paul Lombard did spend some time guarding each other, emphasis on some.  When Kruis had the ball I thought he was passive with Lombard on him and frequently tossed the ball back outside.  By the end of the game I actually yelled for him on one possession to take Lombard to the basket, which he did not.  When Lombard had the ball, Kruis was almost always late to recognize Paul can shoot the mid-range jumper and he hit a few of them.  Most of Lombards scrappy baskets  in close range were due to Kruis leaving his man for the double team.  Childers and Ashley just made good passes on those.

Third,  most of the time Kruis did go strong to the hoop it was with a much smaller defender on him.  Sometimes  Clint Burghdorf, all 6-2 of him or whatever it is and sometimes Jaren Edsall.  Needless to say I felt most of the time Kruis had a decided height and weight advantage.  I find Paul Lombard intriguing as a player but his defense is pretty soft, I didn't think Kruis took advantage of him enough.  I could be totally wrong and all of the fouls were from the help defense, but I don't think so.

Calvin thrived on mismatches all day against Olivet, as they should.  The two rosters are nothing but mismatches across the board.

[sac]

Calvin 81 Olivet 74

As you may have concluded by now I was at the Olivet/Calvin game today.  I'd like to start by saying I was probably a little hard on the Dutchmen for their Wednesday performance, while I still think they played soft, Olivet is playing some good basketball.  That continued today.

In general I think both teams played pretty well.  Neither was particularly great on defense, although Calvin seemed to come up with more big stops throughout the game.  Both teams did a pretty good job protecting the ball.

For all purposes this was tournament game and it played out that way the entire game.  Calvin's first half lead could or should have been bigger if they would have hit their FT's.  They left some points out there, who knows, get a 15 point lead and maybe Olivet quits believing they can win.

Fast-forward to the middle of the second half Calvin up 9 and seemed to be gaining control of the game, but over the next few minutes they failed to lay the hammer down.  Several key turnovers and a couple ill-advised (though open 3's) gave Olivet an opening and the Comets took advantage of it hitting some pretty clutch shots in the last 10 minutes.  By ill-advised 3's I just mean I think Calvin should have continued going inside.  Olivet couldn't stop them and they didn't need the 3's.....though truthfully if 1 or 2 go in its game over.

It was pretty interesting to see Calvin have to operate its offense in the last 2 minutes under pretty severe pressure to score.   Each time they dumped the ball into Kruis who hit DeBoer on a nice pass once and took it strong to the bucket the second time.  Olivet failed to score its next possession and it was wrapped up.

But once again, hit your FT's and Calvin isn't under that kind of end of game pressure.
------------------------------------

The massive foul and FT disparity can be summed up pretty simply.  Calvin attacked the basket the entire game, you get fouls doing that.  Olivet was a jump shooting team most of the game, you don't get fouls doing that.  That pretty much sums it up I think.

Just so people don't think I'm just being the 'Hope guy talking about Calvin'.  A quick look at the boxscore shows Kruis' trips to the ft line and the Olivet fouler.

Lombard 2
Ashley
Burghdorf
Ellis 2
Smith

There were a lot of different Comets trying to defend Kruis, the most serious physical mismatch of the day.  Probably half of these were the result of defensive switches and Calvin recognizing the mismatch.  3 of these five are guards, he should score on them.


Lastly,  Dave Rietema was Calvin's most impressive player to me today.  I'd like to see a chart with the number of turnovers Calvin had when he was on the floor, or the number of bad shots taken.  Probably pretty low on both counts.

[sac]

Hope 65 Trine 46

http://www.miaa.org/mbb/stats/1112/0218trin.htm

This one was full of its usual Senior Day 'everything feels oddness'.  Starting with the opening 7 minutes which saw Hope score exactly 2 points.  Trailing 7-2, then this happened......

SUB IN : Colton Overway                         13:30             
SUB IN : Josh Holwerda                          13:30             
SUB IN : Billy Seiler                                13:30             
SUB IN : Nate VanArendonk                     13:30

and then this happened......

Hope 39 Trine 16  halftime.

Nothing like closing out a half on a 37-9 run, for all purposes at this point it was over.  If anything was made clear today its that Trine hates Hope's height and length and doesn't know how to play against it.  Hope did another fine job on Ian Jackson but made it a more impressive defensive effort tonight by not allowing anyone else for Trine to get going either.  Trine is an odd team that just seems to have nights where the offense goes away, perhaps tonight was one of those.

Its late and I'm tired, so this is probably all the in-depth analysis that's needed.  Hope won another one tonight to complete a perfect 14-0 MIAA season, that's quite an accomplishment.

----------------------------

Afterward a very nice little ceremony for Hope's four Seniors, 2 senior staff members and their parents.  Four years always goes by quick and it gets quicker with age.  Peter, David, Nate and Logan you have very fun to watch these last few years, all the best in the future.  And for Logan, I can't believe our ball boy is graduating so soon, seems like yesterday we were all watching you shoot 3's at the Civic Center.

[sac]

Almost forgot a couple things from Olivet today.


1)  Olivet held a reunion for members of the 71-72-73 MIAA Championship teams and introduced them at halftime.  Oldknight might remember some of these guys, I was impressed by their size.  Unfortunately Coach Gary Morrison could not join them.

2)  Michael McClary was not on the Olivet bench today.  At halftime they announced that Michael is leaving Sunday morning to begin his professional basketball career in Australia.  I think I speak for everyone in wishing Michael nothing but success 'down under'.

3)  I did not hear of the Commish's ruling on the tie-breaker until afterwards, I had a hint yesterday it might happen.  It still surprised me.

4)  Yesterday was OCSID's birthday.

[sac]

Kzoo/Alma is the the only game that didn't get mentioned.

Alma 80 Kalamazoo 78

Joe Prepolec had 23 pts and 14 rbs in his final game for the Hornets.

Kalamazoo led almost the whole game until the final couple minutes.  Tommy Erickson ultimately won the game with a dunk at 8 seconds remaining.  Joe P's shot with 2 seconds left missed.

5 league wins for Alma, which ties their decade high of 5 wins in 2005.