MBB: Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association

[SBell]

Glad to do it.

Judging from first two AAU weekends, the West Michigan small school recruit du jour will be 6-7 Josh Groenhof from Zeeland East, big strong post with good feet, and jumps quickly if not highly.

SBell, thanks for the scoop.  Another Zeeland East big man heading to Hope?  Looking ahead,there's a handful or more of other local West Michigan kids (I think mostly juniors) that have reportedly been guests at MIAA and other small college games.  I know it's early, but any insights/thoughts/info on any of the following?:

Chase Fairchild & Chad Carlson (Rockford)
Jon Marosi (Catholic Central)
Austin Johnson (Spring Lake)
Brad Visser (Grandville Calvin Christian)
Ryan Wassink (Hudsonville Unity Christian)
Marcus Hall (East Grand Rapids)
Jared Bradford (Sparta)

And I haven't heard anything on the Heemskerk kid (senior) from Grand Rapids Christian.  Any idea of where he might end up? 
THANKS!

Chase and Chad, stone shooters. Fairchild not bad athletically or defensively, but size would limit him as a scholarship player, and even more so for Carlson even though he's a tough sob.

Marosi has the size, hit some dagger 3s for the Storm this weekend.

Wassink's dad Kurt played at Calvin. Already has a couple GLIAC offers.

Austin is a tweener, but strong, tough, makes plays, just needs to extend his game and become a guard.

When his head is in it, Hall is a scholarship player. Played well the previous weekend in Detroit, but not the athlete guys like Dontel Highsmith and D'vonte Dockery are when they matched up in GR.

Bradford is small but hit some big shots for Lakers, the second ball-handler to McLoughlin from FHN.

Need to see Visser more.


*fixed quoting format

[Knight2Day]

Glad to do it.

Judging from first two AAU weekends, the West Michigan small school recruit du jour will be 6-7 Josh Groenhof from Zeeland East, big strong post with good feet, and jumps quickly if not highly.

SBell, thanks for the scoop.  Another Zeeland East big man heading to Hope?  Looking ahead,there's a handful or more of other local West Michigan kids (I think mostly juniors) that have reportedly been guests at MIAA and other small college games.  I know it's early, but any insights/thoughts/info on any of the following?:

Chase Fairchild & Chad Carlson (Rockford)
Jon Marosi (Catholic Central)
Austin Johnson (Spring Lake)
Brad Visser (Grandville Calvin Christian)
Ryan Wassink (Hudsonville Unity Christian)
Marcus Hall (East Grand Rapids)
Jared Bradford (Sparta)

And I haven't heard anything on the Heemskerk kid (senior) from Grand Rapids Christian.  Any idea of where he might end up? 
THANKS!

Chase and Chad, stone shooters. Fairchild not bad athletically or defensively, but size would limit him as a scholarship player, and even more so for Carlson even though he's a tough sob.

Marosi has the size, hit some dagger 3s for the Storm this weekend.

Wassink's dad Kurt played at Calvin. Already has a couple GLIAC offers.

Austin is a tweener, but strong, tough, makes plays, just needs to extend his game and become a guard.

When his head is in it, Hall is a scholarship player. Played well the previous weekend in Detroit, but not the athlete guys like Dontel Highsmith and D'vonte Dockery are when they matched up in GR.

Bradford is small but hit some big shots for Lakers, the second ball-handler to McLoughlin from FHN.

Need to see Visser more.

Would be pretty shocked to see Wassink at Calvin...any word on what the other MIAA schools have comin in?



*fixed quoting format

[Knight2Day]

Quote from a basketball mind I respect very much "Next year Calvin will have enough talent to win the national championship. Look at their front line, their starting lineup could be taller than U of M's if they decided to play it that way."

[hoopdreams]

Hold up a sec, partner. Let's win the MIAA first AND win the conference tourney.  Hope had some pretty decent size last year + one of the best guards in D3 + a roster with some fairly significant experience+ a great coach.....and look where that got them.  A loss.....the first weekend.....at home

[BogeyMan]

Hold up a sec, partner. Let's win the MIAA first AND win the conference tourney.  Hope had some pretty decent size last year + one of the best guards in D3 + a roster with some fairly significant experience+ a great coach.....and look where that got them.  A loss.....the first weekend.....at home

Hold up two seconds!  What about Adrian?  If you were to pick a favorite to win the MIAA next year who would it be?  You have to include Adrian in that conversation!

[KnightSlappy]

Hold up a sec, partner. Let's win the MIAA first AND win the conference tourney.  Hope had some pretty decent size last year + one of the best guards in D3 + a roster with some fairly significant experience+ a great coach.....and look where that got them.  A loss.....the first weekend.....at home

Hold up two seconds!  What about Adrian?  If you were to pick a favorite to win the MIAA next year who would it be?  You have to include Adrian in that conversation!

I would consider them, but I would set their odds below that of Calvin and Hope (and somewhat below).

Something like Adrian + the field = 15% or so. And I might be too generous here.

[goodknight]

Quote from a basketball mind I respect very much "Next year Calvin will have enough talent to win the national championship. Look at their front line, their starting lineup could be taller than U of M's if they decided to play it that way."

Isn't there a punch line impending about all that talent squandered? 

[KnightSlappy]

Will-be-senior Matt DeBoer was kind enough to answer a few of my questions for the blog:

http://tomaroonandgold.blogspot.com/2012/04/q-with-matt-deboer.html

(Also, feel free to leave a comment below the blog post in support of Matt and the Knights).

[Knight2Day]

Hold up a sec, partner. Let's win the MIAA first AND win the conference tourney.  Hope had some pretty decent size last year + one of the best guards in D3 + a roster with some fairly significant experience+ a great coach.....and look where that got them.  A loss.....the first weekend.....at home

Now, the quote wasn't that they WILL win it, just that they have an amazing amount of talent that will be on that team...also, Hope definitely had the talent to win it all this year, deserved the #1 ranking, they were just cursed with a weak conference that didn't prepare them for the NCAA's

[ziggy]

Hold up a sec, partner. Let's win the MIAA first AND win the conference tourney.  Hope had some pretty decent size last year + one of the best guards in D3 + a roster with some fairly significant experience+ a great coach.....and look where that got them.  A loss.....the first weekend.....at home

Now, the quote wasn't that they WILL win it, just that they have an amazing amount of talent that will be on that team...also, Hope definitely had the talent to win it all this year, deserved the #1 ranking, they were just cursed with a weak conference that didn't prepare them for the NCAA's

Just so I'm clear, does this mean the argument du jour is "KVS forgot how to coach"? Because this takes either the "can't recruit" or "can't develop players" argument off the table.

Sorry for the need for clarification. I'm trying hard to keep up with the changing tides to push a particular agenda.

[Knight2Day]

Hold up a sec, partner. Let's win the MIAA first AND win the conference tourney.  Hope had some pretty decent size last year + one of the best guards in D3 + a roster with some fairly significant experience+ a great coach.....and look where that got them.  A loss.....the first weekend.....at home

Now, the quote wasn't that they WILL win it, just that they have an amazing amount of talent that will be on that team...also, Hope definitely had the talent to win it all this year, deserved the #1 ranking, they were just cursed with a weak conference that didn't prepare them for the NCAA's

Just so I'm clear, does this mean the argument du jour is "KVS forgot how to coach"? Because this takes either the "can't recruit" or "can't develop players" argument off the table.

That's assuming some of us think he ever knew how I have to say, it's pretty easy to recruit when you have one of the top 2 facilities in division 3 (the luster is wearing off just playing IN a nice facility and recruits are going to notice) and you aren't saddled with teaching classes but can spend all day every day devoted to basketball... and no, I would still say he can't develop players, it just so happens his soph and junior to be class put in a ton of off season work on their own (unlike the majority of the classes before them).

[sac]

Hold up a sec, partner. Let's win the MIAA first AND win the conference tourney.  Hope had some pretty decent size last year + one of the best guards in D3 + a roster with some fairly significant experience+ a great coach.....and look where that got them.  A loss.....the first weekend.....at home

Hold up two seconds!  What about Adrian?  If you were to pick a favorite to win the MIAA next year who would it be?  You have to include Adrian in that conversation!

Maybe at some point in the near future I'll sit down and do a preview of next years teams.  Injuries this past season were a huge factor for 3 MIAA teams and all 3 will have a player or 2 that was/is/could be a difference maker coming back next year that had to sit out most or all of this season. 

We're still weeks/months away from hearing of any transfers and those can always be a difference maker.  This past year Adrian had Toreau Brown on the roster before he mysteriously disappeared.  He could have made a huge difference for the Bulldogs.

And of course Freshmen, despite hype and credentials many Freshmen find that first season a lot more difficult than they ever imagined, but every once in awhile a Freshmen comes along that improves a team immediately either through their overall skill or just their presence on the depth chart. 

Overall I like whats returning in the league next year, the top 4 or 5 teams all look like they could have good seasons if they stay healthy and everyone returns.  I'm hopeful the league finally cracks that .500 non-conference barrier and gets out of this 6 year rut of mediocre overall play.  That could happen, but it could also not happen.

[Gregory Sager]

Hold up a sec, partner. Let's win the MIAA first AND win the conference tourney.  Hope had some pretty decent size last year + one of the best guards in D3 + a roster with some fairly significant experience+ a great coach.....and look where that got them.  A loss.....the first weekend.....at home

Now, the quote wasn't that they WILL win it, just that they have an amazing amount of talent that will be on that team...also, Hope definitely had the talent to win it all this year, deserved the #1 ranking, they were just cursed with a weak conference that didn't prepare them for the NCAA's

Just so I'm clear, does this mean the argument du jour is "KVS forgot how to coach"? Because this takes either the "can't recruit" or "can't develop players" argument off the table.

That's assuming some of us think ever knew how I have to say, it's pretty easy to recruit when you have one of the top 2 facilities in division 3 (the luster is wearing off just playing IN a nice facility and recruits are going to notice) and you aren't saddled with teaching classes but can spend all day every day devoted to basketball.

Hogwash. There's no such thing as a private school for which "it's pretty easy to recruit" in D3. There are no athletic scholarships at this level, and, therefore, to attend an institution such as Calvin -- where the sticker price for a year of schooling is now, what, about $35,000 a year? -- requires a major financial commitment on the part of a student (or, more often, the student's family) that is truly daunting. Add in the fact that there are schools competing for the same players who are quite a bit cheaper than Calvin (either because they have a lower base tuition and room & board than does Calvin, or because they offer basketball scholarships that can defray part or all of the cost), plus the fact that Calvin's admissions standards prevent it from recruiting anybody and everybody whom the coach would like to see wearing a maroon & gold uni, and you're looking at a difficulty curve in recruiting that gets steeper and steeper.

There may have been an assumption in the past that kids who attend western Michigan CRC high schools -- including kids who attend western Michigan CRC high schools who are very good at the sport of basketball -- would naturally pick either Calvin or Hope as a matter of course. But, as many of the veteran posters of this room have attested, the days of assuming such automatic recruiting from those feeder high schools are long gone. There's too many outside competitors now who offer a high level of basketball and a cheaper education, not to mention the cachet of scholarship status.

A nice, big, new arena is certainly a solid plus, but it's hardly a key selling point. In the eyes of the typical prospect, the size and amenities of a gym pale in comparison to such matters as a school's cost, competitive level, and program success. Also, I defy you to find any head coach in D3 whose recruiting is hampered by the requirement to teach classes. Recruiting is the most essential task of coaching. If you aren't out there recruiting, you aren't winning. Every coach who values his or her job makes time to do as much recruiting as is necessary to succeed. That doesn't mean that he or she will be good at it; it means that he or she is fulfilling the job requirement.

Anybody who thinks that KVS merely has to open the door to the gym and let high school hoopers flock to the program really isn't paying attention to the larger forces at work here, in particular the enrollment trends that people such as sac and formerd3db have posted about so often and the recruiting evidence at hand that SBell posts every spring.

[sac]

Hold up a sec, partner. Let's win the MIAA first AND win the conference tourney.  Hope had some pretty decent size last year + one of the best guards in D3 + a roster with some fairly significant experience+ a great coach.....and look where that got them.  A loss.....the first weekend.....at home

Hold up two seconds!  What about Adrian?  If you were to pick a favorite to win the MIAA next year who would it be?  You have to include Adrian in that conversation!

I equate what happened to Calvin this year as nearly identical to what happened to Hope in 2005.  Hope lost its starting PG and had a string of suspensions and injuries that slowed their progress.  They never had the team they thought they would all season and neither did '12 Calvin.  That Hope team ended up 15-12, 10-4(3rd, 4 losses to 4 different MIAA teams) but at one point was 7-10.  They finished the year winning 8 of 9 before meekly surrendering their last game of the year and mercifully ending a tough season.

That team returned pretty much everyone the following year and with the additions of 3 or 4 really good players, Hope went 28-3 (and yet didn't win the league).

The question for Calvin will be can they make that kind of jump relying on just the players returning or will they be better served to add some new faces to give the team a jump start in attitude and desire.  Hope made some very tough roster decisions leading into 2006, maybe Calvin needs to do the same.  Going from 13-13 to something resembling cutting down nets in Virginia is a pretty big jump for even the best programs, massively tall or not.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Hold up a sec, partner. Let's win the MIAA first AND win the conference tourney.  Hope had some pretty decent size last year + one of the best guards in D3 + a roster with some fairly significant experience+ a great coach.....and look where that got them.  A loss.....the first weekend.....at home

Now, the quote wasn't that they WILL win it, just that they have an amazing amount of talent that will be on that team...also, Hope definitely had the talent to win it all this year, deserved the #1 ranking, they were just cursed with a weak conference that didn't prepare them for the NCAA's

Agreed that Hope was a deserving #1, and a legitimate threat for the national title.  They just had the misfortune of hosting a Titan team whose two injured seniors (Jordan Zimmer, broken foot, and John Koschnitsky, injured back for which he had surgery after the season) absolutely refused to have their careers end that way - though in obvious pain, they led the Titans to a victory that this 'Green Weenie' didn't think possible (well, I always think a Titan win is possible, but certainly was not likely ).

Hope was for real, and I wish that game could have been played 2-3 rounds later!