MBB: Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association

[John Gleich]

Not sure on which board I saw it, but someone commented something about a "raucous" crowd atmosphere at St. Thomas.  Now one person's defntition of raucous may vary considerably from anothers.  If it is anything like fellow MIAC school Gustavus A. (which Calvin played in St. Peter in 92) raucous means a football, greek type affair.   I sort of gathered from a niece and nephew who attended St Thomas that most students don't follow sports that much.  It has a large graduate student population, and many students are commuters as on campus housing as I recall is limited.  In many respects one could easily picture St Thomas more like one of the UAA schools.

FWIW, the wildest, craziest crowd I ever saw was at Gustavus Adolphus in 2004. An entire half of the court was students and they were incredibly organized and LOUD.

The MIAC schools tend to have fairly organized student sections... so even if there aren't a ton of them, they'll likely be loud.

The "New Shoe" is much more spacious than their old facility... I've seen pictures of the old one, and people were RIGHT on top of you there. Tough place to play.

[Adrian Bulldawg Alum]

If you haven't seen it.......Brandon Knight needs to make better decisions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1_rKW3HL9GE


Love his twitter response though...
Brandon E Knight ‏@BrandonKnight07

It wasn't in the scouting reports that the clippers threw lobs lol

I thought this was a really interesting take on the play (and the reaction to it) from Yahoo's Adrian Wojnarowski: http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nba--basketball-s-backward-culture-makes-punch-line-of-brandon-knight-for-trying-to-stop-deandre-jordan-s-dunk-174058736.html
I highly recommend the read as it really says more about the game in general than the play in specific.

Great post Ziggy (and if I could, +++K)!

I was going to post this article if someone had not done it already.  As a teacher and coach nowadays, the current young NBA fan culture that I experience is terrible in so many ways.  Much respect to Adrian Wojnarowski for the article and for any Piston that's playing hard through tough times.  And as a Piston fan, I like Drummond, Monroe, Knight (sometimes), our future cap space, and hopefully, our future NBA draft picks (and Singler coming off the bench).

By the way, almost no Piston fans in my last 2 schools.  What happened to cheering for the home team?  The bandwagon-ness of the kids makes me so mad.

[AO]

Not sure on which board I saw it, but someone commented something about a "raucous" crowd atmosphere at St. Thomas.  Now one person's defntition of raucous may vary considerably from anothers.  If it is anything like fellow MIAC school Gustavus A. (which Calvin played in St. Peter in 92) raucous means a football, greek type affair.   I sort of gathered from a niece and nephew who attended St Thomas that most students don't follow sports that much.  It has a large graduate student population, and many students are commuters as on campus housing as I recall is limited.  In many respects one could easily picture St Thomas more like one of the UAA schools.

FWIW, the wildest, craziest crowd I ever saw was at Gustavus Adolphus in 2004. An entire half of the court was students and they were incredibly organized and LOUD.

The MIAC schools tend to have fairly organized student sections... so even if there aren't a ton of them, they'll likely be loud.

The "New Shoe" is much more spacious than their old facility... I've seen pictures of the old one, and people were RIGHT on top of you there. Tough place to play.

You might think the new Shoe is more spacious, but that didn't stop the Augsburg student section from punching/pushing Tommy Hannon after he took a few missteps along the baseline in the MIAC title game.

[knightvision]

If you haven't seen it.......Brandon Knight needs to make better decisions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1_rKW3HL9GE


Love his twitter response though...
Brandon E Knight ‏@BrandonKnight07

It wasn't in the scouting reports that the clippers threw lobs lol

I thought this was a really interesting take on the play (and the reaction to it) from Yahoo's Adrian Wojnarowski: http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nba--basketball-s-backward-culture-makes-punch-line-of-brandon-knight-for-trying-to-stop-deandre-jordan-s-dunk-174058736.html
I highly recommend the read as it really says more about the game in general than the play in specific.

Great post Ziggy (and if I could, +++K)!

I was going to post this article if someone had not done it already.  As a teacher and coach nowadays, the current young NBA fan culture that I experience is terrible in so many ways.  Much respect to Adrian Wojnarowski for the article and for any Piston that's playing hard through tough times.  And as a Piston fan, I like Drummond, Monroe, Knight (sometimes), our future cap space, and hopefully, our future NBA draft picks (and Singler coming off the bench).

By the way, almost no Piston fans in my last 2 schools.  What happened to cheering for the home team?  The bandwagon-ness of the kids makes me so mad.

"bandwagon-ness?!  I love it!

I understand and agree with your disgust at the increasing frequency of the "fair-weather fan", and I'm not so sure that the fan culture you reference isn't a reflection of the player culture. Even if the Pistons had been winning the last couple years, with some players boycotting practice and refusing to report into games in the not so distant past, I wouldn't be rushing to the Palace or pointing kids to the home team as an example of something to be proud of, any more than I can defend or explain the need for the nearly unbelievable amount of profanity spewing from someone like Izzo (and countless other coaches).  Probably why in the end many of us on this board spend more time watching small college and high school ball, because it's way more in line with the things that we value and can encourage kids to emulate.

The older I get, the more my old school-ness comes to the surface .  And when I start saying this kind of stuff out loud at a basketball game, my wife hands me a sucker and gives me "the look",  which is usually enough to stop the rant. Usually....   

[WAlum]

I think all wives have "the look" down to a T!  I get it at games too!

[ziggy]

I'm interested to see what kind of a crowd is at St. Thomas on Saturday night. From the looks of it, they've been about 75% capacity for the tournament games so far (1,500 in attendance) and the campus hasn't been on spring break (that is at the end of the month according to the UST academic calendar).

I'm not sure what kind of an atmosphere they typically have up there but I doubt it will be more intimidating than what Calvin saw at Point. In actuality, Calvin (and Hope) should never be overly impacted by a hostile road environment considering none will compare to what they face in The Rivalry.

It would be nice to see another strong Calvin contingent. I know of two people that will be making their first road trip of the tourney this weekend...

Was Point really all that intimidating? The majority of the crowd is usually people from the town and families, as opposed to students (doesn't make much sense, as UWSP has 8900 students, but the WIAC in general really lacks organized student sections). In some years, the students have risen up and supported the team well (2004, 2005, and 2010, the championship years) but most years they're lacking... at least compared to what they could be.

I would say that 2,270 fans in a D3 gym is more of an atmosphere than the majority of D3 players are used to, even if most of the fans are townies.

I was listening to the radio broadcast so I can't speak to the environment first-hand. However, there did seem to be times when the crowd tried to get into it only to be immediately silenced by Calvin.

[KnightSlappy]

I'm interested to see what kind of a crowd is at St. Thomas on Saturday night. From the looks of it, they've been about 75% capacity for the tournament games so far (1,500 in attendance) and the campus hasn't been on spring break (that is at the end of the month according to the UST academic calendar).

I'm not sure what kind of an atmosphere they typically have up there but I doubt it will be more intimidating than what Calvin saw at Point. In actuality, Calvin (and Hope) should never be overly impacted by a hostile road environment considering none will compare to what they face in The Rivalry.

It would be nice to see another strong Calvin contingent. I know of two people that will be making their first road trip of the tourney this weekend...

Was Point really all that intimidating? The majority of the crowd is usually people from the town and families, as opposed to students (doesn't make much sense, as UWSP has 8900 students, but the WIAC in general really lacks organized student sections). In some years, the students have risen up and supported the team well (2004, 2005, and 2010, the championship years) but most years they're lacking... at least compared to what they could be.

I would say that 2,270 fans in a D3 gym is more of an atmosphere than the majority of D3 players are used to, even if most of the fans are townies.

I was listening to the radio broadcast so I can't speak to the environment first-hand. However, there did seem to be times when the crowd tried to get into it only to be immediately silenced by Calvin.

I think you're under selling the video feed. We did get a still frame to refresh every five minutes or so.

[calvinite]

Two different people have asked me about the departure time of the Calvin alumni bus. I'm just the messenger, not the organizer. I did, however, contact the alumni office. They don't have specific details worked out yet, but their rough estimate is a 5:00 AM departure. If you are interested, contact the alumni office:  616-526-6142  or alumni@calvin.edu.

[ScotsFan]

I would say that 2,270 fans in a D3 gym is more of an atmosphere than the majority of D3 players are used to, even if most of the fans are townies.

I was listening to the radio broadcast so I can't speak to the environment first-hand. However, there did seem to be times when the crowd tried to get into it only to be immediately silenced by Calvin.

Agreed, but I wouldn't throw Calvin in that category.  When Cabrini played at Wooster 2 years ago, their coach was pretty impressed with the atmosphere to the point where he commented in his post game presser that he was going to do all he could to bring that type of atmosphere back to Cabrini.  He also said it's tough to rally your team when you have 3000 fans rallying the home team which can be true. 

I will say this about home court advantage.  Wooster has been in hostile environments at Wittenberg and at OWU and won, but when it comes to tournament time, in TRUE road games, Wooster has not fared well as the Scots have lost at least their last 4 true road NCAA Tournament games going back to 2000.  In contrast, they've won 12 of their last 13 NCAA Tournament games in the friendly confines of Timken.  So being home or away seems to be a big deal for Wooster anyways despite the fact that they've been in hostile environments before...

[almcguirejr]

I just called UST and they are not doing any presale of tickets.  Tickets go on sale 90 minutes prior to the game.  It was my understanding that the visiting team got a certain amount of tickets.  UWSP had a will call table set up for tickets.  I like to have assurance that I will have a ticket when traveling 550 miles to a game.   

[ziggy]

I just called UST and they are not doing any presale of tickets.  Tickets go on sale 90 minutes prior to the game.  It was my understanding that the visiting team got a certain amount of tickets.  UWSP had a will call table set up for tickets.  I like to have assurance that I will have a ticket when traveling 550 miles to a game.   

Maybe try the Calvin Alumni Association? Even if you're not riding the bus, they might be able to help with ticket reservations.

[Drake Palmer]

I just called UST and they are not doing any presale of tickets.  Tickets go on sale 90 minutes prior to the game.  It was my understanding that the visiting team got a certain amount of tickets.  UWSP had a will call table set up for tickets.  I like to have assurance that I will have a ticket when traveling 550 miles to a game.   

Maybe try the Calvin Alumni Association? Even if you're not riding the bus, they might be able to help with ticket reservations.

I seriously doubt this game will be a sellout.  I was at the UST- Wheaton game last weekend & although it was near capacity, they still could have easily squeezed in another couple hundred fans. I arrived around 6:20-6:25PM & on the student side of the floor there were a number of seats.  The typically late arriving UST students began to make their trickle into the field house 5-10 minutes before tip off.

This sounds like this could be a fun ballgame.  Good luck, but not too much.   

[KnightSlappy]

Ian Jackson, Tom Snikkers (1st Team) and Bryan Powell (3rd Team) make the D3hoops All-Great Lakes Region Team.

http://www.d3hoops.com/awards/all-region/2012-13/great-lakes-men

KVS named coach of the year in the Great Lakes Region as well.

[calvinite]

KVS named coach of the year in the Great Lakes Region as well.

Here's Calvin's write up on Coach VandeStreek:

Now in his 17th year at the helm of the Calvin men's basketball program, Vande Streek has led Calvin to a 26-3 record heading into a Sweet 16 NCAA III Tournament game at St. Thomas this weekend.  Earlier this year, he led Calvin to its first MIAA regular season title since 2006 and its first MIAA Tournament crown since 2007. Calvin has also reached the 20-win plateau for the sixth time under his watch and has notched the most wins since the 2004-05 season when it recorded a 27-7 record.  Calvin is making its third strip to the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA III Tournament under his guidance. At Calvin, he has posted a record of 334-139. Overall as a head coach, he is 426-219.

[KnightSlappy]

KVS named coach of the year in the Great Lakes Region as well.

Here's Calvin's write up on Coach VandeStreek:

Now in his 17th year at the helm of the Calvin men's basketball program, Vande Streek has led Calvin to a 26-3 record heading into a Sweet 16 NCAA III Tournament game at St. Thomas this weekend.  Earlier this year, he led Calvin to its first MIAA regular season title since 2006 and its first MIAA Tournament crown since 2007. Calvin has also reached the 20-win plateau for the sixth time under his watch and has notched the most wins since the 2004-05 season when it recorded a 27-7 record.  Calvin is making its third strip to the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA III Tournament under his guidance. At Calvin, he has posted a record of 334-139. Overall as a head coach, he is 426-219.

Calvin won the regular season title in '09 and '10 as well.