MBB: Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association

[sac]

Aquinas 72 Hope 68

AQ likes to make it a chaotic game and forced Hope to turn it over a bunch of times in the 2nd half and held them to very few FG's, 5 maybe before desperation time.  Both teams shot under 40% on the night, the game was there for either to take.   Close game throughout and a tough loss.


Cornerstone beat Calvin in the early game 65-60.  Those 4 teams are pretty even, Cornerstone with a healthy Lanning is probably the better of the 4 right now, that was a big loss for them.  Very interesting if none of these 4 ended up winning their respective leagues.

[sac]

If Kzoo and Trine can pull off wins today against Manchester and Earlham the MIAA would move to 15-20 on the year.  Last year on this same date they were 15-21.  I think overall the league is playing a slightly more difficult slate this year.

[almcguirejr]

Interesting halftime score from Big Rapids.

Albion 34  Ferris State 18.....Ferris shot under 20% in the first half.
http://portal.stretchinternet.com/ferris/stats.htm?eventId=187492&streamType=stats


UPDATE:  Ferris hits a 3 with :02 left to win 54-52

Ferris out scored Albion 17-0 in the first 8 minutes of the second half to take the lead 35-34.  Albion was 3-9 from the line the second half.

Here is the final play of the game: http://youtu.be/BobpMqAfH7U

Albion's defender leaves his man and gets burned.

[kzoo99]

If Kzoo and Trine can pull off wins today against Manchester and Earlham the MIAA would move to 15-20 on the year.  Last year on this same date they were 15-21.  I think overall the league is playing a slightly more difficult slate this year.

Kzoo 56 Earlham 43.. not really that close.  Lead was not under 10 for most of the second half.

[pointlem]

Aquinas 72 Hope 68

AQ likes to make it a chaotic game and forced Hope to turn it over a bunch of times in the 2nd half

Yes, the Aquinas press was the difference-maker.  It worked beautifully--taking 10 seconds off Hope possessions and creating occasional turnovers as Hope tried to methodically pass around and over it.  An alternative future Hope strategy might be to ask its speedy point guards to rip through it--with the risk of, again, having a few turnovers, but with the benefit of some opportunity baskets. 

Would love to see more of our posters--GoodKnight, HoopDreams, and others--post their thoughts as the season develops.

Will Albion--after nearly beating both Augustana and Ferris State--be the surprise MIAA team this year?

[KzooHornet]

A nice weekend for the Hornets.  Probably two games they should win, but it's good to see them take care of business on the road.  It's also good to head into games expecting them to win.  Coach Dougal is really doing a great job with the program at 'K' and I am excited to see where this team is headed.  They will surely take a little time to figure out where their points will come from without Mark Ghafari, but so far it seems like the entire team has picked up some of the slack.  Good luck to the Hornets as they head into the rest of their non-conference schedule!

[BogeyMan]

Would really like to see some predictions on how the MIAA will end up this year?  I saw the Coach's poll but have a hard time with a few of the placements. 

[sac]

Would really like to see some predictions on how the MIAA will end up this year?  I saw the Coach's poll but have a hard time with a few of the placements.

I only thought  Albion/Trine should have swapped positions in the coaches poll.  I'd like to see Adrian/Alma/Kzoo in person but that probably won't happen.

[sac]

Adrian is currently abusing Franklin.  At the half its Adrian 63 Franklin 29


The 63 points in one half are more points than the Bulldogs scored in 19 full games last season.

Franklin must be really, really bad.   UM-Dearborn 52  Adrian 50


Elmhurst 81  Olivet  57
Blake Krum has played sparingly thus far this season, he was noticeably limping on the video.  Olivet has a couple new players who look good but they really struggled to keep up with the Blue Jays tonight.  Not sure about Elmhurst, they might be unbeaten but they don't look like a top 4 CCIW team.  They play Albion, Adrian and Kalamazoo in the coming weeks.

[KnightSlappy]

Well, for whatever reason, Mrs. KnightSlappy thinks the family trip we took to Kenosha four years ago was super swell, so we're packing up the KnightSlappettes and heading around the lake on Friday. I'm hoping to see some quality games.

The Massey Ratings -- which still carries a good amount of pre-season (i.e. historical) weight this time of year -- says Wheaton is the best team of the four. Massey favors them by 3 points over Calvin and by 5 points over Hope. Carthage, on the other hand, is rated as the worst of the four. Massey currently predicts Calvin to win by 3 and Hope to win by 2.

Both CCIW schools are hard to nail down at this point. Carthage owns a probably-decent nine-point road win at UW-Platteville, but they were shredded by Washington U by 35 points in California, and barely escaped UC-Santa Cruz (who was 4-22 a year ago) with a one-point overtime victory.

I'm running my own d3-vs.-d3 efficiency rankings this year -- which don't yet have enough data to be fully operational -- predicting Wheaton over Calvin by 3 and over Hope by 11 and Calvin over Carthage by 9 and Carthage over Hope by 1.

(These rankings only see results vs. d3 games, so it doesn't count the recent games versus Aquinas and Cornerstone for either Calvin or Hope. Hope is the outlier here, only having the two UW games as inputs; this system is unfairly underrating them at this point. A upwards manual adjustment of ~5 points would not be inappropriate. I don't really like trusting this data set until a team has played at least five or six games.)

[Gregory Sager]

Well, for whatever reason, Mrs. KnightSlappy thinks the family trip we took to Kenosha four years ago was super swell

Really? Kenosha? Mrs. KnightSlappy didn't recently suffer a blow to the head, did she?

[KnightSlappy]

Well, for whatever reason, Mrs. KnightSlappy thinks the family trip we took to Kenosha four years ago was super swell

Really? Kenosha? Mrs. KnightSlappy didn't recently suffer a blow to the head, did she?

She is a big fan of the Kenosha public museum.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯   All I know is I get to see some basketball games.

[sac]

If you want a look at Wheaton they're playing a pretty good Chicago team tonight

stats:  http://d3hoops.com/seasons/men/2014-15/boxscores/20141203_xhyp.xml
video:  http://athletics.uchicago.edu/athletics/video_audio


Kzoo and Alma also in action
http://miaa.org/composite

[goodknight]

Well, for whatever reason, Mrs. KnightSlappy thinks the family trip we took to Kenosha four years ago was super swell, so we're packing up the KnightSlappettes and heading around the lake on Friday. I'm hoping to see some quality games.

The Massey Ratings -- which still carries a good amount of pre-season (i.e. historical) weight this time of year -- says Wheaton is the best team of the four. Massey favors them by 3 points over Calvin and by 5 points over Hope. Carthage, on the other hand, is rated as the worst of the four. Massey currently predicts Calvin to win by 3 and Hope to win by 2.

Both CCIW schools are hard to nail down at this point. Carthage owns a probably-decent nine-point road win at UW-Platteville, but they were shredded by Washington U by 35 points in California, and barely escaped UC-Santa Cruz (who was 4-22 a year ago) with a one-point overtime victory.

I'm running my own d3-vs.-d3 efficiency rankings this year -- which don't yet have enough data to be fully operational -- predicting Wheaton over Calvin by 3 and over Hope by 11 and Calvin over Carthage by 9 and Carthage over Hope by 1.

(These rankings only see results vs. d3 games, so it doesn't count the recent games versus Aquinas and Cornerstone for either Calvin or Hope. Hope is the outlier here, only having the two UW games as inputs; this system is unfairly underrating them at this point. A upwards manual adjustment of ~5 points would not be inappropriate. I don't really like trusting this data set until a team has played at least five or six games.)

I'll be happy if the games are close and competitive.  It doesn't seem to me that Calvin and Wheaton have played a close game since Dan Aultman tipped one in just before the buzzer at Wheaton to spark the improbable Final Four run for the Knights in 2005.

I'll be winding my way around the south end of the lake on Friday afternoon with the inexhaustible oldknight.  The inestimable Mrs. oldknight has decided to give him a hall pass this weekend.  Meanwhile, the ineffable Mrs. goodknight is similarly relieved to enjoy a quiet weekend at home.

[kzoo99]

Kalamazoo 61 Purdue Calumet 46. Nice win for the Hornets.  Still not making many three but scoring is well balanced.