MBB: Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association

[sac]

Trine has video tonight.  Link on the miaa.org scoreboard.

[pointlem]

Kudos to Trine for good video and a very professional play by play.

[MaroonKnighty]

Calvin up by 10 and the half and hope up by 11.  Alma and Trine are playing tough, these games are far from over.

[GoKnights68]

Calvin up by 10 and the half and hope up by 11.  Alma and Trine are playing tough, these games are far from over.

Welch sure has gotten a lot of playing time
Tonight...

[goodknight]

Calvin hosts Hope on Saturday for the MIAA tourney championship for both men and women.

The Knights hold off the Scots of Alma 73-65, led by the Jordans.
The Flying Dutchmen knock off Trine on the road 55-44.

[KnightSlappy]

Calvin owned the glass 55-33 on a night they didn't shoot particularly well. Gave themselves extra chances and kept Alma from doing the same on the other end.

[wiz]

Calvin up by 10 and the half and hope up by 11.  Alma and Trine are playing tough, these games are far from over.

Welch sure has gotten a lot of playing time
Tonight...

Stout out tonight with an injured knee.  Sat next to Visser on the bench.  Both dressed and did warmups with the team.  Welch did a fine job.

[HollandKnight]

This night's game was made close by 2 things. First, the obvious hype. The crowd was full of Scots, not just bodies, but loud, sometimes obnoxious fans. Even Alma's coach, Sam Hargraves, got in on the fun doing things like pumping up the crowd and firing up his players.

The second reason this game was closer than it should have been was because of confusion. The Scot's were so effective transitioning defenses, seemlessly going from a full-court man, a full-court zone, half court man or 2-3 zone. Also, it seemed as though there was no rhyme or reason to what position a player was playing. Doug Bradfield was playing a lot on the outside on both sides of the ball, also playing 6-3 Ethan Woelke mainly down low and at times it seemed like players were terribly out of position and they would perform at there highest level. Hargraves surprised me today, getting the most out of every single player in a Popovich-esk way. I noticed this will be the same team next year with not a single senior. It's going to be an interesting year with a great coach with the same team. The one thing I will leave is DO NOT COUNT THE SCOT'S OUT.

[TUAngola]

Congrats to Calvin and Hope on their victories this evening. 

I wasn't able to make it to the game tonight and by the time I could pick up the feed from WEAX radio on my drive home from Ft Wayne the Trine-Hope game was over.  I did get to hear Coach Miller's postgame interview though.  What a gracious guy, gave Hope all the credit in the world, said they were the most talented team in the league (not my words you Knight fans  .  Some other interesting comments from Coach Miller; he thought the refs called the game differently tonight then they do in the regular season, that they were allowed to be much more physical without fouls being called.  This would hurt Trine as they need to get to the line a lot for them to be successful.  He said the tournament experience of Hope was key, that Trine came out so amped that they missed shots they normally hit and Hope was cool and collected and jumped on them early and Trine just couldn't recover.

Coach got very emotional at the end of the interview talking about his 3 seniors.  This is Coach Miller's 4th year at Trine, so these players are his recruits.  He said this year was special because of how hard these kids worked.  Trine had some glaring weaknesses that they tried to hide with "smoke and mirrors" during the season.  He didn't specifically mention anything other than they needed a guy who could consistently dribble drive and get to the rim or kick to an open man.  Also he mentioned Trine needed to be tougher on the boards.  Rebounding killed us pretty much all year.  He did not mention anything about the heavy minutes of the starters or depth issues. 

If any of you Hope posters here were at the game I'd love to hear your recap.  I see they had over 1100 attendance...wow...that is great.  I bet the atmosphere at Hershey was awesome!

[oldknight]

Alma's surge through the conference the second half of the season was no fluke. The Scots have become a solid, hard-nosed team. The M.O. on Alma'a previous Sam Hargraves led teams was that they would try and outscore you. Not so now as Alma's defense was mostly very good. Their full court zone press contested everything and forced the Knights to use up a large part of the shot clock before they ever began running their half court offense. Calvin shot poorly but many Knight shots came late in the clock and weren't necessarily of highest quality. Unlike Trine, the Scots, have more numbers to run at Calvin and therefore didn't run out of gas down the stretch. Alma's zone was a bit of a mixed blessing though as using that defense the entire game had much to do with Calvin's dominating 55-33 edge on the boards. Alma gave up 20 offensive boards to Calvin, 5 of them by VanderBrug and 4 by Daley. I guess Alma had to pick their poison and the poison didn't go down well. The rebounding edge and 41 free throws shot by the home team was more than Alma could overcome. Other game notes:

--Jordan Daley didn't shoot particularly well from the floor (4-12) but grabbed a phenomenal 15 total boards and forced Alma defenders to foul a lot, getting 10-14 from the charity stripe.

--Unsurprisingly, Jordan Brink was leading scorer (along with Daley) with 18 points, but he only got 7 floor shots. Brink draws a lot of attention and is a patient player. Is he sometimes too patient? I really don't know but I do wonder.

--TJ Huizenga scored no points but snared 7 boards, including several crucial ones down the stretch. The senior has a cherubic choir boy face but he's just a gritty player. Readers of this board may have noticed I like this kid.

--Could Alma get some preseason first place votes next year? Everybody's back.

--I was disappointed in the Calvin student section. Not much noise unlike the students who drove down from Alma.

[GreatScot!?]

Great game tonight in Calvin! Neither team shot great, but the difference was the rebounding advantage that Calvin had. The extra possessions helped them overcome their 31% shooting, plus they shot 41 free throws. Scots seemed to get good looks, but couldn't quite execute and the freshman tried to take over down the stretch, but it wasn't enough to comeback. Calvin did a great job of cutting against Alma's 2-3 zone to get good looks and to the free throw line. Dykstra's dunk would have been awesome if I wasn't rooting for the other team. Only gripe with the officiating would be that Alma only got 1 charge during the game on about 5 50/50 calls in my opinion and these lead to Bradford fouling out. Looking forward to the final in Calvin on Saturday!

[GreatScot!?]

Alma's surge through the conference the second half of the season was no fluke. The Scots have become a solid, hard-nosed team. The M.O. on Alma'a previous Sam Hargraves led teams was that they would try and outscore you. Not so now as Alma's defense was mostly very good. Their full court zone press contested everything and forced the Knights to use up a large part of the shot clock before they ever began running their half court offense. Calvin shot poorly but many Knight shots came late in the clock and weren't necessarily of highest quality. Unlike Trine, the Scots, have more numbers to run at Calvin and therefore didn't run out of gas down the stretch. Alma's zone was a bit of a mixed blessing though as using that defense the entire game had much to do with Calvin's dominating 55-33 edge on the boards. Alma gave up 20 offensive boards to Calvin, 5 of them by VanderBrug and 4 by Daley. I guess Alma had to pick their poison and the poison didn't go down well. The rebounding edge and 41 free throws shot by the home team was more than Alma could overcome. Other game notes:

--Jordan Daley didn't shoot particularly well from the floor (4-12) but grabbed a phenomenal 15 total boards and forced Alma defenders to foul a lot, getting 10-14 from the charity stripe.

--Unsurprisingly, Jordan Brink was leading scorer (along with Daley) with 18 points, but he only got 7 floor shots. Brink draws a lot of attention and is a patient player. Is he sometimes too patient? I really don't know but I do wonder.

--TJ Huizenga scored no points but snared 7 boards, including several crucial ones down the stretch. The senior has a cherubic choir boy face but he's just a gritty player. Readers of this board may have noticed I like this kid.

--Could Alma get some preseason first place votes next year? Everybody's back.

--I was disappointed in the Calvin student section. Not much noise unlike the students who drove down from Alma.

The Alma crowd actually came during their spring break, so it was impressive how many fans they had and how loud they were

[sac]

I think Hope turned in one of its best defensive efforts in quite some time tonight.  Sam Otto had a huge game.   Harrison Blackledge not only had 19 to lead the way but spent a lot of this game defending Jared Holmquist.  Holmquist has been terrific against Hope both times this year scoring 26 and 27 points.  Tonight he scored just 5 and was 0-7 from the field.  Hope wouldn't let him get the ball where he wanted and wouldn't let him go where he wanted when he did get it.  They really made him and Trine take a lot of shots they really didn't want.

I noted that Trine scored its first "easy" basket off its half-court offense with just over 2 minutes to go in the first half.

Hope was just good enough to win this one, most pleasing to me was two things 1) finishing off the game the way they did, except for one 5 second violation inbounding the ball they never let Trine get a momentum building shot and took care of things on their.  They were able to grab the needed rebounds and actually turned over Trine in a couple crucial possessions.  Which leads to number 2.  2)  Hope "won" the turnover battle by being one of the few teams this year to force double digit turnovers against Trine (12).  In the previous two game Hope had twice as many turnovers, tonight the margin was only -2.  That was big.


Heading into Saturday the Knights are a different animal, but I'm really happy Hope gets this opportunity.


   

[sac]

Congrats to Calvin and Hope on their victories this evening. 

I wasn't able to make it to the game tonight and by the time I could pick up the feed from WEAX radio on my drive home from Ft Wayne the Trine-Hope game was over.  I did get to hear Coach Miller's postgame interview though.  What a gracious guy, gave Hope all the credit in the world, said they were the most talented team in the league (not my words you Knight fans  .  Some other interesting comments from Coach Miller; he thought the refs called the game differently tonight then they do in the regular season, that they were allowed to be much more physical without fouls being called.  This would hurt Trine as they need to get to the line a lot for them to be successful.  He said the tournament experience of Hope was key, that Trine came out so amped that they missed shots they normally hit and Hope was cool and collected and jumped on them early and Trine just couldn't recover.

Coach got very emotional at the end of the interview talking about his 3 seniors.  This is Coach Miller's 4th year at Trine, so these players are his recruits.  He said this year was special because of how hard these kids worked.  Trine had some glaring weaknesses that they tried to hide with "smoke and mirrors" during the season.  He didn't specifically mention anything other than they needed a guy who could consistently dribble drive and get to the rim or kick to an open man.  Also he mentioned Trine needed to be tougher on the boards.  Rebounding killed us pretty much all year.  He did not mention anything about the heavy minutes of the starters or depth issues. 

If any of you Hope posters here were at the game I'd love to hear your recap.  I see they had over 1100 attendance...wow...that is great.  I bet the atmosphere at Hershey was awesome!

I should defer to Brooks Miller and how he felt the physical play affected his team.  Personally I thought he was right the physical play was different, but I thought it allowed Trine to be more aggressive on defense.  What was allowed physically felt tilted one way for alot of the game.

Defensively Hope matched up differently this time than the previous two times, at least I thought so.  I thought that caught Trine off-guard a little and they struggled to adjust.  On the whole though they didn't get a lot of open looks or easy baskets.  Every point they had felt hard earned.

[Grutte Dirk]

--I was disappointed in the Calvin student section.

Why? Maybe this satirical Facebook post will shed some light...

SPORTS: Hope-Calvin Rivalry Remains Strong As Ever Between Our Dads.