MBB: Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association

[Dutch_Man]

I suppose I should have noted that it was the first half that was particularly bad for the boys in stripes...

My favorite uncomfortable occasion was when both the Augie and Hope students sections collectively chanted "Let them play"

First of all, congratulations Alma! Really hope to see you see cut down the nets this weekend! My only hesitation for cheering for you is that your coach is from calvin... I will move past that... Keep those on dancing!

I will start by saying Augustana is an extremely talented team and if I were a betting man, I would bet on Augustana winning this thing... They were simply the better team on Saturday night. Hope would have had to play 40 minutes of their best ball to walk away with a win and most of us know, this team struggled to put it all together most of the year...

With that being said, I believe it needs to be mentioned how pathetic the refs were on Saturday night. The NCAA should be embarrassed by what they put on the floor for a significant second round match up... Apparently, between the two crews on Friday night, there were 100 games of NCAA tourney experience combined... Saturday night... ZERO. IF this is true... the NCAA has some explaining to do... I absolutely believe in giving new refs an opportunity to grow and flourish but I am not sure if this was the time or place. The Augie/Westminster game might have been a good starting point... These refs from the M.I.A.C looked like deer in head lights. Their inconsistency and misses on blatant should be calls was incredible (please see definition of travel ***), especially for the time and place. I believe both Augie and Hope fans would agree with all of this...

Even with this being said, I am not convinced Hope would have pulled off the upset... But I do believe this game would have been closer to a 6 point game than a 12 point game... If this were the case, the last 5 minutes could have looked and felt a lot different.

All in all, whether this crew truly had no NCAA tournament experience or 100 games of experience, they were pathetic and Augie was stinking good. Augie best of luck in the next round. I enjoyed your enormous "all beef" hot dogs, enthusiastic student section and friendly fans. I do hope your ticket office is a little more gracious to your next guests though...

Cheers to a fun season!



***Traveling - In basketball, traveling (travelling in Commonwealth English) is a violation of the rules that occurs when a player holding the ball moves one or both of their feet illegally. Most commonly, a player travels by illegally moving his or her pivot foot or taking two or more steps without dribbling the ball.

The not-so-hidden assumption here is that the officials' deficiencies were mostly one-sided. I watched the entire second half and while I admit there were some curious, mostly non-calls, I can't say they disadvantaged Hope more than Augustana. We all are prone to take more notice when our own team is getting the shaft while mostly ignoring missed calls that go our way. I thought other issues were at play to distinguish the two teams. To use soccer terminology, there were an awful lot of 50/50 balls that mostly wound up in the hands of Augustana. To me, that was the biggest difference between the two teams.

Totally agree that our perception is that the non-calls that were against us affected the outcome, but I can tell you that the Augie fans were just as upset about the extremely poor officiating and from their perspective they should have won by more.  Personally I doubt it would have made any difference in the outcome if we had different officials.

That does not excuse that a second round game had officials with a total of ZERO tournament experience.  Totally get that officials have to start getting experience sometime, but all 3 of them?  That just puts them in a totally bad place and makes no sense. It was very obvious that they were uncomfortable on several occasions, and with none of them having any experience they had no "go to" person.  Seems like you would at least have a lead official with some experience to assist the newbies.  Certainly there could have been a better choice for a 2nd round game.

[Flying Dutch Fan]

It's always hard for a season to end and to know you won't see those seniors play again.  Seems like their seasons on the court just fly by - all excited about this or that new recruit, and then - poof - they are done playing.  As always - I so appreciate the effort they put in - not just in practice and playing games, but in their studies and volunteer work, and so much more.  Proud to know Ben, Brock, Alex, Sam, and Stephen – and wish them all the best in the future.

Thinking about them being done, the stat geek in me had to go back and look at where these guys ended up in the Hope career record book top 10 lists:

Alex Eidson - 997 points (couldn't 1 3pt have gone in on Saturday for him to get to 1000),  #4 in 3pt FG Made (154), #3 in 3pt FG attempts (430), and #9 in FT% (.805)

Brock Benson – 1050 points which is 32nd all time, #4 in FG% (.604), #10 in Def Rebounds (365), #9 in Off Rebounds (204) – amazingly he is not in the top 10 of total rebounds

Ben Gardner – 1295 points which is 17th all time, #3 in FT made (384), #7 in FT attempts (472), #7 in FT% (.814), #7 in assists (313), #7 in steals (160), and #9 in games played (110)

[realist]

Better coach and a group of tanlented kids who totally bought in

Taking nothing from Alma--they've excelled for all the reasons mentioned, and more power to them--let's not forget that Hope did win the league championship.

Not sure this is the right time for making this comparison.  SH has been at Alma for 5 seasons, and these are all "his" guys.  He has done a good job getting them in the position they are in now (a classic example of using the talent one has available).  GM has only two years at this level, and he benefited by the guys he "inherited".  I recall some of the struggles early on when KVS came to Calvin so "inherited" talent many times has it's own set of issues. 
The real test is can GM assemble a group of players to match the quality level this program has established over the years?
Can SH duplicate the effort to keep Alma at this new level?
Hope has such a great program and system in place one would not expect them to drop off much if at all.
The real test for Alma may be simply in keeping SH where he is.  What Alma has done is no longer under the radar.

[wiz]

I enjoyed your enormous "all beef" hot dogs

Apparently the hot dogs are good but the grapes are sour.

[Flying Dutch Fan]

I enjoyed your enormous "all beef" hot dogs

Apparently the hot dogs are good but the grapes are sour.

True enough, but at least we were invited to the meal     

[arena]

Better coach and a group of tanlented kids who totally bought in

Taking nothing from Alma--they've excelled for all the reasons mentioned, and more power to them--let's not forget that Hope did win the league championship.

long slipped from my thoughts. What I'm recalling now is the team that won the MIAA tournament. And not only that, won Saturday and isn't sitting at home waiting for next year.

[sac]

....like the return of migrating sand hill cranes.  You can count on it every Spring.

[gordonmann]

New feature on Alma as part of our Road to Salem series.

http://www.d3hoops.com/playoffs/men/2016/alma-jason-beckman

I'll be at Benedictine this weekend for the games. If anyone else is going, tell me what to look out for and I'll say hello if I see you.

[KnightSlappy]

New feature on Alma as part of our Road to Salem series.

http://www.d3hoops.com/playoffs/men/2016/alma-jason-beckman

I'll be at Benedictine this weekend for the games. If anyone else is going, tell me what to look out for and I'll say hello if I see you.

Sort of tragic to write a feature on Jason Beckman and not mention the fact that he leads D3 in sock style points. 

[GreatScot!?]

Looking at SNU's and Benedictine's schedules I'm wondering how much their "easier" conferences impacted their record. I looked at their opponents average Massey ratings and their is significant difference between the three teams (alma included).

[gordonmann]

KS:

You know, I didn't even notice that. Stylish!

[wiz]

Off subject from men's basketball but John Ross steps down as Calvin women's basketball coach.  Impressive record and big shoes to fill.  He's a class act.

[Gregory Sager]

Looking at SNU's and Benedictine's schedules I'm wondering how much their "easier" conferences impacted their record. I looked at their opponents average Massey ratings and their is significant difference between the three teams (alma included).

It's SNC, not SNU.

(At least you didn't call it "St. Norbert's". )

In the Massey rating of leagues, the MIAA is the fifth-strongest out of D3's 46 leagues. The NACC is 11th, and the MWC is 22nd. That can be deceptive, though, when you consider that both Benedictine and St. Norbert went undefeated in their respective leagues and neither had the benefit of playing themselves to thus boost their SoS. The next-best NACC team according to Massey is Aurora (#29), and Concordia (WI) (#49) and MSOE (#93) are the other NACC teams in the top quarter of D3. Eight of the 11 NACC teams are rated in the top half of D3 by Massey. Carroll (#42) is the only other MWC school in the top quarter of Massey's ranking (and the Pioneers, who return almost everybody next season from this year's 20-5 team, will be sorely missed by the MWC in terms of league strength when Carroll joins the CCIW this coming school year). Massey says that seven of the 11 teams in the MWC ranked in the top half of the 420 teams in D3.

By contrast, Alma didn't win all of its MIAA games; it didn't even win the league, nor does it have the highest current Massey rating among MIAA teams (Hope is #6, Alma is #7). Thus, the SoS of the Scots is less deceptive than BU's or SNC's if you're just looking at overall league rankings on Massey. Trine (#38) and Albion (#61) are also in the top 25% of D3 in terms of Massey percentiles, so half of the league is in Massey's top quarter, with Adrian (#106) just missing the cut.

And, because the NACC and MWC are both large leagues (eleven teams apiece), their league schedules take up bigger percentages of their overall schedule than does the comparatively light MIAA load of the Scots. So the bottom line is that the respective records of BU and SNC were impacted heavily by the relative weakness of their leagues.

Having said that, though, I'd point out that won-loss records don't tell the whole story. I've seen all three teams play multiple times this season, and Benedictine and St. Norbert are both very much for real in spite of the fact that they have gaudy records inflated by playing several weak teams within their respective league slates. Head-to-head this weekend, I think Alma's a good bet to beat the Green Knights a second time (although I wouldn't look for another 17-point margin of victory), but if the Scots wind up playing the sectional hosts on Saturday I have to go with the Bennies to win.

[GreatScot!?]

Looking at SNU's and Benedictine's schedules I'm wondering how much their "easier" conferences impacted their record. I looked at their opponents average Massey ratings and their is significant difference between the three teams (alma included).

It's SNC, not SNU.

(At least you didn't call it "St. Norbert's". )

In the Massey rating of leagues, the MIAA is the fifth-strongest out of D3's 46 leagues. The NACC is 11th, and the MWC is 22nd. That can be deceptive, though, when you consider that both Benedictine and St. Norbert went undefeated in their respective leagues and neither had the benefit of playing themselves to thus boost their SoS. The next-best NACC team according to Massey is Aurora (#29), and Concordia (WI) (#49) and MSOE (#93) are the other NACC teams in the top quarter of D3. Eight of the 11 NACC teams are rated in the top half of D3 by Massey. Carroll (#42) is the only other MWC school in the top quarter of Massey's ranking (and the Pioneers, who return almost everybody next season from this year's 20-5 team, will be sorely missed by the MWC in terms of league strength when Carroll joins the CCIW this coming school year). Massey says that seven of the 11 teams in the MWC ranked in the top half of the 420 teams in D3.

By contrast, Alma didn't win all of its MIAA games; it didn't even win the league, nor does it have the highest current Massey rating among MIAA teams (Hope is #6, Alma is #7). Thus, the SoS of the Scots is less deceptive than BU's or SNC's if you're just looking at overall league rankings on Massey. Trine (#38) and Albion (#61) are also in the top 25% of D3 in terms of Massey percentiles, so half of the league is in Massey's top quarter, with Adrian (#106) just missing the cut.

And, because the NACC and MWC are both large leagues (eleven teams apiece), their league schedules take up bigger percentages of their overall schedule than does the comparatively light MIAA load of the Scots. So the bottom line is that the respective records of BU and SNC were impacted heavily by the relative weakness of their leagues.

Having said that, though, I'd point out that won-loss records don't tell the whole story. I've seen all three teams play multiple times this season, and Benedictine and St. Norbert are both very much for real in spite of the fact that they have gaudy records inflated by playing several weak teams within their respective league slates. Head-to-head this weekend, I think Alma's a good bet to beat the Green Knights a second time (although I wouldn't look for another 17-point margin of victory), but if the Scots wind up playing the sectional hosts on Saturday I have to go with the Bennies to win.

Might have been a bit distracted when I typed in SNU! Thank you for putting everything into perspective! Having a large conference makes it harder to increase SOS, but it seems that SNC didn't play to many tough teams out of league. Obviously all of these teams are "for real" I just wanted to see how they stacked up against each other despite their differing records and I am now enlightened. Disappointed you don't have the Scots going to the final four though! My confidence my be a little biased however...

[Gregory Sager]

Oh, I definitely think that the Scots would have a legit shot in an Alma @ Benedictine sectional final. BU would be the favorite, though, and IMO deservedly so.