MBB: Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association

[sac]

Collectively Adrian, Alma, Kalamazoo and Olivet are also 3-19. 

Tri-State is holding up the league. 

Yeah this was a point of discussion Saturday with FDF and CivicMinded........I'm to scared to look it up but I'm sure this is the worst non-conference start since the years prior to "The Defiance Experiment".

I attribute it to significant Sr losses across the board.......Calvin and Hope have plenty of talent to be good.  Calvin is still finding themselves and I truthfully haven't seen Hope play a bad game yet,  just 10 minutes of bad, but they are clearly not as talented overall as last season.

I don't know what's up with Albion..........if my tight schedule ( ) works out I might get to see Spring Arbor/ Albion tommorrow night.  I'll do some investigating.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Certainly a large part of the MIAA deficit is the MIAA-CCIW Challenge.  Even on the CCIW pickems all but one picker had the MIAA winning either 3 or all 4 of those games (I had MIAA winning 3)!

Time may help to sort out whether those were shocking upsets or whether Hope and/or Calvin are down and/or Wheaton and/or Carthage were underrated.

[I realize that is a lot of and/or's, but there are MANY possibilities! ]

[ChicagoHopeNut]

Anyone know how many wins GVW has? And KVS for that manner. I see on the d3hoops page that someone just became the 5th coach to get 600 wins. As I recall GVW got win 500 in the championship game of the MIAA tourney against Albion in 2003. So he must be around 560 now?

[hope1]

i think  he has   568  wins   just looked it up

[northb]

KVS is 285-150 as a coach, and 191-70 @ Calvin.

1-0 in National Championship games. 

[Oval]

Through yesterday, December 9, the MIAA has an uncharacteristically shaky collective W-L record of 16-28.   

The "Big Three" of Albion, Calvin, and Hope, all accustomed to appearing in the national rankings in recent years, are an unimpressive collective 10-8.   

I sure didn't see this coming.  The coaching staffs have many "teachable moments" about which to teach.

Great post....Where where these teams in 2004 and 2005 at this time?

[Flying Dutch Fan]

Coming into this season, GVW was 564-194, which means he is now at 568-196.  I think it would be pretty safe to assume he hits 600 sometime next season.

[Flying Dutch Fan]

Through yesterday, December 9, the MIAA has an uncharacteristically shaky collective W-L record of 16-28.   

The "Big Three" of Albion, Calvin, and Hope, all accustomed to appearing in the national rankings in recent years, are an unimpressive collective 10-8.   

I sure didn't see this coming.  The coaching staffs have many "teachable moments" about which to teach.

Great post....Where where these teams in 2004 and 2005 at this time?

The stat geek in me couldn't resist

Games through 12/11

Albion/Calvin/Hope

04/05  14-8  .636

05/06  20-4  .833

06/07  10-8  .555

Adrian/Alma/Kalamazoo/Olivet

04/05  14-15  .482

05/06  13-16  .448

06/07  3-18  .143

Tri-State (can't leave them out completely)

04/05  2-5  .286

05/06  3-5  .375

06/07  3-1  .750

It's also quite interesting that almost every team has played less games to this point in the season as compared to the last 2.

[ChicagoHopeNut]

FDF, Interesting post. If this trend continues by 2010 Tri State will be the only team with a consistent winning record. Yup, this is a disappointing year for the MIAA so far.

[sac]

Albion takes another hard loss tonight but this one really shocks me.

Spring Arbor 79 Albion 58

I didn't make it down there but "watched" the game on their live stats connection.  Spring Arbor led by 12 at the half and pretty much dominated the 2nd half.  Led by 29 with 4 minutes or so to go.

Andrew Holmes had what I believe is a career high with  22 points on 10-13 shooting, no other Britton flirted with double figures.

Best I can tell from the stats, Albion's having trouble shooting the ball and playing good defense.  SA shot 50% to Albion 37%, SA also scored 15 more points from the foul line.  Pretty surprising start to the Brittons' season.

They're off untill a trip to Orlando in two weeks with Elmhurst and Buffalo State on the schedule, then play at North Central and at Illinois Wesleyan two of the CCIW's best.  They're going to need a quick improvement to get through that stretch with a winning record.

Spring Arbor is coming to Holland in late December for the Russ DeVette Tournament, SA has beaten Aquinas, but lost to Goshen.  They are the defending NCCAA Champions.

[Stinger]

Albion takes another hard loss tonight but this one really shocks me.

Spring Arbor 79 Albion 58

I made the trip Sac.  It was a very surprising loss for the Britons. This Spring Arbor team is talented, but they are very, very young.  At times they had 4 Frosh and 1 Soph out on the court.  They seemed to beat Albion to every loose ball and had no problems scoring.  It was not a good defensive performance for Albion. The problem with a team like Spring Arbor  is that they are bio-rhythmic.  You let these guys feel comfortable early on, it's going to be a struggle all night long.

On the other side of the ball, Albion's offensive execution was anything but stellar.  Holms was the only guy attacking the Spring Arbor's defense.   Silas, Jurasek, et al could not hit anything from the perimeter.   All in all, they just weren't getting anything out of their motion offense. It was basically just tossing it around the perimeter the whole night.

This is a surprising start to Albion's season. I think they're still trying to fill the void of Crawford not being there.  With him in there, they would work off the post everytime.  They don't have that person this year.  On the perimeter, the guards aren't working with their bigs to get open.   I'd like to see Silas communicating more with guys like Yancey and Way to get open.  He's too good a shooter to not be getting more open looks.

[AndersDY]

Now that my college football season is shut down until the bowls, I finally made my way over here to peek in on things. I had heard that Hope wasn't starting too hot out of the gate, but hadn't realized it was a conference-wide epidemic. Is it becoming a near guarantee that we only see one MIAA in the big dance, or are enough of the losses of the variety that don't yet count in the regional rankings?

I haven't yet made it back to The Dick this year so I can't really add any insight, I'll probably start attending as the conference season nears. Unfortunately I've switched jobs since last spring and now don't have endless time to kill at work, but I'll have to check in on D3hoops regularly somehow.

At least COW is #1 thus far, so I got that goin for me...

[Pat Coleman]

Don't forget about the Stagg Bowl on Saturday.

[Dark Knight]

Is it becoming a near guarantee that we only see one MIAA in the big dance, or are enough of the losses of the variety that don't yet count in the regional rankings?

Calvin tends to have the best shot at it since most of their pre-conference games are out of region. Last year Calvin pulled it off, with a mediocre first half of the season against non-regional teams and a strong second half, resulting in a Pool C playoff bid. I believe Calvin had only one regional loss before the MIAA tournament.

It's not likely to happen this year though -- Calvin already has a regional loss to Hope, and if they are going to lose another regional game in the MIAA tournament, they'd pretty much have to win all the rest of their regional games. Besides two games against Hope, they'd have to win against ONU and (probably) Wooster late this month. Not to mention two games against Tri-State.

[goodknight]

Is it becoming a near guarantee that we only see one MIAA in the big dance, or are enough of the losses of the variety that don't yet count in the regional rankings?

Calvin tends to have the best shot at it since most of their pre-conference games are out of region. Last year Calvin pulled it off, with a mediocre first half of the season against non-regional teams and a strong second half, resulting in a Pool C playoff bid. I believe Calvin had only one regional loss before the MIAA tournament.

It's not likely to happen this year though -- Calvin already has a regional loss to Hope, and if they are going to lose another regional game in the MIAA tournament, they'd pretty much have to win all the rest of their regional games. Besides two games against Hope, they'd have to win against ONU and (probably) Wooster late this month. Not to mention two games against Tri-State.

The Knights will face EITHER ONU or COW in the Mose Hole Classic at Wooster at the end of the month.  Calvin opens with UW-LAX.  Right now, the Knights look like the prohibitive favorite to go 0-2 in that tourney, with the other three teams currently in the Top 25.