MBB: Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association

[sac]

Some very impressive posts since Thurday evening, not sure there's much I can add.

Obviously the weekend could not have gone better for Hope, they were pretty outstanding in both games and the number 1 incredient was their hustle.  Hope was all over the floor, and after last week I couldn't have been more pleased.

Hope v Chicago

Steve Cramer's first half was just awesome, 25 pts, 7 rebounds.......he had 17 points 13 minutes into the game on a variety of shots.  No question his performance forced Chicago to defend differently and it certainly opened things up for other players.  Hope was very good on defense, pressured the ball exceptionally well and seemed to really push Chicago away from the 3 point arc.  Chicago had more than a couple frustrated players.  I haven't looked but I bet the Maroons haven't been held to 56 points to often.

Calvin v Aurora

Without a doubt the most surprising result, I really thought Calvin would hammer the Spartans(?).  It certainly looked that way early but Aurora just simply played as if their lives depended on it in the 2nd half.  Calvin made just enough mistakes to give Aurora hope and they nearly pulled off the miracle.  Aurora was much better than what I expected and I think they played the first half like they were tight.   A little better middle of the first half and Aurora may very well have won that game.  However the 2nd half offensive stagnation of the Knights was not a good sign of things to come.


Friday came to a close and it was a great night of hoops,  the crowd was great for both games.  The gym was pretty close to full for both games.  I was pretty much floating on air after Hope's win as it went far better than I could have envisioned after last week.  They definately had the hunger back that carried them to a great start in the MIAA.  But most of all I know and everyone in orange and blue knew that Hope would get one more shot at Calvin.............

[diehardfan]

Holiday inn express was booked for the weekend already this am....

My hotel brand of choice was already booked, darn you Hope people , but the Holiday Inn Express wasn't booked 10 minutes ago when I was researching options just now! Rooms are filling very quickly everywhere though!

Incidentally, I am officially coming. Tickets and hotels are booked. Super, super excited. Sections are almost more fun than the final four! (Just cause the smaller arena makes the crowd louder and the atmosphere more homey). Who else is making the trek?

[sac]

Hope v Calvin

To understand this win by Hope I think you have to go back to last week......when it was the Knights who were hustling, makeing plays, getting loose balls, rebounds, hitting all the momentum killing shots.

Fast forward to Saturday and it was Hope doing all those little things and then some it takes to win in March.  The first half was really almost un-Hope/Calvin like with a 50-42 score.  Clearly Calvin was trying very hard and succeeding at pounding the ball low.  In fact John Mantel gave the rest of the league a good preview of whats to come and frankly a number of MIAA coaches should be petrified.  I wondered how Hope would or if they even could slow down the big guy.  In the second half Mantel had a couple tough calls go against him and it probably took him out of the game a bit, to be fair though he got a number of breaks with calls in the first half.  I was extremely pleased to see Hope up 50-42 with a FT desparity of 14......1 to Calvin's 15.

The other key and I don't recall anyone mentioning it but Hope held Calvin to just 2 FG's the final 7 1/2 minutes of the first half after the Knights grabbed a 7 point lead.  Hope had a serious timeout discussion and they were a different team after that moment.  It was a critical early gut check time and Hope responded in a big way.  In fact Calvin scored just 31 points the final 27 minutes of the game.

Fortunate though for Hope, Derek Griffen didn't have his shot and Hope wasn't going to let him find it.  Shooters shoot thier way into hot streaks, but Hope would just not let him get set and find his range.  Keeping Veltema off the 3 point tally sheet was also huge in my opinion.  As the game wore on, Calvin's offensive options seemed to dwindle down to one guy and that was Veldhouse.

Hope just had so many guys play great games, its hard not to name them all, but it really seemed like all 10 guys had their special moment.  I have to point to Tim Partridge who finished the last part of the game on the floor and was a very big part of the defensive effort.  Brett Jager's moment of brilliance was an absolute dagger for Calvin who played 34 seconds of great defense, completely denying any passes.  Jager steps up and nails the triple without another Hope player posessing the ball.  One of many shots that seemed to really deflate the Knights.

What can you say about Steve Cramer, this kid made shots with guys right in his mug all weekend, he just would not be denied.  When he came off with a minute to go it was the most emotion I've seen from "steady eddie" in 4 years combined.  Frankly it was great to see a Hope team play with some emotion.

Looking at the stats, a couple really glared out at me.

Hope 16 assists 10 turnovers
Calvin 6 assists 16 turnovers

Hope had 7 different guys who made a 3, only Klein and Kratz who are capable didn't make one.  

Calvin had 2

In the end this one resembled the first matchup of the year alot more than the last 3.  Hope/Calvin games are never pretty, Saturday I just felt Hope wanted it more and were sufficiently rewarded for their efforts.  It was a unique game in a unique place 200 miles from home.......but it was still Hope v Calvin.

[HopeConvert]

Nice job, sac. You can see why the board breathlessly awaited...

I was interested in titanq's comment that he couldn't see how Calvin beat Hope in the previous two games. No disrespect to Calvin, but I think it is quite clear Hope beat themselves in those two games. No shots from the floor for Veltema: that was an absolute key. Hope played harder this weekend than they have since January. And Cramer is stepping up big. The difference between Hope and Calvin right now, I think, is experience. Calvin is still a very young team, and I've said this before, but at some point they are going to realize how good they can be, and I expect them to be in Salem at some point before Veldhouse graduates.

According to my wife, on the radio broadcast after the game Cramer said "I was not going to let my last game be a loss to Calvin." I think that speaks to the nature of the rivalry. I'm still not sure how far this Hope team can go, but it is good to know they won't go down for lack of effort.

I trust Hope won't underestimate a Carroll team that has knocked off Augustana and St. Thomas. It should be a great weekend of basketball. I don't see how I'm going to be able to make it fit in my schedule, sad to say, but neither will that be for lack of effort.

[Titan Q]

I trust Hope won't underestimate a Carroll team that has knocked off Augustana and St. Thomas.

Very good point.  I think there is a tendency to look at the UW-Stevens Point bracket and assume that Carroll is just a Cinderella team, but one that is not as good as the other 3 teams.  Carroll is a good team though.  I saw the Pioneers last year when IWU faced them in Round 1. 

This is a team that went to Rock Island, Illinois and defeated CCIW champion Augustana Thursday and then all the way to St. Paul, Minnesota Saturday and defeated MIAC champion St. Thomas.  Having seen both teams, I can tell you that the Augustana team Carroll beat is every bit as good as Hope.  Also keep in mind, Augustana went 3-1 vs Wheaton and Carthage (one loss to Carthage)...Hope and Calvin were both swept by Wheaton and Carthage.  Speaking of Carthage, Carroll defeated the Red Men in the non-conference.

Hope is catching a hot team here with a lot of talent.  The Dutchmen will have to play well to win.

[sac]

Thoughts

-----Our hosts for the weekend did a nice job, they were handed a tough assignment and I thought they handled it well.  Let's face it these two fan bases are not very easy to please.


-----I got a kick out of the 8 adults to my right, boy did they carry on all game long, stretching with the dew crew, firing up the dew crew, pointing out obvious refing deficiencies........but I believe they had a good...no Great time. ...........definately need to work on the high-fives


-----There was no way I was sleeping after that game, so I switched sides of Chicago for the night and drove awhile to Indiana, then headed back into downtown today.  I bet I didn't get to sleep untill 3am, undoubtedly a great weekend for the boys in orange.  I couldn't have wished better.


-----My Saturday and Sunday to kill time can be summed up this way,

Sears Tower---Tall, everything looks small from up there  
Shedd Aquarium---busy, very, very busy, too busy
Evanston, Glencoe, Lake Forest---Filthy rich  
Gary, In---very sad and depressing  

[ziggy]

Thoughts

-----Our hosts for the weekend did a nice job, they were handed a tough assignment and I thought they handled it well.  Let's face it these two fan bases are not very easy to please.

I agree.  Even after losing on Friday the AU folks running the gate were very friendly on Saturday evening.  Great hosts all around.  The security folks seemed to have very little to do, a credit to us all.

We all know why Hope won this one; they were wearing the road jerseys! 

[sac]

We all know why Hope won this one; they were wearing the road jerseys! 

At least one Hope poster (<cough>  FDF) was jumping up and down for joy when Hope came out in the Orange.

[almcguirejr]

Hope vs U of Chicago

I was disappointed in Chicago because I anticipated them being better.  I thought their defense was poor.  In the first 2-3 minutes of the game you could see they did not help out when Cramer beat someone off the dribble.  I thought Cramer got some easy baskets early and then later made some tough shots.  He had a great first half.  I also wondered why Chicago's coach only used 1 30 second time out the first half when his defense was being shredded.  Did anyone put the Holt dunk on You Tube?

Calvin vs Aurora

Calvin was very good in the first half.  I thought Josh Meckes was excellent on Larry Welton.  The intensity level in this game was quite a bit higher than the Hope - Chicago game.

Calvin - Hope

Very frustrating.  I don't think we played very smart.  You have to credit Hope for the way they played.  I thought we played differently than we did the during the last 2 wins.  We went almost exclusively with a 1-4 offense that was trying to have a guard beat a defender off the dribble or get the ball to Mantel.  We once again had no movement.  We fired up bad shots out of frustration.   We had no offensive rebounders in this offense.  Playing Bear and Zoerhof in this 1-4 set meant the defense only had 3 guys to worry about.  Putting Snoeyink in a corner meant he couldn't screeen or pass the ball, 2 of his strengths.  We did not have any interior ball movement.

Defensively, I thought we were slow.  We have no one to slow down Cramer when the he is playing right now.  But we allowed Wolfe, Partridge, and Reimink open 3's and they hurt us.  You have stay up on them because they aren't going to hurt you by driving the ball to the basket.

It's tough to beat Hope 3 times in 3 and half weeks.  I think Aurora made Calvin work a lot harder than Chicago made Hope work Friday night.  Last night Hope was better than Calvin and deserved the win.

[Civic Minded]

Come on Civic Minded! Didn't you meet me to!!! Way to go last night I loved how you helped get all of the "old folks" up and cheering last night! I look forward to going it again this next weekend!

How could I have forgotten!    Sorry about that one, DM!    I guess you're such a fixture that you didn't hit my radar as a "new" meet -- although you indeed were.

We were delighted to help.  Heck, we were the loud and faithful student section in our day.  And this particular group of us hasn't realized that we're all grown up yet -- thank goodness.     (I'm afraid we're also the group of 8 that sac refered to, but he's right; we had a great time!)    Thanks for including us -- and thanks to all of you for once again being a great 6th man.  Games just aren't as much fun when the Dew Crew isn't out in force.  Here's to seeing lots of orange in Wisconsin!

[oldknight]

Defensively, I thought we were slow.  We have no one to slow down Cramer 

Lately, no one else does either.

[Dutch_Man]

I was also impressed with our hosts this weekend except for there dang DRINKING FOUNTAINS haha!!!    ;)I cant believe they didnt work and then they tried telling me I had to buy my water!!!  other than that they did a very good fine job this weekend! I just hope that that UW- Stevens Point has there drinking fountains ready for me and for those who are thirsty! 

[gohope]

Thoughts

----I got a kick out of the 8 adults to my right, boy did they carry on all game long, stretching with the dew crew, firing up the dew crew, pointing out obvious refing deficiencies........but I believe they had a good...no Great time. ...........definately need to work on the high-fives

Let's see.... 6, 7, 8 - WHEW!  Think I was #9!!!  

Most everybody has pretty much done a stellar job on posting up already (THANK GOD SAC got to a computer!)  But two other things:  The quote from the GR Press story I felt was pretty good came from GVW: "We talked about Aurora being a stop on our NCAA map, not the destination, and we move on from here."   Since we thought it was pretty good, we decided to change the wallpaper on the computer at the hotel that we were staying at, and added the picture from Hope's website of Stephen Cramer taking the last shot before halftime against UofC and then we added the above quote to the screen saver of that same computer! Ahhhh modern technology!  

And... did anyone notice the color of the worker's shirts who work the toll booths?? Yep - ORANGE with BLUE Sweaters or Sweatshirts!!  Another sign!

Lastly, I'm up watching the 11p.m. news and they just gave an update on that bus crash with the Bluffton students.  Say another prayer for those affected. They say that one of the injured students is from Michigan.

[oldknight]

It's tough to beat Hope 3 times in 3 and half weeks. 

If you go back a few pages you'll note that DarkKnight and I--while holding down the fort in West Michigan--figured out a Dutch plot that undoubtedly contributed to Calvin's Saturday night demise in Aurora. WFUR's anticipated 8 pm broadcast started late due to a radio program that ran until about 8:20. And what program was on the station of Calvin College basketball forcing us to choose between a study of John 6 and the Hope broadcast team on AM 1450? David Bast and--get this--"Words of Hope" discussing the hard sayings of Jesus. And Rev. Bast? A graduate of Hope College and Western Theological Seminary. A more nefarious plot has never been hatched in this rivalry. It makes last year's theft of the little kid's foam finger at DeVos look like child's play. Hey, wait a minute that was child's play. The irony of that radio broadcast interruption was unmistakable and gave me an uneasy feeling about the Knights' chances.

[gohope]

Officials: Mike Fox; Charles Russell and;

Do we know where these guys came from?  I want to send the schools in that league a sympathy card for putting up with them all season...