MBB: Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association

[sac]

Tri-State 59 Alma 58

I was checking out the play by play, hard to know exactly what happend of course, but down 3, Alma got a layup with 3 seconds left out of a timeout.  I'm guessing thats not what was drawn up.

http://www.miaa.org/mbb/stats/0708/0116alts.htm

[hope1]

hope played very good last night that was big on how they jumped on kzoo in the beginning  of the game to take a big lead it set the tone for rest of the game

[almcguirejr]

-----Thank you Will Bowser for the best Dan Holt impersonation to date. 

That brought back the same memory for me.  The signifcant difference was Bowser caught rim.  Bowser struggled a little bit last night but Carter and Bowser are impressive freshman.

[Flea]

Got this from a friend of mine.  It may interest some of you.  

Because of all the construction Calvin is offering a free shuttle service for some events.   The shuttle is usually from the Prince Conference Center but will be changed for the Hope/Calvin game (some other event on campus).  I just google mapped the address.  The shuttle begins 45 minutes before tip-off, but for the Hope game it will begin at 1 p.m.  the shuttle is available to everyone.

current schedule:

Day ... Date ... Game Time
Saturday, Jan 19, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, Jan 26, 3 p.m.  from the Calvin future Advancement Building, 1580 East Beltline.
Wednesday, Jan 30, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, Feb 02, 3 p.m.
Saturday, Feb 09, 3 p.m.
Saturday, Feb 16, 3 p.m.

A couple corrects.

The January 26 Hope v. Calvin game begins at 2 p.m., not 3 p.m.
The vans will begin shuttling at noon.

[dumezrules]

The games not over yet but right now Hope is 18-19 from the FT line. I can't remember the last time Hope shot free throws that well. Hopes' FT shooting has always been something that perplexed me. Hope has had so many great jump shooters and fundamentally sound players yet there FT shooting has never been where I would want it. Granted I think they should be at 80%+ as a team.

As I wrote this Bowser missed the first FT of the game for Hope after 18 straight!

NBA teams dont shoot 80% as a team....there is a large difference between jump shooting and FT shooting mentally.....ask Antonio McDyess  ( he may be a better 15' jump shooter than FT shooter)

[realist]

I really thought Kalamazoo would do better against Hope.  Not win, but make a better showing.
Calvin showed they learned something in losing at Adrian last year, and struggled at times, but held the lead.
The Tri-State/Alma score is very interesting.  Like many posters I sort of figured this was a slam dunk, but perhaps Alma is getting better.

[Civic Minded]

Quite the head scratching night in the MIAA!

I expected, like everyone else, to see more from Kalamazoo.  How, then, did they manage to beat Albion??

And Alma; I can't wait to see them in person.  Could it be they are making some serious improvements?

Olivet's program is taking some seriously strong turns toward disciplined, organized basketball.

And how can Albion beat Olivet by 12, and yet lose to Kalamazoo?

It's shaping up to be an interesting season in our beloved MIAA.  (And a tough one to be picking with confidence points!)   

[Stinger]

Historically, Kalamazoo has a very difficult time playing at Hope (obvious statement of the year). The 18-7 K team in '02-03 was on the wrong side of that awful loss at the Civic.  K hasn't won there since '98.  The score, unfortunately, didn't surprise me all that much. 

Let's not forget Hope is the 6th ranked team in the country. The fact that they've lost 2 games this season should be more "head scratching" than the fact that they beat Kzoo at home.

[sac]

The games not over yet but right now Hope is 18-19 from the FT line. I can't remember the last time Hope shot free throws that well. Hopes' FT shooting has always been something that perplexed me. Hope has had so many great jump shooters and fundamentally sound players yet there FT shooting has never been where I would want it. Granted I think they should be at 80%+ as a team.

As I wrote this Bowser missed the first FT of the game for Hope after 18 straight!

NBA teams dont shoot 80% as a team....there is a large difference between jump shooting and FT shooting mentally.....ask Antonio McDyess  ( he may be a better 15' jump shooter than FT shooter)

The Division 3 record for FT shooting in a season is 81.8% by one of the UW's (Oshkosh maybe).  I haven't seen it recently but the NCAA used to publish a statistical trends book and FT shooting generally averaged around 70% as a team, but dipped into the 60's recently.   I think most teams that shoot 72% or above are thought of as good FT shooting teams, 75% or above as excellent.

On the season Hope sits at 72.9%, in second among MIAA teams.

Of Hope's 11 regular players, 9 have FT%'s of 70 or better (which I think is astounding), the only two below are Osburn at 68% and Kratz at 50% but he's only taken 2 FT's all season.    I think this Hope team is a very good FT shooting team.

If you need to foul Hope at the end of the game...........who?

[oldknight]

The Division 3 record for FT shooting in a season is 81.8% by one of the UW's (Oshkosh maybe).  I haven't seen it recently but the NCAA used to publish a statistical trends book and FT shooting generally averaged around 70% as a team, but dipped into the 60's recently.   I think most teams that shoot 72% or above are thought of as good FT shooting teams, 75% or above as excellent.

Sac's memory is pretty good. If you click the first link below you can review graphs of statistical trends for a host of NCAA bball stats from the late 1940's through 2006. Scroll down and you will see that each graph has the NCAA stats highlighted with a red diamond for each year. The stats show that for every year since the early 60's free throw shooting has been between 68.1% and 69.7% with the exception of the years 1993-98 when they were in the 67's. I found the stats of shots from three point range to be enlightening. The best percentage (38.4%) was shot in 1987, the first year of that rule's existence. The percentage went down steadily from there and seems to have found an equilibrium at or just under 35%. I would guess that it took a few years for defenses to catch up to the effectiveness of that new offensive option. The raw data for these stats can be accessed by clicking the second link.

http://www.bigbluehistory.net/bb/trends.html#shootingpercentages

http://www.ncaa.org/stats/m_basketball/trends/all_time_trends.pdf


As you can probably tell, it's a slow day at work.

[sac]

Here's a little tidbit for Hope fans

Mt. Vernon Nazarene lost its 2nd game of the season last night 75-70 to Walsh College.  They stand at 14-2 and were ranked #5 in NAIA II going into last night's game.  Walsh was #2.

Aquinas is #19, and has dropped to 14-5.......of those 5 losses 2 to D2's, 1 to NAIA I, and Hope.  The fifth came last week to WHAC rival Madonna.  I made the comment earlier this year that Albion's loss to Madonna was a surprise,  maybe not anymore.   Madonna, Aquinas and Indiana Tech are tied at the top of the WHAC at 3-1.

[sac]

found this in the sentinel....the caption read, "Hope's Will Bowser soars for a dunk against Kalamazoo Wednesday night at DeVos Fieldhouse.".........oops.  Gave it the Jordan tongue to, awesome!

[hope1]

that was great  picture    and for a chance the sentinel was right for a while about his dunk

[sac]

Historically, Kalamazoo has a very difficult time playing at Hope (obvious statement of the year).

to illustrate........

From 1978 to 2008, Kzoo has won exactly one men's basketball game in Holland vs Hope, in 1998.  This includes 31 regular season games, 2 MIAA tournament games and 1 NCAA tournament game.  Total record of 1-33.

Hope's website designates home and away games back to 1956.  Since 1956 Kalamazoo has won in Holland 7 times.  '56, '64, '69, '70, '74, '77, '98.  Thats a 7-49 record in 56 games played vs Hope, in Holland.

92, 93 and 94 Kzoo beat Hope once each season, since then Hope has won 39 of 41 overall meetings.

Hope's current overall winning streak vs Kzoo stands at 21 consecutive wins, dateing back to the 1998 win in Holland. 

[HopeConvert]

Here's a little tidbit for Hope fans

Mt. Vernon Nazarene lost its 2nd game of the season last night 75-70 to Walsh College.  They stand at 14-2 and were ranked #5 in NAIA II going into last night's game.  Walsh was #2.

Aquinas is #19, and has dropped to 14-5.......of those 5 losses 2 to D2's, 1 to NAIA I, and Hope.  The fifth came last week to WHAC rival Madonna.  I made the comment earlier this year that Albion's loss to Madonna was a surprise,  maybe not anymore.   Madonna, Aquinas and Indiana Tech are tied at the top of the WHAC at 3-1.

Walsh University is in North Canton, OH and is the archrival of Malone College in Canton, where I used to teach. Suffice it to say the games didn't attract the crowds of a Hope/Calvin game, but it was a fairly big deal in an area that lives and breathes high school football. I went to a few of those games, which Walsh started dominating in the late 90's, and thought they were OK, not great. I missed their national championship team of a few years ago. Walsh is also where Bob Huggins got his start.

Odd fact: The basketball coaches of Malone, Walsh, and Glen Oak High School, all located down the same road from each other, each was diagnosed right around the same time with PSC, the rare liver disease that claimed Walter Payton. Malone's coach's life was saved when the women's softball coach donated half her liver in a transplant operation.