MBB: Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association

[AlwaysHope]

Everyone is overlooking the obvious when analyzing the Rivalry game tonight.  On the big screen before the game it was announced that Ron Reimink was celebrating his 50th birthday tonight.  So his son Jesse must have decided to give the old man his present on the court tonight.  All he did was score 25 points (exactly 1/2 his Dad's age), get 9 rebounds, two assists, two steals, and no turnovers in 29 minutes of play. 

To add to the symetry, this is GVW's 31st year at Hope as head coach.  In his first season one of his players was Ron Reimink!

By the way, I thought Jesse played a good game at Calvin this year, but he did only have two points in 39 minutes.

I am sure the old man will remember this present for a long time!

[Civic Minded]

One thing Calvin fans can be happy to hear is no other team could have caused nearly as much nervousness in the sea of orange. If any other opponent were out there, no Hope fan would have been worried at any time in the last 25 minutes of the game. Being The Game as it were, everyone wasn't quite secure until 4 or 5 minutes left. It was mentioned earlier that Glenn waited awfully long to really empty the bench, but the second half did feel at points that a couple bad minutes could get the lead to single digits and suddenly cause a competitive game to break out. It seems like things like that just happen when those teams are near each other.

My thoughts exactly.  Despite the lead, it just never felt comfortable enough.  Calvin is capable of turning things around with a moment's notice, and GVW respects that.  Hope did well to hang keep the lead from going no lower than 16, but the turn around from a 26 pt lead to 16 was quick, and painful.  Once KVS emptied the bench, GVW waited just a short time before taking out Jesse, allowing the crowd to pay some respect, and then taking the rest of the starters out.  I didn't see that as anything untoward.

Going in to The Game you just never know what will happen.  I didn't allow myself to even think that this would be the result.  But I'm proud of what Hope accomplished tonight (shocked at Griffin's and Smith's zeros), and amazed once again by the Rivalry and all it represents.

[Happy Calvin Guy]

Hey, maybe there's a silver lining somewhere:

Calvin-59

Hope – 35

(Tonight's score minus the points of the seniors from both teams)

If Hope isn't allowed to replace those seniors on the floor next year and has has to play with less than five, I am guaranteeing a Calvin sweep in 08-09!

[NW Hope Fan]

Hey, maybe there's a silver lining somewhere:

Calvin-59

Hope – 35

(Tonight's score minus the points of the seniors from both teams)

If Hope isn't allowed to replace those seniors on the floor next year and has has to play with less than five, I am guaranteeing a Calvin sweep in 08-09!

Is dreaming about this the thing that makes you happy? 

[sac]

Stat of the night is not Griffin zero points, Smith zero points.......its Griffin 5 shots, Smith 2 shots.

Hope just locked those two guys down tonight..........ok, the zero points helped.


.......and this little gem.  This game was a single digit margin for 3:40

[sac]

Hope 76 Calvin 59

I've sat in the stands more than 100 times watching Hope get great starts right off the tip, but very rarely against Calvin and certainly nothing like tonight.  Hope's hot start was the whole ballgame.  Calvin's first 5 minutes turned into a keystone cops segment of substitutions, timeouts and unfortunately for them a steady series of inbound passes after another Hope bucket.

The offense and hot shooting will get a lot of talk, but defensively Hope was just as outstanding.  Your doing something good when you keep a team like Calvin to 22 first half points.  Hold two guards to zero points.  Tonight, the offense just caught fire at the wrong moment for Calvin.

Two guys stuck out tonight for Hope, Reimink the obvious one, who pulled a virtual repeat of his performance in DeVos a year ago.  This kid just loves playing Calvin, and his efforts the last two speak that loudly.  The other standout was Brandon Bosch who comes off the bench with 6 big points and more cruicialy spelling VanSolkema and giving him a break from the point while Hope never lost a beat.  Point guard was a big area of concern before this game.

Calvin should be commended for their second half fight, it would have been oh so easy to just pack it in a start chucking up threes, but they stuck to their guns and whitled away at the lead while 3603 looked on nervously.  Reimink and Wolfe led a mini-run of 8-2 that put the lead back to 24 and all seemed certain at that point.  Strange how the second half went, I thought Hope was getting most of the same shots they were getting in the first, they just didn't go in.  Calvin was able to mount a better offense without getting anything from Smith or Griffin, and that just seemed odd to me.  Englesma and Mantel were very good in the post for the Knights tonight.  The odd part was the Dutchmen seemed kind of willing to just let them be and concentrate on the outside. 

It still took shooting 60% and holding Hope to 27% to get it down to 17.  The halftime lead was just that big.

Reimink 25, Wolfe 13, VanderHeide 13

Veldhouse 23, Mantel 17, Englesma 13

--------------------------------------------------------------
quick notes

Griffin came into the game leading Calvin in scoring 5 straight games, and averaging 18 pts since the first Hope/Calvin game.  Hope played some serious defense on him tonight.

Hope's second half is all the author's fault, not only did he not go for the new stick of gum to start the half, but he put the double whammy on them by talking about Hope's largest margin of victories over Calvin................1922, 34 points.

.......It can be verified the new stick of gum went in right around Jessie's first of 2 2nd half 3's.........give or take 3 or 4 minutes.

[sac]

Tonight's top performers

Double-double's
Michael McClary, Olivet 14 pts 11 rbs vs Kzoo

Scoring
Desmond Young, Adrian 28pts, 11-16 shooting vs Alma
Jesse Reimink, Hope 25pts, 6-8 treys vs Calvin (career high)
Brandon Way, Olivet 25 pts vs Kzoo
Caleb Veldhouse, Calvin 23 pts vs Hope
Brandon McClary, Olivet 21 pts vs Kzoo

The Odd
Last 4 minutes of Alma v Adrian
Substitutions:  Alma 33 Adrian 2

If the tournament were held tommorrow

#8 Alma at #1 Hope
#7 Kzoo at #2 Albion
#6 Olivet at #3 Calvin
#5 Adrian at #4 Tri-State

The only thing certain is 1-4 will host home games, Calvin and TSU have clinched their spots, and the order of finish can change in the bottom 4.........don't even ask me to figure tie breakers for a potential 4 way tie for 5th.

[AndersDY]

Fitting, hasn't Hope managed to match up with Alma in all but 1 or 2 years of the existence of the MIAA tourney?

[sac]

Fitting, hasn't Hope managed to match up with Alma in all but 1 or 2 years of the existence of the MIAA tourney?

Yes

95,96,97,98,04 Hope had byes

2000 Hope played Kalamazoo as the #3 seed

They have met 10 times in the previous 16 MIAA tournaments, all in round 1.

[GoKnights68]

Tough night to be a Knight fan.  Without look at any of the night's posts I'll make a few comments.

-Don't know why the Knights came into the game with the lack of intensity.  These are the same players that beat Hope in a meaningless game(tourney-wise) in DeVos last year, so I thought they knew how important the Rivalry was.

-Congratulations to Hope for making Calvin's offense a 3-man game tonight (Englsma, Mantel, and Veldhouse),   Pretty embarrassing to look at the team-stats and see that.  I don't care how good of defense Hope is playing, if you're a good 3-point shooter like Veltema, Griffin, and Smith, you gotta get some shot-attempts in!

-Calvin once again left Hope with too many wide open 3s.  Remink and Wolf have both proven they can easily knock those 3's down with ease when nobody is in their face.

-Maybe I should wait until the MIAA tourney is over to comment on this, but it appears the KVS "Motion" offense is not fitting these group of players,  Hope and Albion learned that the key to beating Calvin is just putting some pressure on the guards and be aggressive with going for the turnover.  When a guard gets the ball half-way between half court and the perimeter and turns to the opposing teams' basket like they do with the motion-offense, Calvin seemed unprepared when multiple players were in their faces when they turned around.

-Officiating was very questionable, but you can't on that that much when you get your tails handed to you by the opposing team like Calvin did tonight.

[GoKnights68]

I'll add Hope did an excellent job at not turning it over tonight.  They also get a ton of offensive rebounds (11, but it seemed like more).


And yeah Calvin's lack of bench production hurt them.  Englsma and Mantel (starters) can only do so much of the down-low work before they need a rest..

Calvin just puts out too many line-ups where they don't have a lot of offensive weapons, so the team can easily focus on Calvin's key offensive players.  Katt, Zoerhoff, and Koetsier are not traditionally scoring threats.

[hope1]

hope played a good game last  night calvin was just flat in the first half  and that was really bad that the calvin fans were mad when vanderstrek put the subs in the last 2 min the game was done   no on towards tri state saturday

[hopehoopfan]

Hey, maybe there's a silver lining somewhere:

Calvin-59

Hope – 35

(Tonight's score minus the points of the seniors from both teams)

Good grief.

What was the score of the JV game?

Well, since noone else has commented on the JV game, Hope won surprisingly easily, making the Dutch supporters wonder how they lost the first time??  The score was 81-52 led by Aaron Boersma's 20 points(6-3's  I think).  Good guard play from Tonn,  Keyser,  and Carrol to control the tempo of the game. The "almost" play of the game was a sweet alley-almost-oop from Tonn to Nelis. Perfect pass, good grab, just didn't quite find the mark!   There is quite a bit of talent on this team and some will be ready for varsity action next year to help fill the void of the graduates. They averaged close to 85 points per game in conference and played very strong defense as well.

[Flying Dutch Fan]

Couple of stats that caught my eye (beyond those already mentioned)

- Calvin out shot Hope for the game (47.2% vs 42.6%) which doesn't seem to make a lot of sense given the final score.  Hope made one more basket than Calvin (26 vs 25) but the real difference comes from behinds the arc (Hope 10-30 vs Calvin 4-11).  Hope also out scored Calvin from the FT line 14-5.

- Both teams had a "hot" half (Hope 56.3% in the 1st & Calvin 60.0% in the 2nd)and a "cold" half (Hope 27.6% in the 2nd and Calvin 35.7% in the 1st).

- Combined Veltema, Zoerhof, and Katt played 43 minutes, and were 2-3 for 4 points (all Katt) 3 rebounds, 5 fouls, 1 assist, and 4 turnovers (all Zoerhof).  Not the kind of bench play you need in a game like this.  To me the most amazing part is that Veltema is solid zeros across the board for stats in 15 minutes.

- Ty Tanis - one of his more impressive games, despite being 0-1 from the field, with 1 rebound, 1 assist, and 1 steal.  Great to see this freshman go all out on D and help shut down DG.

- There always seems to be an unlikely "star" in The Game, and Branden Bosch was definitely that last night.  3 great drives to the basket, and great D as well.

[hope_hoops1]

Excellent win for Hope last night as they start to build momentum heading into the tournament(s).  It was great to see Reimink come out with a big game and knock down some huge shots throughout the game.  I knew he would have a better game than last time, but outscoring his matchup, Griffin, 25-0 seemed very unlikely.  He can't take all of the credit on Griffin as Tanis played his best defense of the year and the entire team seemed focused on him when he had the ball.  Stiffling team defense the entire night, and even though Klein gave up quite a bit to Mantel, his ability to rotate and help other defenders allows the perimeter guys to get right up on Calvin's perimeter players.   Now we just need to take care of business on Saturday so Albion doesn't host the conference tournament.