| Game One | |
|---|---|
| Who | Anderson Ravens |
| What | Season opener |
| Where | Anderson University |
| When | Tuesday, 7:30 PM |
| Audio | Stretch Internet |
| Video | Anderson Go Live* |
| Stats | Live Stats |
* When prompted to log in for the live video, use the username 'anderson' and the password 'ravens'.
When We Last Met
To my knowledge, this will be the first meeting between Calvin and Anderson.
About Anderson
The Ravens were picked to finish sixth in the HCAC coaches poll, but they shouldn't be taken lightly because of that fact. The HCAC is a league that has added depth and quality in recent years; I find the conference to be sneaky in how deep it actually is. No, Anderson doesn't look to be quite as good as their 23 win squad from two years ago, or probably even last year's 18 win team, but they'll still put up a good fight.
Apparently the Ravens are also coming into the season a little bit on the inexperienced side of things. Here's a snippet from Anderson's website:
“We have more incoming players than returning players and the schedule isn’t friendly at the beginning,” said AU coach Tom Slyder. “We’re behind where we have been the last few years. We’re inexperienced in learning our system so we’re at a different starting point.”
They do return three starters, so the inexperience looks like it comes in the depth, and not necessarily from the top of the rotation.
The Ravens played one exhibition game, a 101-68 loss to Division I IUPUI. Hard to glean anything meaningful from that score.
Calvin's Rotation
Coach Vande Streek used an eleven man rotation in the exhibition win over Ferris State. I'd expect to see pretty much the exact same usage against Anderson. Coach usually likes to whittle his list down to ten guys eventually (although he has gone eleven deep on occasion in the past), and right now it appears that there's playing time battle between Adam DeYoung and freshman Tyler Dykstra. Both played five minutes in last week's exhibition. Dykstra has more raw tools so if he can handle the assignment defensively then we'll probably see his playing time increase.
I'd also assume that we'll see the same five start for Calvin: Rietema, Haverdink, Snikkers, Vallie, and Kruis. I much preferred Calvin's play when Bryan Powell was on the floor instead of Rietema, but I'm not sure that coach will make that change yet. He may want Bryan to truly earn it back.
Sure-to-be-wrong Prediction
Massey Ratings: Anderson by 4 -- 37% chance of victory
D3 Index: Anderson by 2
Me: Calvin by 4
Need-to-win level: Super-duper high (one of only two non-conference in-region games)
Expected-to-win level: Medium to medium-low
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