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| I'm hoping these students (not pictured) were at the volleyball match. |
Calvin 83, North
Park 54 (box
score)
Not the sports apparel retailer, that’s Champs Sports, and not the sports bar and grill
chain, that’s Champps Americana
Restaurant (notice the extra ‘P’, someone over there is too clever); I’m
talking about the Calvin Tip-off Tournament Champs.
It’s kind of a big deal. People know it.
I find it hard to write words after horrible, horrible
losses and blowout victories, but at least I can justify typing random words
after the latter (I think that means the second one), because no one’s reading
this anyway. They’re all out celebrating the championship. Still.
The results of the two games this past weekend were nice –
it’s rarely a bad thing to win by 30 – and we don’t know how the respective
seasons for Grace and North Park will shake out, but winning both of these
games by 30 (or 31 and 29, if you’re a stickler for details) should put Calvin
right where they want to be. In order to be a good team one must beat these two
soundly, and Calvin did just that.
I think the biggest thing that stood out to me, both
while watching the actual games and while taking a brief stroll through the
stat sheets, was that Calvin played two pretty complete team games. The Knights made 66 field goals across the two games,
and recorded an assist on 49 of them (that’s 74%). Last year’s team was
actually quite good with assist rate (59%), but that could be a partial function
of the team’s poor-ish scoring ability. Whereas last year’s team needed assists
to lead to easy baskets (otherwise they weren’t scoring), this year’s team seems
to be constantly creating such opportunities. The result has been very few
forced shots and many, many good looks at the basket.
Fun fact: everyone
that’s played at least ten full minutes has at least two assists.
One of the more impressive stat lines probably belongs to
Tom Snikkers. Tyler Kruis has the impressive 20+ point average (and I’m going
to take him for granted for a moment here), but Snikkers has dialed down his shot
attempts and has become the team’s assist leader. Not that he wasn’t scoring –
he has the third highest scoring average at 8.5 – but he’s doing that while
also leading in assists and trailing only Mickey DeVries in total rebounds.
That’s a versatile player.
Defensively Calvin was no less impressive. I’m sure coach
Vande Streek will find things to break down and stomp about, but they appeared
to be as active – or proactive, perhaps – as a Calvin team has been in a number
of years. Like they’re past the point of learning
the system and to the point of getting good
at the system. Active hands, active feet, cutting off driving lanes, closing
out on three point attempts, getting in the passing lanes. All things that
frustrate the opponents and lead to high (25%) turnover rates.
My biggest complaint about the man-to-man help side defensive
system that coach Vande Streek likes to employ is that it can’t be a passive
system. No defensive system can be (and still be effective). When Calvin has a
young team (like last year) or a team filled with new people, the defense feels
that way. When the defense is passive, the offense dictates the play. I’m sure the
Grace Bible and North Park players will tell you they didn’t feel comfortable
on the offensive end.
All of this, of course, receives the all-encompassing
quality-of-opponent caveat, but it’s not like we’re trying
to justify an eight point win over Finlandia or anything. All signs point
to good.
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