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Posted March 10, 2005

All eyes
on Michigan

We’re talking about the MIAA this week, so let’s get the controversial stuff out of the way first. Albion coach Mike Turner has talked enough about the finish to the Albion-Wooster second-round game, in which the Britons won on a free throw with less than a second left. Bottom line is this: Both teams were good enough to win that game, and one did. As Turner said: “It was a game we were happy to win and fortunate to win.”

Both the men’s and women’s teams at Albion and Calvin are feeling quite happy and quite fortunate heading into Friday’s Sweet 16. Albion won the regular season titles on both the men’s and women’s side by one game, but Calvin won the league tournament in each, beating Albion in the title game.

Ricky Shilts shot 9-for-18 from three-point range in three regular-season games against Albion.

The Britons were left to sweat out Selection Sunday and were rewarded with a Pool C berth and a first-round bye in both cases. The men were rewarded again by being allowed to host, which meant that the Albion women would have to travel. The trip will be a short one though, as Calvin was awarded the women’s sectional, partly because top-seeded Millikin is hosting some Illinois high school basketball tournament games.

Really good teams get in position to catch breaks on and off the court and no one’s going to doubt whether the Albion men (25-3 heading into its sectional semifinal with John Carroll) are part of a good team. The Britons knew this was going to be a really good season when they hung with Division I Detroit until the final seconds of a preseason exhibition. Those thoughts were confirmed with a 14-0 start, and three wins at the Cactus Jam in Phoenix, including one over fellow Sweet 16 participant Ramapo. Those thoughts were rewarded with the Pool C selection and a first-round bye.

“I feel that we’re a very fundamentally sound team,” Turner said. “Rebounding and defense are our cornerstones. We can run a little bit, but we also play very solid in the halfcourt.”

Talentwise, Albion has three players that it can stack up with anyone in the country. All three made the eight-member All-MIAA first team: junior forward Brandon Crawford, senior guard Mike Thomas, and senior forward Travis DePree, the latter two of whom are three-year first teamers. The 6-7 DePree rivals UW-Stevens Point forward Jason Kalsow as the nation’s most impressive all-around big man. He is ranked in the top two in career numbers in five categories at Albion and led the team this season in rebounds (9.6 per game) assists (5.0 per game), blocks (35) and steals (62), finished third in scoring (13.4 points) and was second in both field goal percentage (58.2%) and free throw percentage (80.0%).

“He’s one of the most intelligent players we’ve ever had,” Turner said. “He’s the whole package. He’s a guy — I don’t say I coached him, I say I coached with him — for four years. He has been a tremendous ambassador for our program”

“We have a range of talents,” says DePree. “We can shoot, score from the inside, do whatever takes.

“There’s a lot of heart on this team.”

Albion wins with patience and good ball movement. The Britons can win a game in which they take fewer than 50 shots because they shoot better than 50% from the field, 39% from 3-point range and 71% from the foul line, allowing them to pile up better than 78 points per game. That’s nearly as many as the Michigan neighbor that will be playing in the other sectional semifinal, albeit with a different style.

“Two teams who play basketball the way it should be played,” DePree said.

The Calvin men’s team is the only one in either bracket to advance to the Sweet 16 by winning a pair of road games. It hasn’t seemed to matter where the Knights have played this season. They seem to be as good away from home as they are in the Calvin Fieldhouse.

“We’ve been playing some very consistent basketball all year long,” said head coach Kevin VandeStreek. Defensively, I think we’ve been outstanding.”

Calvin had 10 new players last season and made the NCAA Tournament after finishing in third place in the regular season, losing to John Carroll in the first round. This season’s team had 10 returnees and their experience from last season showed.

“We’re not a bunch of spectacular talents, but we play very well as a team” VandeStreek said. “This is a very unselfish unit.”

Part of that comes from team building exercises done in preseason. Calvin has done this the last few seasons, in which, once a week, it spends a day of practice without a basketball. The players and coaches talk about trust, communication and commitment and relate it to on-court performance. Those words were repeated under adverse conditions, like prior to beating Albion, a team Calvin had lost to twice by a combined six points, in the MIAA title game, and a matchup VandeStreek referred to as a battle of wills. They also came up when Calvin trailed Wheaton (Ill.) by 10 at halftime of its first-round game this season, after having already lost to Wheaton once this season. There was no grumbling or finger-pointing, just comments about how the team could be better.

“Sitting back and hoping for team chemistry isn’t something I wanted to risk,” VandeStreek said. “We’ve worked hard to try to develop it. There have been possessions where we’ve absolutely needed a stop and we needed our guys to tryst their teammates to do their job. That mentality does influence whether you win games.”

Calvin has won a lot of games this season with its shooting. The Knights have five players that hit 3-pointers at a rate of better than 40%, and though 6-8 senior Dan Aultman doesn’t, he hits 55% from the field and averages a team best 16.0 points per game. Other scoring comes from a lot of sources. In the first-round against Wheaton, it was from junior forward Joel Hoekstra, who netted 20 points, better than double his average of nine per game. In the second-round matchup with Aurora, it was from junior forward Andy Draayer, who has provided a lot of instant offense off the bench, netting 17 on that night.

The idea of seeing Mississippi College in the sectional semi, doesn’t bother them, even though it is an unfamiliar opponent. The MIAA has provided them with enough diversity of competition, from physically tough Albion, to multidimensional Hope to Tri-State’s run-and-gun that Calvin feels its consistency will carry them through.

“We’ve seen so many styles this season,” VandeStreek said. “I think that really helped prepare us for this tournament run.”

Calvin and Albion will only meet again on the men’s side if both win on Friday, which would create a tremendous sectional finals matchup, as the three prior meetings were decided by a combined 10 points. On the women’s side, the MIAA is assured an Elite 8 team, since Calvin and Albion will have a fourth meeting in the sectional semifinals

Calvin's Kristen McDonald averaged 9.3 assists in the first three games against Albion this season.

Although Albion shared the regular season title with Hope, Calvin swept all three meetings between the two, including the one in the MIAA Tournament to get the automatic bid.

It has been an odd and somewhat confusing season for that league when trying to figure out who is best. Calvin swept Albion, but was swept in the regular season by Hope, a team that Albion swept. Calvin did beat Hope in the playoffs, behind a season-saving 40-point performance from senior Kristen McDonald after Albion beat Hope at the close of the regular-season, on a season-saving performance from senior guard Sarah Caskey, who hobbled off the bench on a sprained ankle to drain a pair of clutch 3-pointers in the last 80 seconds to clinch the No. 1 seed in the league tournament and a share of the regular-season title.

The two teams both made the NCAA Tournament and after Calvin got through what coach John Ross referred to as “conference withdrawal” by beating Franklin and DePauw, and Albion beat a Denison team that coach Doreen Belkowski said had many similarities to Calvin, the stage is set for the fourth and final meeting this season.

The Knights felt snubbed after losing in the MIAA title game and being denied an NCAA appearance last season, even with a 20-game win streak on their résumé. Ross implemented a very aggressive weight training program and the players took to it, coming back physically stronger. With six seniors on the roster, the win-now mentality was in place. When winning the league tournament became a necessity, Calvin did that, getting that great effort from McDonald in the MIAA semifinals and a dominant performance from sophomore center Lisa Winkle in the championship game.

When teams try to go inside against the Knights, they have to deal with Winkle, who has 65 blocked shots and held Albion’s top inside threat, Ruth Sventickas without a basket in the MIAA title game. Winkle has thrived on offensive too, averaging 16 points per game as part of an inside-out combination with McDonald. Winkle is averaging 22 points in her last three games (the MIAA title and two NCAA Tournament games), while McDonald is averaging 24 points in her last five games,

Calvin has six seniors, all of whom came in together as freshmen. This tournament is their ultimate reward.

"I remember freshman year, we were something like 12-14," McDonald said. "I never thought we would be here in four years."

Calvin changed its style of play in midseason, looking to go to a faster paced offense, but losses to Hope and Tri-State had them abandoning that plan and going back to a focus on tougher defense, denying opponents opportunities in the low post. In Ross’ words, it was time to get back to business. The Knights have won 10 in a row and are 24-4.

“I want the players to enjoy practice, so we would play loud music during it,” Ross said. “Then, when we lost to Hope and Tri-State, I took that away. We were having fun, but it wasn’t a serious enough atmosphere. We haven’t lost since.”

Likewise, Albion has made a remarkable progression to get to this point. When Belkowski was hired, she was told that winning five games in a season would be an improvement. Now the seniors that were a part of her first team have a chance to play for something pretty special.

"I didn't think things would happen so fast," Belkowski said. "It was a matter of adjusting to what we had. For example, we couldn't run with a team like Hope, so we slowed the game down a bit."

Albion (25-4) has been very businesslike this season and has succeeded despite losing four starters to injury at various points. The Britons are tough, as evidenced by Caskey’s one-legged display against Hope. Without that win, the Britons are probably sitting at home this weekend.

“Sarah is a very good all-around player, but the biggest thing with her is leadership,” Belkowski said. “She relaxes everybody around her. She’ll even calm me down during timeouts. She’s such a tough kid. For her to do that on one leg really proved how tough she is.”

Albion took its first step to national prominence last season by beating Calvin, which had swept them during the regular season, 49-45, for the league title. The Britons held a late double-digit lead against Wilmington in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, but the Quakers rallied to win that game en route to a national championship. Caskey (16 points, 4.8 assists per game) and backcourt mate Vanessa Thompson, as well as sophomore No. 2 scorer, Sventickas have taken the attitude that this season, the team can push itself a little bit farther.

“That’s one change for us this season,” Belkowski said. “We’ve learned how to finish games. I think a lot of that comes with experience. I think it was good then, for us to see just how close we were (to national championship level). I hope we’re peaking at the right time.”

ANOTHER NEW FACE: When we asked William Smith coach Olympia Scott-Richardson in what ways her team improved since the start of the season, she came up with quite a lengthy list.

From the top to the bottom of the scoresheet, Scott-Richardson, a former star at Stanford and a six-year veteran of the WNBA, was able to come up with something for everyone, and that helps explain why the Herons won the Liberty League and have made it all the way to the Sweet 16 in Richardson’s first season as a coach at any level.

William Smith had fallen off the women’s basketball radar the last couple of seasons, but now has everyone’s attention again, heading into a sectional semifinal with No. 2 ranked Bowdoin at Scranton.

In the preseason, Richardson made it clear that she would demand a very high level of intensity for her players, but one that wouldn’t alter their enjoyment level of the sport, or make them uncomfortable during games. She drew chuckles when demonstrating how she wanted them to set ‘brick wall’ screens or yelling to distract an opposing ballhandler, using the same techniques she’ll put to use this summer for the Sacramento Monarchs (Scott-Richardson was traded there by Charlotte this past week). But the message got across very well because the Herons players knew Richardson had credibility.

“I told the players that we would do everything in our power to make them better,” Scott-Richardson said. “I told them I believed in them, and I’d push them because I believed.”

Richardson has dealt with enough coaches as a player to know what worked and what didn’t and she realized the best message she could send was one of poise and composure, so she doesn’t pace the sideline or criticize her players during a game. Composure has been a key characteristic of this season’s squad. William Smith won its second round game at Oswego by pitching a defensive shutout over the last seven minutes. William Smith, which scores about 60 points per game, wins with its defense, which has held opponents to 34% shooting from the field and 23% from 3-point range.

“The last seven or eight games, we’ve really turned it up a notch,” Scott-Richardson said.

That comes back to the improvements, like how Marisa Vespa, the team’s leader in points and assists, has learned to choose when to fast break and when to pull back into a halfcourt set, all the way to No. 8 scorer Paula Foote, and how her recovery from a torn ACL (which Scott-Richardson could relate to, having suffered the same injury in 2003), has led to her becoming one of the team’s most clutch players (33 points in the last three games).

“A lot of people think we’ve overachieved this season, but I think this is the level that we’re really on,” Scott-Richardson said. “We’re highly motivated right now and we’re feeling really good about how we’re playing.”

TIGER TALES: There was a pattern earlier this season for the Trinity (Texas) men’s basketball team, one that was somewhat bothersome considering that the Tigers start five seniors. Trinity started 3-4, not just because of a tough schedule that included Texas A&M and a couple of Division II and NAIA squads, but because it couldn’t hold leads against those teams. In three of those losses, Trinity held a double-digit first half lead and couldn’t close the deal.

So the Tigers faced a gut check early in the season, but when you have five seniors of the caliber that Trinity does, and have the experience of four juniors coming off the bench, you’ll eventually thrive in such situations. Trinity did, beating Newman and rallying from 10 points down against Illinois Wesleyan to start a 12-game win streak and a run of 21 wins in 23 games that led to a third consecutive SCAC title, another NCAA appearance, and a trip to the Sweet 16, where they’ll take on Hanover, a team that also got a huge emotional lift from beating Illinois Wesleyan, in a sectional semifinal.

“We could have been 3-6, even though we were playing pretty well,” Cunningham said, knowing that kind of mark could have taken a mental toll. “I think the Newman and Illinois Wesleyan games got us believing in ourselves. They got us pointed back in the right direction.”

Trinity wins because of its height in the post, which makes it a very imposing team to play against. The Tigers start a frontcourt that includes 6-6 Andy Bates, 6-8 Peter Murray and 6-10 Sean Devins. That leads to easier shots on offense (the trio combine for about 36 points a night), and no easy looks for an opponent when the Tigers are on defense (Trinity had 175 blocked shots, nearly four times as many as their opponents)

This has been a different kind of run for Trinity, which lost close games in its NCAA opener in each of the last two seasons to Aurora and Sul Ross State. The draw was a little more favorable this time around, as the Tigers held off Texas-Dallas, then dominated Pomona-Pitzer.

“Our guys felt that we could have and should have won in the last two years,” Cunningham said. “They were determined to get back again.”

ATTENTION GRABBERS
There are 32 teams still alive in the bid for a national championship and it’s easy to make the argument that every game is of equal importance to our readership. Time does not permit us to offer a full-scale preview of every one of the Sweet 16 matchups, but with the help of SIDs and the magic of the Internet, we made it our personal quest to try to somehow attempt to satisfy everyone. With that in mind, we went through each one of the games and looked for a note that grabbed our attention and hopefully will be intriguing enough to pique your interest for that particular contest..

Men’s
Hanover/Trinity: Hanover upset Illinois Wesleyan, probably the only way it could, by shooting a lights-out 17-for-23 in the second half. Streaky might be the best word to describe the Panthers, who by our count have had eight halves this season shooting 60% or better, plus two more in which they shot 59%.

UW-Stevens Point/Puget Sound: The statistical dominance of UW-Stevens Point is pretty amazing. UW-Stevens Point is 52-1 in its last 53 games against non-WIAC opponents since a loss to Edgewood on Dec. 29, 1999. The only loss during the span was a 75-62 loss to Gustavus Adolphus in the 2003 NCAA second round. Over their last seven NCAA tournament games, the Pointers are shooting 56.1% from the field, 46.5% from three-point range and 79.6 percent at the line. Nick Bennett is averaging 24.3 points while shooting 60.2% from the field and 56.9% from three-point range in eight career NCAA tournament games. He has averaged 13.8 points over all of his 113 career games. He had a career-high with 37 last year against Puget Sound and needs 24 points to pass Milwaukee Bucks head coach Terry Porter for fourth place on the school’s all-time scoring list.

Ramapo/Kings: Albright head coach Rick Ferry compared King’s forward Brian Horgan to Billy Hoyle, the character played by Woody Harrelson in the basketball-themed movie White Men Can’t Jump, referring to Horgan as a quiet, non-descript athlete with the ability to be a silent-assassin style. The 6-4 Horgan made plenty of noise in his senior season, winning Freedom League Player of the Year honors, and has played all five positions in his four years at the school. Horgan leads the team, which won a school-record 23 games, in scoring, rebounding, steals, and blocked shots.

Worcester Polytech/York (Pa.): York is the definition of balanced. Four players average double figures, six led the team in scoring at least once, six led the team in assists at least once, and five players led the team in rebounding. Meanwhile, the last time WPI played a school from Pennsylvania in the NCAA Tournament — it lost — to Widener, 41-38, in the Round of Eight in the 1984-85 tournament.

Amherst/Rochester: This will be the third time in four years that Rochester and Amherst are in the same sectional bracket, and the second time that the two will meet there. It is also the third consecutive year in which Rochester will play its Sweet 16 game on a New England-based court, which is particularly neat for Massachusetts natives, senior forward Seth Hauben and junior guard Joe Canty. It should be pretty neat to watch the matchup between Hauben (19.3 points, 12.2 rebounds) and Amherst’s Andrew Schiel (17.0 points, 34 3-pointers, 53 blocked shots), who could end up in adjacent spots on an All-American team based on the way they’ve played this season.

Potsdam State/St. John Fisher: These were the last two unbeaten teams remaining in the nation before Potsdam lost its first game. With North Dakota State’s women’s loss to TCU in late February, and Illinois’ loss to Ohio State this past Sunday, St. John Fisher is the only unbeaten four-year college basketball team in North America, men’s or women’s. The Cardinals also have the best opponents’ field goal percentage of any men’s basketball team in any NCAA division at 35.7%.

John Carroll/Albion: John Carroll has a tremendous amount of experience playing in tight games this season. The Blue Streaks are 4-0 in overtime games this season, making up for a three-season stretch in which they didn’t play any, and has played six other games decided by five points or less.

Calvin/Mississippi College: The statistician for this game should be ready for some unusual tallying. No team shares the scoring as much as Mississippi College does. In each of the last 19 games, the Choctaws have had at least 10 players score a point. As we were going through each box score, we were more and more amazed. Even when Mississippi College scored only 53 points, against Texas Lutheran on Jan. 8, a dozen Choctaws found their way onto the scoresheet.

Women’s
Bates/Southern Maine: We’ve spent some time and space on this site focusing on what USM doesn’t have, but what the Huskies do have is a run of 11 consecutive NCAA appearances, so they are used to playing in very big games. The Huskies also have a player who stepped up her game immensely this season in sophomore Ashley Marble, who was named Little East Player of the Year. Key for USM will be whether Marble, a transfer from Maine who nearly doubled her scoring average as a sophomore, is held in check (she went 2-for-9 against Bates in their first meeting) or can dominate (37 points, 21 rebounds in two NCAA games).

Springfield/Wesleyan: From having seen Springfield three times and Wesleyan twice, we feel this is a pretty even matchup, though the results of the first meeting didn’t indicate such. Wesleyan won, 74-53 on Dec. 10, led by 21 points and eight rebounds from junior center Hannah Stubbs. Lost in the NESCAC shuffle of great play from Bates and Bowdoin is Stubbs, who needs seven points to become the first junior in team history to score 1,000. Stubbs averages 16.7 points and is among the nation’s leaders in field goal percentage shooting at 63%.

Millikin/UW-Stout: Millikin freshman forward Lindsay Ippel, who has been playing terrific off the bench recently, will be playing in an interesting environment at Calvin on Friday. Both of Ippel’s parents are Calvin graduates and her grandfather was a professor there. Her college decision came down to Millikin and Calvin. Ippel has averaged 6.8 points per game this season playing sparingly after an injury to Karen Olson, but has been the team’s leading scorer in its biggest games. She had 26 in the CCIW title game win against Illinois Wesleyan and 20 in the second-round triumph against Washington. Ippel is one of triplets, with a brother playing soccer at Calvin and a sister playing basketball at Wheaton.

Albion/Calvin: One of the better human interest tidbits we uncovered this week was about Albion coach Doreen Belkowski. Prior to coaching at Albion, Belkowski worked at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, as a cytotechnologist, assisting in cancer diagnoses and helped coach part-time on the high school and AAU levels. Belkowski was encouraged to apply by someone she knew at the school, and in her first season, 2001-02 proved she was up for the challenge by increasing the team’s win total from four to 17 and laying the groundwork for the NCAA appearances the last two seasons.

Bowdoin/William Smith: Bowdoin head coach Stefanie Pemper has crossed paths with William Smith’s Olympia Scott-Richardson before. In 1998, Pemper was an assistant on the 16th-seeded Harvard team that topped Richardson’s No. 1 seed Stanford team in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Stanford was without two of its top players, so Pemper was among those involved in designing a strategy in which Richardson, an honorable mention all-american, was triple-teamed at every touch of the ball. “They had a good gameplan,” Richardson recalled with a laugh.

Scranton/Messiah: Homecourt advantage is an appropriate theme for this sectional. Scranton has the nation’s second-longest home win streak, at 30 games, and is 24-3 in NCAA Tournament home games, with the last loss coming in 1995 while current head coach Mike Strong was on sabbatical.

St. Benedict/George Fox: Mike Durbin’s family and friends in Virginia and Ohio will get a second chance to see his St. Benedict basketball team. This marks the second trip to Virginia this season for the St. Benedict women’s basketball team. The Blazers opened the season at the site of the Final Four, in the Batten Center at Virginia Wesleyan, winning both games of the season-opening tournament and prompting one onlooker to say that looked were as good as any of the four squads that were there at the end of last season.

Randolph Macon/Trinity (Texas): If championship-level experience is important, then the Tigers should be in good shape. Four of Trinity’s starters played significant minutes on the national championship team from two seasons ago. Tara Rhode was the team’s backup center and played a huge role in the Final Four with her shot-altering abilities. Jenna Smith started at shooting guard and set a standard for defensive play with 92 steals. Amy Howe was injured and didn’t play in the Final Four, nor did then-reserve Jennifer Farrar, but both have played big roles in getting the team back to this level. Farrar hit the buzzer-beater that won the first-round game against Howard Payne, while Howe had 18 points in the second-round win against Greensboro.

Champion predictions
If public opinion has anything to do with it, the national champs will be UW-Stevens Point and Bowdoin, because those were the teams tabbed most often to win in our pick ’em contest. We had 672 entries on the men’s side and 246 on the women’s side.

The biggest surprise team in the Sweet 16 was the Hanover men, as only 44 had the Panthers beating Illinois Wesleyan. St. Benedict, Springfield and Wesleyan can cause a lot of havoc if they win the whole thing on the women’s side. Not one fan picked them to win.

Notes for Around the Nation are compiled with the help of sports information directors across the country. If you have suggestions or information for this column, please send it to mark@d3hoops.com.

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