Elmhurst and Northwestern Games

Our first game of the season against Elmhurst didn't go the way we had planned. Our shooting percentage overall and from three was downright awful. The sad thing is that we still should've won the game. Carl Hipp had a monster game with 24 points and 20 boards, ten of them offensive. He just didn't get any help. Levi Wenrich went from 11 and all of those were from the line. I was disappointed in our overall effort. We can make as many excuses as we want about being young but it wasn't a problem vs. MCTC or St. Cloud. Hopefully, this game was a wake up call for our guys.

I think that we learned a lot about ourselves during this game. We found out that we have to defend for a full 35 seconds on every possession and that we can't rely on Ray Brown to bail us out of certain situations on offense (he's hurt with a torn pec muscle). We did outrebound Elmhurst but we rarely boxed out. If Carl didn't play, we would've gotten murdered on the boards. We also made more free throws than Elmhurst attempted, which is a sign of a good team. We need to give ourselves better opportunities on offense by spacing out more and by always being ready to shoot.

The Northwestern game was quite the barnburner. We enjoyed an eight point lead during the first half that slowly dwindled away because of lack of focus. We ended up three at the half. Northwestern then came out and blew our doors away to start. It wasn't exactly the way we wanted to start. We quickly dug ourselves a hole and got out of it later.

After being down as many as nine points in the second half we battled back and got the lead after two Carl Hipp free throws with about 30 seconds left. This was after Carl made a great block along a great rebound that he couldn't have made last season (strength and confidence). We then played solid defense and recovered a loose ball for a jump ball with four seconds left. We had it being our ball as did the official scorekeeper. The only problem was the arrow on the scorer's table had it Northwestern ball. It was fixed and it was our ball. We got the ball inbounds to Levi Wenrich (one of our best FT shooters). Levi missed both shots and Northwestern called a TO. They drew up a play and their guys fumbled the ball a bit, we recovered, and came away with a 79-78 win.

It was a great win for us because it was our first and because it was the first time since I've been here that we won a close game that we battled from behind to win. Carl Hipp had another monster game with 25 and 12. Frosh Jordan Schmidt had 16 and fellow frosh Christian Taber was a great spark off the bench with 11 and three 3's.

I'm looking forward to Ray being 100% and our team battling on a nightly basis. Hopefully, that will come soon. Our next game is the 29th vs. Buena Vista at home at 3pm. Hope to see you there.

First Scrimmage

We had our first scrimmage on Saturday and it turned out fairly successful. We scrimmaged MCTC, who is ranked #1 preseason in the NJCAA D3 poll (which really means nothing). We started off a little slow and then our "second group" came in and had a ton of ball pressure and really pushed the tempo. Guys were communicating and really getting after. That group's pressure turned our whole half around. We ended up winning the first half handily.

At the start of the second half, we were scoreboard watching and our lead fell very quickly. Though, we didn't play particularly well, we still won the scrimmage (if you can do that). I always think its difficult for a young team to develop that killer instinct to beat teams when they are down. It is something that we will have to develop in order for us to get to where we want to be and that is the NCAA tournament. I give credit to Coach Jay Pivec and his players for coming after us after a lackluster first half. I won't go into specifics about players but we had four players in double figures with two upperclassmen and two freshmen.

This afternoon we watched the film and there is still a ton for us to work on. We were a step slow in many of our defensive slides. We must get more ball pressure and force the offense into making rushed decisions. Hopefully, we will learn from the film and keep working at it.

After watching film, we headed over to former Piper great Howie Schultz's viewing. It was great to interact with former Hamline players, I just wish it would be been in better circumstances. I know these viewings (or wakes) of Joe Hutton Jr. and Howie Schultz don't hit home with our players as much as they probably should but it's great for them to see the history of the Hamline basketball program. My condelences go out to his family. We are looking forward to honoring the past Hamline teams with a great season this year.

Congrats to the football team in their great win against Carleton on Saturday.