Basketball Season Recruiting

Today I'm going to give you a listing of all the places that I went for games for this past high school season. I'm not going to give you names of the kids because it's a NCAA violation. The Hamline Basketball schedule is mixed in there in bold as well so you can get an idea of how busy we are during our season. If you look through the schedule you will notice that most Sundays are off, but not for the coaches and players. Sunday is usually a prep day for Monday's game, so we almost always have practice. Sunday is also a big day to catch up with recruiting.

Nov. 15 - vs. Elmhurst (IL)
Nov. 17 - vs. Northwestern (MN)
Nov. 29 - vs. Buena Vista (IA)

Dec. 2 - vs. Augsburg
Dec. 3 – Forest Lake
Dec. 4 – St. Cloud Cathedral
Dec. 5 - vs. Macalester
Dec. 7 - @ St. Olaf
Dec. 8 – Forest Lake
Dec. 10 – St. Anthony Village
Dec. 12 - @ Concordia-Moorhead
Dec. 15 – Academy of Holy Angels
Dec. 18 – Janesville Parker, WI
Dec. 21 – Wheeling Holiday Tournament, IL
Dec. 22 – Blaine
Dec. 29 - @ Cal Lutheran Tourney vs. Wheaton
Dec. 30 - @ Cal Lutheran Tourney vs. Cal Lutheran

Jan. 2 - vs. Carleton
Jan. 4 - @ Bethel
Jan. 5 – Forest Lake
Jan. 6 - vs. St. Mary's
Jan. 8 – Shakopee
Jan. 9 - @ Gustavus
Jan. 12 – Minnehaha Academy
Jan. 13 - vs. St. John's
Jan. 15 - St. Cloud Cathedral
Jan. 18 - vs. St. Thomas @ Macalester
Jan. 19 – Minnehaha Academy
Jan. 20 - @ Augsburg
Jan. 21 – Janesville Craig, WI
Jan. 22 – St. Cloud Cathedral
Jan. 23 - @ Macalester
Jan. 25 – Minnehaha Academy
Jan. 26 – Robbinsdale Cooper
Jan. 27 - vs. St. Olaf
Jan. 28 – St. Cloud Cathedral
Jan. 29 – Forest Lake
Jan. 30 - @ Carleton


Feb. 1 - vs. Concordia-Moorhead
Feb. 2 – St. Anges
Feb. 3 - vs. Bethel
Feb. 5 – Breck School
Feb. 6 - vs. Gustavus
Feb. 9 – St. Cloud Cathedral
Feb. 10 - @ St. Mary's
Feb. 16 – Zimmerman
White Bear Lake
Feb. 17 - @ St. John's
Feb. 18 – St. Cloud Cathedral
Feb. 19 – Academy of Holy Angels
Feb. 20 - vs. St. Thomas
Feb. 23 - MIAC Quarterfinal @ Carleton
Feb. 24 – Minnehaha Academy
Feb. 25 – Totino Grace
Feb. 26 – Shakopee
Feb. 27 – St. Anthony Village

Mar. 1 – Hill-Murray
Minnehaha Academy
Mar. 2 - Hastings
Mar. 5 – St. Thomas Academy
Mar. 10 – Holy Angels - Sectionals
Mar. 11 – Forest Lake - Sectionals
Mar. 12 – Hill-Murray - Sectionals
Mar. 13 – Howard Lake-Waverly-Winsted - Sectionals
Mar. 16 – Arlington HS - Sectionals
Elk River HS - Sectionals
Mar. 18 – Kohl Center – WIAA States
Mar. 24 – Target Center – MSHSL States

Some practices that I attended were not included. One must remember that this is just my recruiting schedule and not the other coaches.

NABC All-District Team

Nice to see that there are people that actually have a clue. The NABC's All-District Teams came out and Carl Hipp was voted on a Second Team All-District member with fellow MIAC player Aaron Burtzel from St. John's. Tyler Nicolai from St. Thomas was voted First Team.

You can find the list by following this link on the NABC website. (It's a PDF file so it might take a while).

Also, congrats to Coach Mike Maker and his Williams College Ephs making the Final Four. Coach "Makes" worked with me at West Virginia and has been very instrumental in my coaching career.

D3hoops.com All Region

D3hoops.com All Region teams were announced yesterday. Congrats to all the players on the first, second, and third teams (like the MIAC should do it). West Region teams are here. I'm just going to go out on a limb here (insert sarcasm). A few of these selections are complete jokes. John Fraase from Concordia is a good player and good enough to be All-Conference but isn't an All-Region player let alone a 2nd team, ahead of our conference's MVP, Tyler Nicolai. I don't think Fraase is even the best player on his team let alone a top ten player in the West region.

Are they trying to say that neither Ray Brown or Carl Hipp aren't one of the best 15 players in the West? What a disservice to these kids. On top of that, Aaron Burtzel, second leading vote-getter for MVP of the MIAC isn't on the list either. Come on people, have a clue.

At least they got one thing right on Freshmen (not First year) of the Year Chris Palmer. He was a stud for them and clearly should be awarded.

MIAC Awards

The MIAC awards just came out the other day and was filled with Hamline players. Both Ray Brown and Carl Hipp were All Conference. Carl was also All Defensive Team. Jordan Schmidt and Noah Aguirre were two of the five guys on the All Freshmen Team. You can look at the rest of the awards here.

Based off the votes, both Ray and Carl would be First Team All League but unfortunately, the league basically decides anyone who is nominated for All Conference gets at least Honorable Mention. What a joke that is. There should be a First Team, Second Team, and a Third Team and that's it.

There is also a Sportsmanship Award that goes to one player from each team. In the famous words of Jack Byrnes (Robert DeNiro) in Meet the Fockers, "I didn't know they gave out 9th place ribbons."

Playoff Basketball @ Carleton

After being listed as the #5 seed in the playoffs, we got to play in the bandbox of a gym they have at Carleton. It could make for a great atmosphere but it certainly doesn't. Huge advantage to Carleton right from the get go. We have played much better at home and I don't think there is any question about that. Another worry we had going into the game was the status of Ray Brown. Ray hyperextended his knee vs. St. Thomas hasn't been close to 100% in practice and we weren't sure how much he could go or go at all.

The game started out pretty good for us at we got the ball inside quite a bit to Carl Hipp. He scored pretty much whenever he wanted and we took control for a long stretch of the first half. The game then slowed to a snail's pace and the game didn't seem to have any flow. Carl got his second foul on a very questionable call and he still isn't to the point where we feel comfortable playing him while in foul trouble. Carleton then starting making a bunch of shots and we quickly were digging ourselves out of a hole and we ended up being down two at the half. Not exactly how we wanted to end the half.

The second half was quite the back and forth battle as neither team could pull away from each other. Carl got his 4th foul with about ten minutes left on a questionable call to say the least. Everything turned in Carleton's favor after that. We started helping a little more than normal on their bigs and they kicked it out for some 'dagger' 3's that we couldn't climb back from. We got back to within four a couple of times but couldn't get over the edge. Another call that didn't go our way was a potential "and 1" from Carl Hipp that the refs waived off because they said it happened before he got the ball. Inexcusable call but the refs and could've been a huge turning point for us, instead we got two free throws. We ended up losing by eight in a tough hard fought loss.

Carl had another monster scoring night with 26 on 10-13 shooting from the field, while going 6-14 from the line. We had no other players in double figures.

I personally want to thank our seniors for their hard work and dedication to turning things around here at Hamline. Thanks Nick, Danny, and Ray.

It seemed like every 50/50 call went their way. I'm not saying that the refs cheated but you are doing the kids a disservice when our kids are playing just as hard as the other team and not getting any respect. The stigma about Hamline is that we aren't any good, that is changing and hopefully the refs will change their misconceptions about our basketball program. We will battle with this until we are better than Gustavus, Carleton, St. John's, and St. Thomas. Nelson and I know it's the good ol' boys network (that we clearly aren't a part of) here in Minnesota but don't screw our kids.

By the way, Carleton beat St. Thomas last night in the Semis of the tournament and will play at Gustavus for the championship on Saturday.

St. John's and St. Thomas

Haven't been posting lately because I've really focused on the last couple of games and our playoff game today vs. Carleton. We didn't exactly end the season the way we would have hoped but that's the nature of the beast in a tough conference.

St. John's
We went up there last Wednesday in what always seems like a tough game. Last year we lost to them by 946 and it doesn't get any easier in Collegeville (yes, that's the name of the town). We started off pretty well from the field and then went into a major funk as St. John's went on a 18-2 to go up 20-11. We just couldn't get anything going offensively and they were making some tough shots. Usually not a good combo.

The second half was more of the same as we couldn't get it going. We got down as many as 15 and just weren't clicking offensively. Then something happened. We went with Brandon Rieg, Jordan Schmidt, Noah Aguirre, Dan Andersen, and Andy Voigt. They cut the margin quickly while moving the basketball like crazy and getting open looks. We have consistently told the team when we move the ball with penetration and passing, no one in the league can cover us. That was clearly the case for that stretch. On top of that, we were getting stops defensively. We ended up getting up two with about 2:30 left. Those guys looked like they were running out of gas and we ended up putting Nick Carroll, Carl Hipp, and Ray Brown back in the game. We couldn't close out the win and lost by three. Another tough loss on the road for us.

We were led by Noah Aguirre's 16 points on 6-12 shooting. Carl had 14 and 11 while Dan Andersen had his first double double of his career with 11 and 11. Jordan Schmidt rounded out the scoring with 12.

St. Thomas
This was probably the biggest game of the last 20+ years for the Pipers. At stake was a playoff home game and a win against St. Thomas, which hasn't happened in a long time. We got off to a rough start. Never a good sign to be down early against a quality basketball team. We kept on fighting and ended up being down by 14 at the half. We turned the ball over way too much and couldn't get ourselves going on defense. Not exactly the way we wanted this game to begin.

The second half was more of the same, as we could never get it closer than eight. We had several chances at getting it closer but couldn't make shots. What we did show was our toughness, we didn't back down at all in the second half. We actually outrebounded them by 14, which is definitely a good sign. The problem was that they got to every loose ball. That's the difference between having strong juniors and seniors compared to freshmen and sophomores. We just didn't want it as much as they did, plain and simple.

Final score, St. Thomas - 80 Hamline - 69. We were led by Carl Hipp's double-double with 20 and 14. Ray Brown finished with 15, all in the first half. Dan Andersen also had double figures on Senior Night.

On another note, here a link to some College Sporting News MIAC Awards that were handed out recently. Congrats to Carl and Ray on a great regular season.

We have Carleton tonight in the first round of the playoffs. It can be seen this link.

St. Mary's

We headed on the bus for the two hour trip down to Winona to take on the Cardinals from St. Mary's. We beat them by over 30 the first time and we knew coming in that this one was going to be tough one and it certainly was.

We got off to a decent start and were up by five, five minutes into the half. We made it a 21-17 game with about 13 minutes to play in the half and it went completely downhill from there. They went on a 15-0 run over the next six minutes and didn't look back the rest of the half. We were down 52-36 at the half after our worst offensive performance all second semester and our worst defensive performance of the year. It was very disappointing to watch and it didn't help that many of our guys got into foul trouble.

The second half was more of the same. We couldn't get things rolling for a while. We finally got it within single digits and St. Mary's answered with a 9-0 run of their own and never looked back. The final was an extremely ugly 98-77 loss for the Pipers. They flat out beat us to every facet of the game. We outrebounded them by over 20 the first time we played and they got us by six this time. Clearly, it was an emotionally letdown from our game Saturday against Gustavus. It clearly shows that anyone can beat anyone in our league.

We were led by Ray Brown's 33 point performance. Noah Aguirre played his best game in a while with 14 points with four offensive boards. Carl Hipp rounded out our double figure scorers with 10 in very limited minutes.

SMU was led by Lucas Holland's 22 on 11-12 from the line. Gary Seifert scored more points than he had all year with a career high 17. They also had three other double figure scorers. They shot a solid 50% from the floor and a astounding 32-35 from the line. Props to the Cardinals for their effort.

Even with the loss we still clinched a playoff spot and still have an outside shot at getting the 2 seed or a home game. We are a half game behind both Augsburg (who beat St. John's) and Gustavus (who lost to St. Olaf in OT) for 2nd place. Should be interesting to see what happens this weekend when we have our bye.

We have a week off before we play in Collegeville against St. John's on Senior Night. Hoping to ruin that night for them.

Carl Hipp was named to the D3hoops.com Team of the Week for his performances last week.