Game Notes: Hope College @ North Central College (11/16/13)

Final Score
Hope 126, NCC 56

Game Summary
This game was a stark contrast to yesterday's affair. Lauren Hernandez hit a three on the opening possession to give the Cardinals (1-1) an early lead. It lasted for about a minute as the Flying Dutch (2-0) worked their way down the court quickly in transition a couple times and scored the next 15 points. Hope even stole North Central's line change strategy for subs a few times to keep fresh legs out there. Transition buckets kept adding up, and Hope led 71-30 at the break. The second half took a while for being a blowout, and Hope just kept adding to the lead. They topped the century mark about halfway through the frame, but there were a lot of fouls and free throws that stopped the clock and extended this game longer than it needed to be.

Key Stats

• NCC: 51 turnovers. Really, I should just leave this here and be done with it, but I think this told the tale. You can't be this careless with the ball and expect to win. Hope logged 32 steals in the win, a lot of them on really bad/telegraphed passes. Hope has a lot of size in the post, and they made it almost impossible to get entry passes, yet the Cardinals kept forcing it in there. Too bad.
• Rebekah Llorens (HOPE): 9-14 FG, 5-6 FT- 23 pts, 3 reb (2 ofr), 3 stl. The tournament's Most Outstanding Player, Llorens had plenty of open looks for layups all game long. A lot of it stemmed from fantastic ball movement by the Dutch to beat North Central's traps, but she made the most of her opportunities. I'm a little surprised she only had 3 boards, but they shot over 50% from the floor in the game, a given when you get so many easy layups.
• NCC: 17-21 FT (81%). In all the darkness of a 70 point loss, I did want to find something for this team to hang their hat on, and for me, it's how well they've done at the free throw line through 2 games. Tacking on last night, they're sitting at about 78% as a team. Freshman DeJa Moore was 10-11 from there to lead the way for the Cardinals. Considering as a team, they shot about 65% last year, I'm very happy with this. It bodes pretty well for the close games that CCIW play is bound to bring.

North Central System Watch

• NCC 3PT: 5-19 (26.3%). Hope played pretty good defense, so the Cardinals didn't get to jack up nearly as many threes as they normally do. And percentage-wise, it's an improvement to about what they shot last year. I think eventually, the shots will start to fall a little bit more as this team gets into the pace of the regular season.
• Hope Turnovers: 32. Hope came into the season ranked 9th in the country, and I had heard someone praise them as being very fundamentally sound. So at the end of the day, to force 32 turnovers is probably the best any team will do against them this season. The Cardinals logged 15 steals out of those 32 turnovers, paced by Sofia Svensson, who had 3, and three other Cardinals had 2, including last year's leader, Bobbi Johns.

Final Thoughts
Unfortunately, the prevailing thought pregame was that something like this was bound to happen, but it's sad to see it unfold this way. Even in a 70 point loss, we learn where this team is at going forward (spoiler: I'm not looking forward to the Wheaton or Wesleyan games), and you can tell there's a lot of youth on this team. I think they'll grow from this game and get a chance going forward to do a little damage over the rest of non-conference play. There are going to be games like this one. The question is, how do you bounce back from them? They're home on Wednesday against Lake Forest, so we'll find out then.