Updates on Bradley's Class of 2019 recruits

[tornado]

well, it is a little risky to say with certainty -- but my take...

-without a doubt Stephan Gabriel has a solid D-I body and looks to have the ability, talent and fitness to play right away. Plus, he does seems to have some pretty good defensive abilities. However, from all the games of his that I have seen, he shows signs of playing in poorly coached offenses - so he might need some time to develop into someone Coach Wardle uses.

-Rienk Mast has played against toughest competition consistently- playing and practicing constantly for over a year with & against mature pros and in systems with competent & experienced coaches. So I think he will be a good replacement for Luuk right away.

-Antonio will get some time and he will be tremendously valuable if DB gets hurt

-I think Ville will come in to Bradley a little like Sam Maniscalco - able to play right away but will need to adjust as i think it will be much more physical than the 2nd tier game in Finland. If he shoots the 3-pointer well - then it would be hard to keep him off the floor. Northern Iowa always has one or two of those guys like Lohaus & Sonnen - and Drake's Timmer last year - who weren't the most physically gifted but earned playing time with their shooting

-JaMir Price is a year away - I haven't seen a lot of his games but he is not going to contribute next year

[Heemeskerk]

Thanks good insight. You are right risky to say/predict. Excited to see what each brings to the table!

[tornado]

HBA-Marsky get a huge win in their first playoff game....
They also play again Saturday.
...

Ville Tahvanainen & HBA-Marsky are playing well and win today - taking a 2 games to none advantage in their best-of-five playoff series.
Score: HBA-Marsky 84 - Torpan (ToPo) 78
Ville had a phenomemal game hitting 5-9 form the 3-pt arc!
He ended with 19 pts, 4 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 steals
Utah commit Mikael Jantunen had 21 pts, 14 rebs on just 7 shots attempted!

they have a chance to close out the series and advance on Tuesday March 26



Rienk Mast & Donar Groningen tip off in about 50 minutes and here's a link to a live stream - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7-VVhKyeCA
It may be free - it doesn't appear to actually say - but it's a possibility you'd have to register or pay

[tornado]

Donar loses 76-61
but I found a picture of Rienk Mast from the game - he can go with his left hand

[tornado]

Rienk Mast will play for a Groningen U20 team in the Holland National U20 Tournament from April 19-22

https://www.hnbt.com/

[tornado]

Ville Tahvanainen and his HBA-Marsky team win and sweep their series 3-0 with Ville getting 16 pts, on 4-7 from 3-pt
Ville also had 3 reb, 4 asst, 3 steals..
..but now they play the next round against the top team in the league

[tornado]

Update on Bradley recruit Antonio Thomas - gotta like what you see!

https://twitter.com/Teamshabazz9/status/1111680345915695104

[tornado]

In Ville Tahvanainen's last 10 games he is shooting 33-65 from 3-pt range
That's 51% from the international 3-pt line which is almost a foot and a half further than NCAA

[tornado]

The schedule for the next round is set - for the HBA-Marsky & Ville Tahvanainen

HBA-Marsky faces LoKoKo in a best-of-five series with games currently set for:
April 3 - LoKoKo vs. HBA-Marsky
April 5 - HBA-Marsky vs. LoKoKo
April 8 - LoKoKo vs. HBA-Marsky

LoKoKo is located in Loimaa, Finland about 80 miles NW of Helsinki
Their name "LoKoKo" is the shortened form of Loimaa Korikonkarit Korisliiga (which meant the Loimaa Veterans of the competition league)
...but for short, they call themselves the Bisons, which despite being commonly thought of as a North American animal,
...one species of Bison is native to northern Europe


EDIT- the games are scheduled for April 3, 5, 8, 10, 12 - the last two if needed
https://www.basket.fi/basket/sarjat/...a/?arena_id=95

https://www.basket.fi/basket/sarjat/pelipaikka/?arena_id=65

[wizard1]

t....Isn't there some way we could get an good interview on Ville Either in English or translated into English? There hs to be more on Ville in major games and interviews. What do other coaches say about him? He is obviously a very good offnsive player but can he play the kind of defense he will ned in the MVC?
Wizard

[Da Coach]

There are several interviews of Ville on Youtube, but they are all in Finnish. But there are also a couplel videos of him in games, so that is about the best we have to evaluate his play for now.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%22ville+tahvanainen%22

[tornado]

HBA-Marsky opens their 2nd round playoff series today vs. LoKoKo Bisons - who have two guys our staff would be quite familiar with...

-their leading scorer is Marcus White, who is from Milwaukee Vincent HS and jumped right to playing pro ball in Finland after starring at Salt Lake City CC (juco)
He averages 22.9 ppg and 8.4 rpg.

-then they also have Alex Foster, who played at Bradley from 2015-17 - and he averages 15.7 ppg and 11.3 rpg for LoKoKo

HBA-Marsky will need to find a way to contain these two guys
Game starts at 11:30am Central

[tornado]

HBA-Marsky lost their first game of the series - semi-final series vs. LoKoKo

HBA-Marsky 85 - LoKoKo 88
Ville's shooting was off - he scored only 3 pts and didn't make a 3-pointer but he had 6 assists to 2 turnovers and a couple rebounds
Utah commit Mikael Jantunen had 25 pts, 8 reb and for LoKoKo- Alex Foster had 13 pts, 10 reb - both below his averages.
HBA-Marsky got more points off turnovers (24-8 ) and more on fast breaks (27-14) and more off the bench (25-5)

Next game April 5 - https://www.basket.fi/basket/sarjat/...ason_id=103771

[tornado]

Live streaming of Rienk Mast's game going on right now

https://www.newheroesbasketball.com/livestream/

very low halftime score -
Donar Groningen (Mast's team) 26 - Den Bosch 28

Mast is #15 in white


My observations so far...

-Rienk Mast is very active, mobile and athletic - he starts & plays a lot of minutes at the top pro level in Holland

-he's slender so he gets pushed around a bit but he's very good at getting position, grabs rebounds, sets screens and can score but it's obvious with all the older guys on the team that he does not take a lot of shots and sets up other guys.

-the Dutch style is fast paced - lots of quick passes then often they settle for a bad 25 foot jump shots

-if you look at the stats - Rienk Mast is one of the better shooters (based on shooting pct) so probably he ought to shoot more.
Mast hits 41% from 3-pt which is 2nd best on the entire team but he only attempts about 2 3-pointers per game - way fewer than half the number attempted by a few others on the team.

-the picked a fat old guy out of the crowd to try a half court shot for a free big screen TV, and he shot the ball backwards over his head and almost made it!

[tornado]

Donar loses 69-63
Mast had just 2 pts but never really looked much to shoot
he had 5 rebounds