Champlin Park at Buffalo Thoughts

The Czar goes east metro to a special west of the metro trip with the Caveman to Buffalo for their tilt with Champlin Park. Hard to figure what league Buffalo is in as this is their 4th straight game vs the NW Suburban. They beat Coon Rapids and are coming off back to back losses to Elk River and Maple Grove. Buffalo has a very nice building too. Good place to watch a game despite the fact that the friendly concession stand person gave me Diet Pepsi instead of regular Pepsi. How am I going to maintain my girlish figure on 0 calories?

I was psyched for the Jasper Duberry (CP) vs Eric Olson (Buffalo) matchup but Olson isn't in the starting lineup and the 1st 3 Buffalo subs don't include him. But Olson finally makes his entrance at 12:32. Lefty Brock Korbel enters as well and sparks an 8-0 run in just over a minute with back to back triples on his 1st 2 touches. 13-6 Bison at 13:26. Buffalo very deliberate with their 5 man open post motion. Korbel with another triple and Olson on the board with a layup to make it 20-14 Buffalo at the 10 minute mark. Korbel not bashful about shooting it when he's got any daylight. Scott Theisen with a triple and a Josh Pella layup brings Champlin Park within 22-19 at 8:48. Thiesen picks up his 2nd foul at 6:04 and he has to sit out the rest of the half. The Rebels now going 1-3-1 trapping the corners. Olson with a free throw, a triple and then he finds Brooks Beilke for a layup. That's 6 in a row for Buffalo and they're up 30-24 with 2:50 left in the half. CP not rebounding in the zone so they're back man. Pella and Zimmerman trade assists to each other and get the rest of the 1st half points for CP. 33-31 Champlin Park at halftime after a 8-1 run over the last 2 minutes. Theisen with 10 points before the 2 fouls. Pella with 8 and Zimmerman with 6. Korbel with 9 for Buffalo on his 3 triples. Olson and Beilke with 6 each.

Champlin Park determined to play inside in the 2nd half. Kyle Zimmerman with the scoring there. Korbel with a couple of buckets for the Bison to keep it close. 41-39 CP at 12:45 and Zimmerman has 6 in the half and all the points for CP are inside. Zimmerman then with 2 FTs and a layup that bookend a 7-0 CP run that makes it 48-39 CP with 10:40 left. Eric Olson back in after a rest as Buffalo needs him on the floor to stop the bleeding. He finds Chase Liska to break the run but picks up his 4th foul at 10:15. Will Buffalo survive? Beilke with a 3 point play cuts it to 4. DeAndre Williamson with another inside hoop for CP. Brandon Stevens with a 3 to cut the CP lead to 50-47 at 8:50. Zimmerman with another post hoop but then he leaves after appearing to tweak his back (an injury that kept him out most of the fall) at 8:17. Beilke makes 2 bonus FTs and another FT to cut the lead to 53-50 at 7:45 and Olson is back in the game. Zimmerman returns and finds Tyler Munneke for a triple on the inside out look. Beilke hot with a triple and then a J cuts it to 56-55 CP at 6:25. Zimmerman with a free throw and then a nice pass ahead to Pella that yields another free throw. Pella gets a steal and finds Duberry for a layup 60-55 CP at 5:15.

Bielke with another triple and then he steals the inbounds for 2 and the foul. He makes the foul shot and in the blink of an eye, Buffalo is back on top 61-60 with 4:30 to play. Duberry drives and banks one home at 4:10, CP by 1. Olson gets a steal at the 3 minute mark and in the process of driving to the basket on Duberry, he pushes off on him and gets called for the offensive foul. (good call) That's the 5th foul on #3 Olson and he's gone. But wait, the zebras and the scorer's table (and frankly the CP bench too) mess this up horribly and the foul is credited to #33 Beilke and Olson by some miracle is still in the game. I'm speechless. Duberry makes 2 FTs off the resulting possession and CP leads 64-61 with 2:38 left. Olson then makes 1 of 2 after a phantom holding call on Duberry. The ref right on the play sees nothing and then out of nowhere the official on the other side of the court calls the hold. Wow. 1:45 to go CP by 2. They take time and kill almost a minute of clock with a dribble weave type delay but Theisen on the bounce pushes a guy over (good call) at 49.9. CP stays with the 1-3-1. Beilke makes a hard cut down the left side of the lane gets the ball on a nice feed and goes up. Pella appears to block the shot cleanly but there's the whistle and that's Pella's 5th foul. Beilke makes both with 37.7 left and we're tied at 64. Out of a timeout, CP looking to quickly run a screen the screener play for Theisen rather than playing for 1 shot. Zimmerman gets fouled off the ball as that's happening. He makes 1 of 2 with 21.7 left, 65-64 CP. Out of a Buffalo timeout, CP stays 1-3-1. Olson gets in the top gap and in the lane. He finds Beilke underneath but he can't convert. Theisen rebounds and gets fouled with 4.3 left. He makes 1 but misses the 2nd. Buffalo rebounds and calls their last timeout at 3.6. They show the play and then CP calls timeout before the inbound. Buffalo tries to find Olson curling near midcourt but he is forced into the backcourt. He never touches it and Buffalo doesn't get a look at the final shot. 66-64 Champlin Park in a fun game with some strange officiating late.

For Buffalo, they fall to 2-3. 1-3 vs the NW Suburban. They finish their tour of the league when they host Osseo on Tuesday. Eric Olson with 6 points but he was the guy who got them into their sets and found open people. This was especially true of his penetration for good looks vs the 1-3-1. Brock Korbel is instant offense off the bench. he got his 11 points in 2 quick bunches. Brooks Beilke was coming off 2 quiet games, but he went off for 25 tonight. He had 19 of Buffalo's 33 in the 2nd half despite that last tough miss inside. 2 triples and 7 of 8 from the stripe. Monticello appears to be the favorite in the Mississippi8. STMA just moved into the rankings so they'll be there. I look for Buffalo and Cambridge-Isanti, despite their current struggles to be next in line. CI has a brutal 3 game stretch after the holidays where they host STMA and Buffalo followed by a trip to Monticello in a 6 day span.

For Champlin Park, they get their 1st win of the year after tough losses to Minnetonka and Wayzata (no shame there). Kyle Zimmerman with 15 in the 2nd half and a total of 21 for the game. CP was able to throw the ball down to the block to him to get points whenever they wanted in that 2nd half. With the assists added in, he had a part of at least 19 of the 33 CP 2nd half points. This may be the only time all season where you see CP as the dominant team inside scoring post up buckets. Scott Theisen with only 4 2nd half points after 10 in the 1st half. They're not deep as they really only play 7, and you could say 6 as DeAndre Williamson may or may not be part of the critical rotation. Size obviously an issue and in their 1-3-1 they didn't rebound well in it and they weren't active in it. But if they played man, Buffalo's execution would have gotten to them. Tough spot to be in. They'll also need to address the backup point spot and they really don't have a good way to get Jasper Duberry a rest.

X and O of the Day
The final play for Buffalo was something like this (at least the apparent intent, not the result). Ball on the end line on the right side of the basket for the offense. 1 guy around the top of the key in the backcourt. 1 guy at center court. 1 guy at center court on the left side line. Olson was on the left side near the far hash mark. The idea here is to have Olson curl around the screens of all 3 guys or any set of them and catch the ball on the move going toward the basket (or at least not backwards) and in the natural direction of his dominant hand (an under estimated part of this) up near center court or at least above the top of the key. You tell a player how many dribbles he has by calculating 1 dribble per second. So he'd have 3 dribbles with 3.6 left. They'd be clear because no one wants to foul him in a 2 point game. That would put him at the foul line extended area on the right wing with a chance to knock down the winning 3 at the horn.