Recap The Court

Jacob Smith

The Guelph Gryphons hosted the Humber Hawks for a set of four 10-minute scrimmages on Saturday evening, a first look at the new squad gearing up for the OUA season. Choosing to play scrimmages instead of a full game, we saw minutes from players up and down the roster, and two areas of the game shined in particular. Let’s look at two areas of strength and two not.

Guelph held the size advantage over Humber throughout the scrimmages and with that came the opportunity to show off their rebounding. Mainly on the offensive end, the Gryphons punished Humber with their height and used their second chances to score on many possessions where the first opportunity wasn’t great.

What made the first opportunity not great was their ball movement. When put into the half-court Guelph relied heavily on the speed of their guards to turn the corner on screens, but Humber wasn’t allowing that. As the Gryphons have shown in the past, a lot of their movement comes side to side, and usually off ball screens and trying to find a second opening to feed a pass inside. Whether it was the Humber defence or the worry of turning the ball over, the ball would get stuck in players hands usually leading to a last second shot.

When the Gryphons didn’t get stuck in the half court, they executed their transition offence extremely well. Guelph made Humber’s ability to get the ball inside null for most of each scrimmage as they used quick hands to force steals. Once they could force a turnover, the speed of the guards and the physicality of their forwards allowed the Gryphons to attack downhill and they forced many fouls with their aggressive style.

Guelph found a lot of success inside the paint and around the rim, and that left their other facets of offence up for question. The three-point shooting didn’t make much of an impact against Guelph. Guelph shot 27.9 per cent from three last season, seventh in the OUA. With Julia Colavecchia shooting 29 per cent as their highest volume shooter returning from last year, she will be important going against teams that are bigger inside the paint.

Guelph showed a lot of good through their scrimmages against Humber. As preseason goes on and the team gets more minutes together, the steps they’re able to take forward will help determine the start they get off to. A young but gritty team in Guelph will surely take everything as an opportunity to learn and grow, and we have yet to see what the capabilities are for this team.

Scrimmage 1

Guelph: 17
Humber: 11

Scrimmage 2

Guelph: 23
Humber: 8

Scrimmage 3

Guelph: 23
Humber: 9

Scrimmage 4

Guelph: 19
Humber: 19