You keep talking about difference makers. Freeman was a true Freshman. I’d rather bring back a true Freshman at 6-10 who was the Freshman of the year than 95% of the portal guys. And he didn’t even really hit his stride until halfway through the season. Dix was coming off a year of recovering from a broken leg. These 3 guys who you keep saying lead us to the NIT should be much better this year. We filled needs with athletes at the other 2 positions. Go cheer for Greg Gard losing his 2 best players. Let’s see how he replaces them.
Big Ten Arms Race
- Thread starter GunnerHawk
- Start date
Don’t argue with America. He knows it all. Just ask him.
Gard is 'replacing' Storr, Chucky, and Klesmit with 3 guys who've been absolutely plagued by injury in their respective college careers. I'd be happy with John Tonje, Xavier Amos, or Camren Hunter (who Fran had eyes on) on the Iowa roster but by no means are they clearly better than Thelwell or Traore.
What about these guys? What are they missing? Both say Torvik overrated us at 15/50 (discussion starts at 16:10):
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You found 2 guys in their bedrooms offering 15 seconds of uninterested analysis
They also picked Iowa to finish last in the conference last season. If you listen to some of their other videos, a lot of the reasons why they are so low on Iowa this coming year is due to them thinking Fran is checked out and doesn't care anymore now that Patrick is gone.
Which, I get why some outsiders might think that--there's certainly Iowa fans that think Fran is close to being checked out too. I guess we will see, but I have a feeling that not coaching his sons anymore is going to be more of a positive for Fran and the team than a negative.
It's almost as if college basketball players tend to get better during the offseason. And while, yes, that applies across the board to other programs just as well it has to be mentioned that Iowa's internal development of players has been a bright spot of the program. Not every single player is going to hit--but honestly if even just 1 of the non-Owen sophomores takes a nice jump in production then Iowa has the chance to be pretty good.
You don't even have to go back that far to when the last time Iowa had a bunch of underclassmen with potential on the team and missed the tournament. In 17-18 Iowa went 4-14 in the conference and in that same offseason the only real addition they had to the roster was Weiskamp coming in as a freshman. Using America's logic here, the same players that lead Iowa to a bottom of the conference record with no real "improvements to the roster" you'd expect that Iowa would have been dog crap the following season. Instead, Iowa was ranked in the top-10 in the country at one time before it fell off the rails a bit at the end of the season, but they still made the NCAA tournament and that team was definitely the closest we have gotten to the damn Sweet 16 we've been wanting for 25 years. Cook, Garza, JBo and Moss all took fairly significant jumps in that offseason. And don't get me wrong, Weiskamp was a really good 4-star high school prospect that everyone was excited about. But I think it's fair to say that no one really expected that level of production out of him in year 1 also.
Look who Gard lost to the portal... his best players couldn't leave fast enough.
lol ok
Sleepers is as B1G centric as it comes. They usually have solid takes.
Like the beginning of last season when Greg argued for weeks that Michigan was a top-25 team lol
They're entertaining, don't get me wrong. But they lean too far into the hot takes (which is part of the entertainment) for me to look to them for solid analysis.
If you are an Iowa fan, why don't you donate a bunch of $$$ to NIL or stop ragging on Fran for not being able to get "top" portal players when he can't pay them like other schools? Fran has finally gotten some athletic players who aren't too fragile or unathletic to play defense and rebound. With your in-depth analysis
you don't seem to recognize it.
lol Everyone knows Iowa will be a top defensive team, just like we always are.If you are an Iowa fan, why don't you donate a bunch of $$$ to NIL or stop ragging on Fran for not being able to get "top" portal players when he can't pay them like other schools? Fran has finally gotten some athletic players who aren't too fragile or unathletic to play defense and rebound. With your in-depth analysis
Not true. They predicted that Iowa would make the tournament and that Pat would make an all big ten team (around 22:00). I'm fairly certain you're also lying about Greg predicting Michigan as top 25.
Yeah...you were lying about Greg saying Michigan was a top 25 team before last season. Here (Oct '23), he argues that they are ranked too low preseason at 11th in the B1G, and claims that they belong in the middle of the pack with teams like Iowa. Yet more evidence putting the lie to your claim that they projected Iowa last in the league last year.
Tsk. Tsk. .... Stop making things up, bro.
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Another guy writing from his bedroom projects Iowa as 12th with Sandfort:
247sports.com
Way-too-early Big Ten power rankings after heated transfer portal arms race
The dust has (mostly) settled in the transfer portal. Who has emerged at the top of the new-look Big Ten pecking order?
247sports.com
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The one thing that seems clear to me is that with the transfer portal, predicting the following year is pretty close to a total crap shoot.Another guy writing from his bedroom projects Iowa as 12th with Sandfort:
Way-too-early Big Ten power rankings after heated transfer portal arms race
The dust has (mostly) settled in the transfer portal. Who has emerged at the top of the new-look Big Ten pecking order?
Everyone knew Purdue would be the best team in the league. Everyone roughly knew most of the tourney teams -- MSU, Wisconsin, Illinois.... After that? Yeah...it's far from Newtonian.
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