Dasonte Bowen has entered the Transfer Portal (Commits to St. Bonaventure). He was supposed to be "the" PG that Fran finally landed
- Thread starter Franisdaman
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This tells me that the big donors don't like Fran and a new coach that can appeal to them is needed. Or the NIL guy needs to come up with a different sales approach. Unfortunately I think a new coach would be required for this also, not much to sell currently.
He'll play the Sandfort boys at the 2 and talk about how they can shoot it, drive it or move it.
I am no basketball expert but when I watch it just seems like when harding plays, the offense runs better and we get easier shots.
The problem is, so does the other teams when he's in. Maryland's comeback came with Harding on the floor.
Can anyone say with a straight face that they really thought guys Krikke, Patrick, and the brothers Sandfort would take Iowa basketball to new levels/deep runs in the Dance? Its seems like every season Fran recruits the same types of players year in / year out - most of the players on our roster had a few decent offers, but by no means were 'highly sought after'. I don't follow recruiting that hard, but by all accounts signing Freeman may have been one of his all time best gets out of H.S., but then he pairs him with Brock (who I like) who had zero bigtime program offers. The staff just does not recruit the #1-#3 position players that well - most have defensive slowness and are streaky shooters who would be coming off the bench for most top BT programs (i.e IL). The few athletic players we do get normally come with some sort baggage/handicap like turnovers (Joe T) or inconsistent/no shot.
I agree then he makes a boneheaded play as freshmen do. Harding adds an element Iowa needs though. He can break a press fairly easily using his quickness and he can get in the lane to breakdown defenses and deliver some great assists. He’s also abused when the opposing team posts him up. He’ll get stronger in the off season and comeback better. He can be a special player.
He recruits better guys, can't close on them. Need the slasher 3 position guy and guards, gotta have the guards
Shooting yes, anything else, not so much. Not sure yet about Pryce, but Payton can't defend most 2s. He looks like a wooden Indian (reference for those of us old enough to remember them), trying to stay in front of anyone with handles and even a little quickness. Also, really not a good enough ballhandler IMO.
I already think Fran needs to find a combo guard in the portal, if Tony doesn't come back. If Bowen is disappointed enough to leave, I think that need will huge.
If Tony leaves I fully expect the starting lineup next year to be Dix, Payton, Patrick, Freeman and either Pryce or Koch.
And that lineup will probably lead the league in scoring and miss the tournament.
Best case scenario is at this time next year we're discussing how well the new coach has done in year 1.
It could be something like that. I'll go into my spreadsheet and get you a precise answer on that. Best way to analyze that I think is to only look at the possessions where Patrick is out of the game and then compare how the team does with Bowen or without him (and similar comps for the other guards).
He has a covid year.
The last two iowa players who said they weren't going to use their covid year ended up using their covid year.
Do you track whether it's zone or man?
Most of the time when Bowen comes in at the 13 minute mark Fran goes to a zone for some reason. And not just on out of bounds plays.
And as we all know, whenever Iowa goes zone it's an automatic open corner 3.
Fran used to do this with Perkins and Ulis when they were Freshmen and with Toussaint his last year.
It's a ridiculous strategy to use your players who are most capable of man defense in a zone. Not to mention when it's only 4 or 5 minutes a game the players out there never develop the communication and familiarity with eachother to make a zone work.
This is correct It amazing how much the word “defense” comes out of people’s mouths when explaining why he doesn’t play more.
Let’s address this right here. Brock came into the game at around the 1246 mark and they were ahead by six points. He left four minutes later with Iowa up two.
In that time, he had four points or about 6 to 7% of Iowa’s offense, and a steal. His turnover came from Patrick tipping the pass to someone else while running around wildly. Two of Maryland’s points came from Patrick, watching somebody, take the ball right in front of him and putting it back in.
That four minute stretch was pretty darn good. Patrick sucked the life out of those four minutes. End of story.
I agree with this but to be fair you did leave out the part where Young manhandled him on the block.
And then Frany went to a zone because of that which is almost never a good outcome.
I'm all for more guards on the floor in any way possible though.
Agreed. They did back him down. But someone would have to explain to my why there was no help against one of the worst shooting teams in the big ten.
I would consider the backdown and steal an even trade and one you should be able to plan for.
I would consider the backdown and steal an even trade and one you should be able to plan for.
Depressing if Patrick returns. Team will be better if Tony is back, but that could impede the development of Bowen and Harding. I am hopeful that Dembele will be a different player next year, if he gets at least 15 min/game, and maybe even starts. Patrick would put and end to that or Koch playing a lot of minutes.
For sure, that shouldn't have been possible to back him down from that far away without help.
I do track zone vs. man on every possession. I've been doing this for years and what I've found is that Fran typically uses zone on out of bounds and when the other team is shredding our man-to-man defense. Sometimes he will mix it in there to create confusion - like if it's a late shot clock situation and the other team likely has a drawn up play to beat m2m. Generally, he doesn't lean on it much unless the m2m is getting smoked. He generally won't just suddenly switch into it if the m2m is going well. For example, against Nebraska, Iowa started the 2nd half in m2m. Nebraska scored on each of the first six possessions against the m2m (14 points in six possessions!). Fran switched to zone for the rest of the game and Iowa gave up only 0.88 points per possession in the zone defense in the second half of that game. Iowa gave up a number of open looks from three point range in the second half of that game, Nebraska missed them and we could stay in our zone for the entire half.
I wrote an article a few years ago on the old Go Iowa Awesome website on the effectiveness of our zone. What I found is that the zone tends to work quite well for about 20 possessions and then it gets absolutely shredded (probably by corner threes). I don't think that article exists online anymore otherwise I'd link it.
Definitely.
The team would have been so much better off to use this season as the rebuilding year where all of the young guys got to play through all their mistakes.
Instead it was just a waste of time riding the upperclassman big minutes and likely not even getting to the NIT.
It might seem that way but the truth is that against high major competition (omitting the recent @Maryland game which I haven't yet tracked), Iowa scores 1.03 points per possession when Harding is in the game and 1.14 points per possession when he is on the bench.
Our best backcourt combination, by far, is Perkins + Dix.
Are you talking about guards? Are you saying that Perkins, after everything that he's given to this program, should be sitting in favor of vastly inferior players like Bowen and Harding?
spot on post - I know everyone loves them home state boyz, but Fran and staff really need to recruit more athletic guards/slashers.
I'm pretty positive hes been using zone frequently (maybe half the time) the last month or so when he brings Bowen off the bench for those 4 minutes or so.
A couple games ago it really stuck out with him and Dembele being completely confused on who was supposed to go where on multiple possessions that were not out of bounds plays.
If you're going to track what you were referencing early in regards to Patrick in conjunction with the guards it would be interesting to know how many of those particular possessions were zone or man.
Nope, Patrick and Krikke.
Sandfort should be playing the 4.
Play 3 guards like the rest of the world.
Tony is the best player and should be on the floor as much as possible.
I was being a bit sarcastic with that description. Fran always says that about his guys and the other team in most press conferences. Kind of like when he says a player isn't a mistake guy. Just a bunch of coach speak verbal diarrhea. He needs to find a combo guard even if Bowen and Perkins decide to stay. Perkins can play the 2, Dix the 3 and the new guy at the point. Harding can sub for any of them and play the point. Bowen can sit with Mulvey.
I'd play Harding with Perkins and Dix. Sandfort at the 4, Freeman at 5. I think Harding would get Dix and Sandfort more open 3's and we know he has chemistry with Freeman. Defense and rebounding wouldn't get worse than playing Krikke and Patrick. Perimeter defense would probably actually improve.
Meaningless stat because it doesn’t account for who you are playing with.
Brock gets stuck with Patrick see my post above. It’s hard to play when Patrick just runs around on offense and dribbles randomly to elbows forcing others with last second shots. Or having to play 4-5 defensively when he’s in.
Can his shooting be better. Yes. He’s 4-7 the last five games from 2 and 0-1!from three. He’s shooting 30% from three for the year. I’m guessing that would be slightly better if he had more confidence he wouldn’t get yanked for a missed shot or mistake.
I’d also guess shooting %’s for Peyton and Josh would go up with a guard that can collapse a defense.
Defense would improve drastically, so would rebounding and so would the amount of shots Sandfort gets.
When you play 4 out and use the 5 as the screener it opens it up for everyone you get drives and kicks all day because of how much more ground the defense has to cover. That's why the NBA almost exclusively plays that way, it's easier to score.
Statistics don't always tell the truth, Perkins is averaging 3 times the minutes and Dix is averaging 2 times the minutes that Brock is averaging, it's not even a level playing field. Also does your analytics take in account who is on the court when Brock is in compared when Tony and Josh are playing, plus Brock as a freshmen is not going to take as many shots while he is in, as he is concentrating on getting his playing partners involved. The last few games Dix when he is handing the point has been reluctant to even put up shots when open. Why do you think that is, does your analytics take that into account?
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Sorry Bulldogs1974 for replying to the post about, I picked the wrong post to reply, the above reply was for this Andrew Houk post.
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BirdistheWord
HB Legend
Harding is fairly disruptive on the defensive end. Averages 1.0 steal in 11 minutes/per game. We desperately need some additional quickness.
You have no idea if this is true. We were his only high major offer. He’s actually regressed from earlier in the season. He’s small and he’s getting killed on the defensive end. Now I’m not saying it’s all his fault but it’s ugly right now between both him and Bowen. I’m actually blaming Fran. He’s looking for the first all 6-7 starting lineup!
