If it weren't for JBo and a lucky Weiskamp banked three we would be on a 5 game losing streak reminiscent of 2016 where we were 19-4 and then went on to lose 4 of the next 5.
End of Season Slump Part 2?
- Thread starter ArmchairQB4hawks
- Start date
I don't get this. "If" they didn't make the shots? They made them. I would say that Iowa is not playing good basketball right now (I didn't watch last night) but they are still winning the games they should win.
Part 2? Doesn't the 2014 collapse count? This is Part 3, my friend, and a very disturbing trend.
That's diplomatic of you, but anyone who follows this team closely can see that they are becoming less and less interested with each game, and now look like they just want the season to be over. It is scary similar to '14 and '16. This team has "one-and-done" in both B1G Tourney and NCAA Tourney written all over them.
Another poster postulates that Fran simply physically and/or mentally fatigues his players, so that they get to this point of the season and simply have nothing left. Hard to argue with that.
Can we at least let the season finish before we bury this team?
I agree. This team will probably wrap up the regular season at 23-8/22-9 and an NCAA lock. Last night was a stinker and Iowa hasn’t been playing well, but find a team in this conference who hasn’t hit a rough patch this year, you won’t.
The Defense is just so atrociously bad, 90 points to a garbage Offensive team and some Clown who averages 2 points goes off for 20+. That isn't happening much around the league in the upper half of the standings right now.
One loss in a row is a slump? In college basketball teams lose all the time especially on the road... fans can have their gripes about Fran or dolph or whatever but losing on the road is not reason to shout the sky is falling.. I understand a strange subgroup of fans roots for iowa to fail but we aren't there yet
Maybe not, but Iowa’s record is what it is and they have no bad losses
My concern about this Iowa team is we seem to be regressing. Yes, we won a few last-second games but let's be honest ... Iowa is NOT playing good basketball ... And this is NOT the time of year you want to be regressing.
What in the freaking hell are you talking about? Did you not see the team mobbing Wieskamp after his made 3 vs. Rutgers? Or mobbing Bohannon after the NW and Indiana games? Pure joy.
At no point over the past 5 games has it looked like the team has given up or wants the season to be over (last night's game included).
The team had a bad game against an NCAA-level team on the road. Some random dude had the game of his life and OSU shot 22-24 from the line--if Ahrens has a normal game and OSU only shoots 70% instead of 95% from the line, Hawks would probably win that one. They were in the game up until the tech collapse in the last 2 minutes. Playing hard the entire time.
Franuary flop! nothing beats backing into the post season...
also, at no point during the first 35 minutes of the 3 miracle wins did they play good basketball. OSU they struggled the whole game. Maryland was competitive. This team isn't showing up ready to play. I don't like blaming 20 year old kids so I point to the millionaire coach who doesn't have them ready to play.
Northwestern is the only game I'd agree that they played poorly throughout. Rutgers was back and forth and Iowa actually held a narrow lead down the stretch - also remember that same Rutgers team beat the OSU team that thumped us last night...Big 10 is a very good conference this year, even the bad teams are only bad relative to everyone else, heck Indiana has a possible lottery pick on their team.
OSU was also back and forth in the first half before the wheels obviously fell off in the second. Partly that was Iowa's defense was poor but also credit OSU a bit. sometimes the shots went in even when they did play good D - I remember a couple of shots that went in as the shot clock expired, and those can be so deflating. Last night was the first game where it looked like the Hawks lost their composure.
If Iowa goes 1-3 or worse this last stretch...maybe you can talk about a "fade". I can't really credit that if the hawks 23-8/12-8 this year.
Iowa has bounced back well after poor performances previously this season. Bring this up again Saturday night.
OSU was also back and forth in the first half before the wheels obviously fell off in the second. Partly that was Iowa's defense was poor but also credit OSU a bit. sometimes the shots went in even when they did play good D - I remember a couple of shots that went in as the shot clock expired, and those can be so deflating. Last night was the first game where it looked like the Hawks lost their composure.
If Iowa goes 1-3 or worse this last stretch...maybe you can talk about a "fade". I can't really credit that if the hawks 23-8/12-8 this year.
Iowa has bounced back well after poor performances previously this season. Bring this up again Saturday night.
21-7. This team was projected as in the bottom 4 of the conference. People are quick to forget.
I was actually thinking about this today on the way to work - Go back to Pitt (11/27) a game they won by one point - Pitt at 2 shots at the end of the game and missed both. You could look at the others mentioned above and this could easily be 15-12 - which is much more in line with the results we're used to from past seasons of Fran......
They are 5-2 in February.
Agree that they aren't playing their best basketball right now, but the W/L in February is NOT a flop and W/L is all that matters at the end of the day.
Hopefully getting blasted on the road is a wake-up call...again.
Remember what happened last time they gave up 90+ points and got blasted on the road (@MN). They returned home and beat #5 Michigan, playing pretty dang good D, then went on the road to beat Indiana.
I fully expect them to win AT LEAST 2 of the final 3 regular season games.
Go Hawks!
The two main trends as I see them:
He's either going to get sick of this and bolt so as not to subject his kids to the growing fishbowl frustration—it's like a tinderbox, or he's going to do everything he can to make sure the experience Connor and Patrick is a good one. I've long maintained that his coaching his kids at Iowa would either spark real improvements in the program or it would effectively end his time in Iowa City.
- Iowa wears down every year because the B1G is wearisome, especially for teams not chock full of big, strong athletes who play big, strong defense.
- B1G gets more physical as the season wears on, exacerbating the previous point.
He's either going to get sick of this and bolt so as not to subject his kids to the growing fishbowl frustration—it's like a tinderbox, or he's going to do everything he can to make sure the experience Connor and Patrick is a good one. I've long maintained that his coaching his kids at Iowa would either spark real improvements in the program or it would effectively end his time in Iowa City.
Agree with what you say. I think/hope Fran figures out that this physical play is going to continue and we need a bruiser inside, for matching up with these dang teams. It's not the style of basketball I like to watch, but the league doesn't seem interested in changing/calling fouls on the "bruiser" play.
Nope. We're Iowa...the sky is always falling.
We have an insufferable fan base. This past week has magnified that once again.
Really? You truly believe these hyper competitive kids "just want the season to be over?"
These are D 1 athletes on a winning, competitive team. I highly doubt they have thrown in the towel and just want the year to "be over."
Believing so, shows a lack of understanding of an athlete's mind.
You can do that with any team... if (insert team) would have lost all of their close games instead of win, they would have a worse record. The hoops some people jump through to put down this team is crazy to me... this team is not a championship contender, but they are a tournament team and have some special talent
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Wasn't likely they were gonna run the table. B1G has been a terror for road teams for the most part this year. Off night for sure for us and OSU was shooting out of their minds. It happens. Hawks will be fine. They do have to tighten D. That much is true. But....lets hope they are getting this little slump out of their system now.
Our fan base thinks we should go undefeated in every sport, every year.
We just lost on the road, as an underdog after winning 5 of 6 with tOSU needing a win. I would have been very surprised had we won.
But trying to explain this stuff to most of our fan base is an exercise in futility.
It's not just that Iowa needs more studs. It needs coaching and player development such that it has the strength and skill to punish physical, up in you defense. Being able to dribble, pass and shoot versus Izzo-like defense is an entirely different skill set than being able to dribble, pass and shoot versus Fran-like defense. And part of the reason Izzo guys have that skills set is because they go against Izzo defense year round, day in day out.
I played in one of the best high school programs in Illinois, Peoria High School. Coaches whose otherwise very good teams would always say something to the effect of, "you just can't replicate what they (meaning Peoria High) do in practice." Us and Peoria Manual would destroy teams simply because their skill level was not ready for the challenges our speed and athleticism—and defensive coaching—presented.
This is how it is with MSU and Purdue and Wisconsin. With MSU it is their athletes (and physicality) but also their attention to detail defensively and especially with rebounding. Purdue, similar. Wisconsin, similar. We beat a very good Michigan team partly because they are one team whose level of physicality presents less of a problem than those other three. Iowa simply cannot come close to replicating MSU. They can come closer to Purdue and Wisconsin, but still a huge challenge.
I got excited this year because I saw the end of Iowa's bench and there was Pemsl and Nunge and even Till and I thought okay, those guys plus Connor and Kriener? Okay now we have some real practice bodies and competition. I thought of how Joe W could maybe get after Moss in practice to help Moss develop a game where he could attack pressure, attack a guy's hip and make him pay for being up in him. I saw Connor relieving some of the pressure of JBo, allowing him to rest a bit both on the court and with more bench minutes.
But bodies aren't enough. If neither first, second, or third units have good-to-great defensive skills and habits both individually and as units, there is no chance they can prepare the first unit, or any other unit, for what MSU is going to do to them.
So jealous of MSU. This time of the year they and their fan base must be like, okay, this is our time. This is when we ramp it up and sprint to the finish. Our guys always look like they're hanging on for dear life.
Not sure what you were expecting, but weak ass whiny posts like this are silly. Were you expecting the team to finish as a top 10 team and go to the final 4? We have done a pretty good job of not letting a bad loss impact the next game, and we need to come out and play a LOT better in the next one...
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anon_i8nzeu2gbf0ba
Guest
And if it weren't for the Electoral College, well, you know.
Let's look at football. If it weren't for accidentally touching a punt, Iowa would have beaten Wisconsin. If it weren't for the officials failing to give KF a timeout, Iowa would have beaten PSU. If it weren't for a sensational TD catch, Iowa would have beaten NW. If it weren't for a couple of long pass plays, Iowa would have whipped Purdue. And then they'd have been 12-0, won the Big Ten, and probably the national title. If it weren't for . . .
My god, your psychoanalysis is mesmerizing. Can you come to my house and tell me what my wife is thinking?
Exactly Bryce. Literally every team in the nation can say “if this happened” or “if this didn’t happen” during the year. That’s just a stupid argument. If I was a foot taller I would have been an NBA All-Star.
Correct me if I'm wrong didn't we just finish the month 5-2? How does this count as a collapse. Have we played as well as most would want, no. Has the team still found a way to win ball games, yes.
But the whiners haven’t had a chance to bitch after a loss for a while so they had to jump on their chance.
The only reason OSU is considered an "NCAA-level team" is the same reason we are practically a lock - the bubble is extremely weak this year. Justify all you want, but that was an extremely poor effort at OSU, probably our worst of the year, and anyone who had watched the previous 4 games should have seen it coming.
We'll have to agree to disagree. The team I've been watching since the game in Bloomington looks like they've been spending their free time drinking beer and smoking weed, and would rather be playing video games than B1G basketball.
LOL at "athlete's mind." Being competitive takes a lot more than wanting to win. Athlete's are prone to physical and mental fatigue, probably more than most. Maybe not their faults, but that's where these players are now, and it is a clear trend under Fran.
Probably "What the hell am I doing in this life," but that's not really the topic here.
And thank you for no pic.
Seriously? So the team that came back against Northwestern, lost in the final seconds against Maryland, and won in OT against Indiana looked like they would rather play video games? Are these saved posts from last year? They could have easily gotten their asses kicked if they were so disinterested but they fought back and won most of them.
Except that if OSU played in any other conference they would be a lock. The Big Ten proved in non con that they are the best conference in college basketball. Now that we’re deep into conference play and everybody has been beating up on each other, B1G gets no credit and will likely only end up with 6-7 teams in the tournament despite the weak bubble. There is a lot of parity in this conference.
Not disagreeing on the effort though. It was bad
