***** Florida International transfer guard Ashton Williamson commits to Iowa***** Update:*****Ashton Willliamson will NOT be playing for Iowa*****
- Thread starter Matt1nb7
- Start date
Look where they all ended up.
Welcome to Ashton!!! Glad you're a Hawk!
Looks like a good get. I look forward to watching him play.
This kids tape looks good! Scores at all levels, excellent athleticism. He’ll see the floor this year and get solid minutes imo
For curtis and everyone who has complained that we don't recruit guys who can play street ball, here's a video of Ashton hooping it up in a park in Gary, Indiana:
Obviously you can't really gauge anything, but he shows some good skills and athleticism. Not to mention, I don't think you grow up in Gary without some toughness.
Obviously you can't really gauge anything, but he shows some good skills and athleticism. Not to mention, I don't think you grow up in Gary without some toughness.
Looks like a player with defensive abilities we've not seen at Iowa in recent years. Also, he grew up in the Chicago area. Who was our last Chicago recruit?
I assume McCollum will be focused on recruiting the Chicago area. He's already going after a lot of Missouri recruits. These were two areas that we should have always recruited aggressively - it's nice to see it finally happen.
Post #30.
I would just think Hawk fans would have hoped to have kept a few their guys
Jermaine Jackson could ball, and Michael could distract everyone with his pet monkey.
The distraction part made me think of Billy and Sidney's first hustle in White Men Can't Jump. Woody was just classic. 🤣
What a thoroughly well made movie!
If they didn't want to be Hawks and took the money instead then we don't need them. Ben has gotten players that are just as good if not better than those who chased the money.
Did you not hope a few were going to stay?
We may never know for sure, but I think there's a good deal pointing the possibility that most of those players were never made to feel wanted.
I'm not getting on Ben's case. It is what it is.
It's just that the whole current dynamic leaves a lot to be desired. Myself, I was hoping some of those guys would have been back
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You been paying any attention? With the portal there are very few “their guys” anymore. Especially with a change of coach.
Out side of Koch (I'm on record here saying he was the most important recruit for Mac to get) there isn't a single player from last year's roster I'd take over who we currently have.
I would have liked Dix, but that care waned significantly when we got Stirtz. I loved that Koch stayed because his season was incomplete and he's a legacy. Many of the players from last season seemed to either (1) not have a lot of dog in them, (2) not have very high basketball IQs or (3) both. I was one that said "burn it down" although I didn't think it would be to this extent.
Teams will lose and can lose in any number of ways. Getting outworked on a regular basis is not an acceptable reason, IMHO. Being ok with that via not addressing it makes it worse. I suspect we aren't going to have that issue with this team and new coach.
Defense is a team function. Team functions get cultivated through coaching.
I have still yet to understand why individual players are getting heat for something that existed at Iowa for the high majority of 15 years. At least I assume you're referring to defense when you say, "outworked". Iowa sure sprinted the floor on offense, cut and spaced hard, screened hard, ducked in hard
I just watched the highlight tape that Elliot posted in the article. Williamson appears to be a great pickup. He has a great first step, above average athleticism and is a willing passer with good vision. I like this addition.
I can't speak for others, but for me, "outworked" includes multiple things. One is lack of effort, crispness or general laziness. It is often associated with poor defense, but can show up via soft passes, slow cuts, poor screens, soft post technique, etc. Another way is a simple failure to recognize and/or follow basic fundamentals. Just a few that I saw countless times during last season especially, (1) not stopping the ball on a fast break or making the guy give it up. (2) A shot goes up, everyone watches the ball....great, you need to see the ball. You also need to find the nearest guy and get your rear end into him to prepare for a rebound. It's possible to do both. (3) Giving up the baseline. Inexcusable.
Now is where coaching comes in. If these things aren't embedded in the players already, coach them up or don't play them. Coaches have big jobs especially when it comes to creating offensive flow, team defensive techniques, etc. Players coming in at this level should already know some basics. I consider the things in my first paragraph to be basics. If they can't handle the basics well, they're getting outworked.
I guess you need to talk to the folks that evaluated them
Ok.
The offensive examples you gave don't apply. Iowa played their asses off on offense.
Certainly the defensive examples apply. But those are all things that have been happening for 15 years at Iowa.
The new coaches that bought those players sure didn't hold their effort or performance on defense against them. They understand that on a bad team defense, the individuals are put at the mercy of the fact that they are part of a bad team function, and are set up to look bad over and over again. They understand that that is the destiny of playing defense on a Fran team
The team function is largely true. But Iowa also had the issue of being unable to guard individually when isolated due to slow foot speed. There are certainly ways to coach a team to attempt to mitigate those isolation one-on-ones, but they generally will still occur even with the best coaching/strategy. It's certainly easier to coach defense when you have players who aren't easily smoked off the dribble by quicker, more athletic players on the other team...
They were plenty athletic enough to keep the ball in front of them with proper coaching.
Fran doesn't teach/emphasize proper containment angles nor hold players accountable for containing the ball. It's a non-negotiable habit that has to be built through coaching.
Fran didn't recruit 15 years worth of players unable to defend.
And agan, the athleticism was good enough for their new coaches to have bought them. Watch how much better they will look as part of a functioning unit
Don't buy in to eyesofhawks schtick. He's insufferable and hasn't gotten over his beloved Fran getting canned
You rarely have to play real iso defense in college the way you do in the NBA.
For one thing you can be way more physical with the ballhandler and second it's way easier to help in college because the players just aren't consistently good enough to burn you with great passing and shooting. Where as that's automatic in the NBA if you help.
There's zero doubt in my mind that McCollum could have taken that same Iowa group and had them top 40 in defense, granted that would have meant different lineups than what Fran played.
Why would you want to keep them when they won 7 BIG games last year? You can say, well they’re Iowa guys, but in todays transfer portal world, there’s no such thing. Every seasons roster is going to be different. Pretty sure we’ll be ok without every one of them that left!
That's not a valid point in terms of evaluating individual talent. Dix is a borderline nba talent and would have been a huge get.
That said, yes Iowa will be fine and there's really no reason to talk about it anymore. It's irrelevant now.
Iowa will be far better off for this coaching change.
That's a really lazy take.
And I get there's a lot of roster turnover in today's game. Just not crazy about it and hope Iowa can lean towards retention
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Amen. We needed to burn it to the ground and rebuild and that’s exactly what’s been done.
Again, I'm not exactly sure why people wouldn't have wanted a couple Hawks retained.
Why did it need to be burned to the ground?
Good money has been paid for the former Hawks
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Bc it wasn’t a good program and half the team quit part way through the year? Is this a trick question?
