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IF everyone returns next season Iowa will be top 5 in the BIG

i actually hope Perkins doesn't come back. He's been a good player for Iowa and I wish him well but don't want him back. I can't tell you how many times he has taken it upon himself this year to be the hero at clutch times and failed. Take the Illinois game. Iowa has come back from I think 17 down and are trailing by 5 in the second half. There is a steal. Perkins takes the ball hard to the basket and misses a dunk. Iowa get's the ball back still down 5 and he takes the ball to the hoop and misses a tough shot. The next time Iowa get's the ball, Tony turns it over and Illinois scores. On three straight possessions down 5 Tony makes three mistakes and Iowa never challenges after that. Again, I think he was a good player for the Hawkeyes, but he isn't the clutch player he thinks he is late in the game and late in the season. I wish him all the luck in his new career as long as it's not at Iowa.
The second play you referenced he was absolutely hammered. One of the worst no-calls I've ever seen.

Who else was supposed to take over? Would you rather see another air-ball from Payton forcing a 3?

Again, with an actual PG on the floor Tony would have had the space to more effectively attack like in the Illinois game last season when he put up 30.

You can pick out one bad game for anybody. 2nd team all- league while playing out of position points to a pretty good season.

Tony is the exact type of player Hawk fans are asking for. But when he runs out of gas from having to carry the team while playing out of position people are ready to run him out of town🤣
 
2 more solid additions in the 2024 class coming. Hopefully we land a guard and BIG in the portal.
Tadjo looks like he has the athleticism Iowa needs. Koch is a more refined player but isn’t explosive and I have my doubts he will play good defense. I hope I’m wrong. If Fran would coach defense as well as offense, Iowa is a top ten team regularly.
 
Tadjo looks like he has the athleticism Iowa needs. Koch is a more refined player but isn’t explosive and I have my doubts he will play good defense. I hope I’m wrong. If Fran would coach defense as well as offense, Iowa is a top ten team regularly.
Agreed as previously stated I'm 50/50 with continuing as is with what we have and what is coming and starting over with DeVries.
 
Agreed as previously stated I'm 50/50 with continuing as is with what we have and what is coming and starting over with DeVries.
I think Iowa’s lack of D is more about the type of player Fran recruits than the actual coaching of defense. He’ll take a good offensive player with poor defense than he will vice versa. Now, when discussing why Iowa FB is so putrid on offense and great of D there isn’t much of an excuse. FB players don’t play both ways like they do in BB.
 
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I think Iowa’s lack of D is more about the type of player Fran recruits than the actual coaching of defense. He’ll take a good offensive player with poor defense than he will vice versa. Now, when discussing why Iowa FB is so putrid on offense and great of D there isn’t much of an excuse. FB players don’t play both ways like they do in BB.
Pretty crazy year in and year out the issues for football and bball are polar opposites.
 
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I think Iowa’s lack of D is more about the type of player Fran recruits than the actual coaching of defense. He’ll take a good offensive player with poor defense than he will vice versa. Now, when discussing why Iowa FB is so putrid on offense and great of D there isn’t much of an excuse. FB players don’t play both ways like they do in BB.
The lack of D is far more about the coaching than it is the players.

You think Iowa has had 14 straight years of players who can't defend? That isn't even possible.

At the college level, defense is a team thing. It's about how well five players are functioning together. And athleticism really isn't a requirement, although it certainly helps. Look at Wisconsin. They are usually below average athletically and very strong defensively.

When having been asked what he can do to improve his team's defense, Fran has consistently responded, "we are an offensive program." That tells you all you need to know, if watching the complete lack of fundamentals and principles for 2 or 3 possessions doesn't
 
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Pretty crazy year in and year out the issues for football and bball are polar opposites.
Crazy too that if the strength is a continued trend just a slight to moderate increase in the other puts Iowa as a perennial top 15ish type school in both sports. Ugh so frustrating.
 
The lack of D is far more about the coaching than it is the players.

You think Iowa has had 14 straight years of players who can't defend? That isn't even possible.

At the college level, defense is a team thing. It's about how well five players are functioning together. And athleticism really isn't a requirement, although it certainly helps. Look at Wisconsin. They are usually below average athletically and very strong defensively.

When having been asked what he can do to improve his team's defense, Fran has consistently responded, "we are an offensive program." That tells you all you need to know, if watching the complete lack of fundamentals and principles for 2 or 3 possessions doesn't
One of Marble's years, Iowa was in the top 30-40 in defense, fyi. I really do think Iowa lacks the athlete's to play D at a high level. You need good lateral quickness to play defense and Iowa never has 4-5 players on the floor together that do. Now, Fran might not be great at teaching D either, but if you don't have player that have the ability to play D, it's hard to do so.
 
One of Marble's years, Iowa was in the top 30-40 in defense, fyi. I really do think Iowa lacks the athlete's to play D at a high level. You need good lateral quickness to play defense and Iowa never has 4-5 players on the floor together that do. Now, Fran might not be great at teaching D either, but if you don't have player that have the ability to play D, it's hard to do so.
I agree its a combination of things.

Fran focuses on Offense with little regard to defense in his substitution patterns. Look at Krikke playing so much.
Fran likes to go big at the 3-spot instead of going 3 guards....history of lanky smal fortwards that have trouble keeping up with opposing team's smaller/quicker 3's. PMAC is worst example of a guy too tall/slow to guard his position playing at Small Forward.

Fran likes to extend his defense full court to speed up pace of play. HIs defenses end up giving up a lot of easy baskets on wide open 3's or layups when teams break the press.


His handling of JoeT says a lot about Fran's mindset. He sat JoeT a lot for offensive mistakes, ignoring the value he brought on defense. JoeT was a great on ball defender, but with Bohannon and Garza, Iowa was a bad man-to-man defensive team so Fran put the team in a lot of zone defense, which took away JoeT's value as a defender.

I think Iowa had a Top45 type defense when Gessel/Clemmons/Uthoff/Jok/Woodbury were senors. They played something like 90% zone and that team had been together long time. I don't think Zone works as well these days. Trend has been for teams to have more 3pt shooters on the court at same time and shoot the 3pt shot better and they torch zones. Add in you see big drop in % of defensive rebounds secured in zone and the zone defense becomes a defense teams only play as a change of pace. Fran himself has switched to mostly man-to-man defense this past year.
 
I agree its a combination of things.

Fran focuses on Offense with little regard to defense in his substitution patterns. Look at Krikke playing so much.
Fran likes to go big at the 3-spot instead of going 3 guards....history of lanky smal fortwards that have trouble keeping up with opposing team's smaller/quicker 3's. PMAC is worst example of a guy too tall/slow to guard his position playing at Small Forward.

Fran likes to extend his defense full court to speed up pace of play. HIs defenses end up giving up a lot of easy baskets on wide open 3's or layups when teams break the press.


His handling of JoeT says a lot about Fran's mindset. He sat JoeT a lot for offensive mistakes, ignoring the value he brought on defense. JoeT was a great on ball defender, but with Bohannon and Garza, Iowa was a bad man-to-man defensive team so Fran put the team in a lot of zone defense, which took away JoeT's value as a defender.

I think Iowa had a Top45 type defense when Gessel/Clemmons/Uthoff/Jok/Woodbury were senors. They played something like 90% zone and that team had been together long time. I don't think Zone works as well these days. Trend has been for teams to have more 3pt shooters on the court at same time and shoot the 3pt shot better and they torch zones. Add in you see big drop in % of defensive rebounds secured in zone and the zone defense becomes a defense teams only play as a change of pace. Fran himself has switched to mostly man-to-man defense this past year.
Those teams played mostly man.

They were the only group Fran had that played organized team defense.

Lots of people on here bitched about Woodbury picking up fouls outside the 3pt line on guards because they had no idea what they were talking about.

Theres two main reasons those teams were good at defense. Adam Woodbury was a great defensive comunicator and he was great at hedging ball screens. He rarely let the opposing pg get downhill.

Every Fran team before and after has been terrible at it and you can clearly see by the lack of organization that they don't work on it.
 
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I think Iowa’s lack of D is more about the type of player Fran recruits than the actual coaching of defense. He’ll take a good offensive player with poor defense than he will vice versa. Now, when discussing why Iowa FB is so putrid on offense and great of D there isn’t much of an excuse. FB players don’t play both ways like they do in BB.
There's some of that for sure but there's also a very clear lack of fundamentals, communication, and knowing what the fck is going on.

For instance Frans guards go under screens. That's not lack of athleticism that's lack of coaching. They automatically leave anyone at the 3pt line to cut off a driver, no matter who it is. That's not athleticism that's lack of coaching.

The lack of organization and attention to detail is really obvious.

There's a reason most teams don't have great out of bounds plays, it's because they don't spend time on it. They're spending that time practicing defense.

You can tell Iowa works on out of bounds plays a lot.
 
As much as this sucks this team still exceeded expectations this season. Solid young core with 2 nice additions. Hopefully Perkins comes back for a 5th year and they land a BIG and or Guard in the portal this team will be top 5 in BIG and Dancing again.
But will we win a post season game?
 
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