Last Night's Game

[mooresville hawk]

I wanted to step back and think about the game before posting anything. That game was very disappointing as a fan, but these games do happen. Iowa was never in a rhythm offensively or defensively. A lot of the credit for that goes to Indiana as they were able to control the pace of the game. There were a few reasons for this that I saw:

1. CJ was not 100% and did not play the second half. I could not even tell he was on the floor in the first half, but Indiana still had to respect his outside shot and could not sag off of him which did allow Luka some room to work inside.
2. Jordan was off all night. He has been hot for most of January, but he could not hit a shot last night. This may have been a good game for Joe T and Ahron to play more to try and get to the basket.
3. Joe W disappeared in the second half. He took charge in the first half and was scoring at will. He seemed much more passive along with the rest of the offense in the second half.
4. The ball movement for Iowa was too slow last night and they were not getting into their offense fast enough. The ball was not moving quickly and Iowa was not doing a good job cutting to the basket to make Indiana pay for double teaming Luka. When Iowa is clicking on offense the ball is moving quickly and the other team is back on their heals defensively.
5. Indiana was catching the ball after they scored to slow down Iowa from getting the ball in bounds. This gave Indiana a chance to set up on defense and force Iowa to play a half court game. Fran complained to the officials about this during Indiana's run in the second half during one of the time outs.
6. Defensive rotations and footwork were poor. Iowa was giving up a lot of uncontested dunks because guys were out of position. Luka got caught leaning to TJD's left, which gave TJD a wide open lane to the basked when he spun right. Connor got caught ball watching as his guy went to the basket and then fouled him setting up the three point opportunity. Keegan left TJD wide open under the basket as he went to help on the left side.

Hopefully, last night's game was an outlier and Iowa comes back strong against Illinois next week. I cannot decide if having eight days before the next game is a good thing or not. I know that I would prefer as a fan that there was a game tonight so that I could see how they respond now as opposed to waiting until next Friday. We will have to wait to see how the team responds though. This time off should hopefully give CJ time to recover. There is only one ball, but we do need CJ out on the floor so team's cannot pack it in against Luka. Team's have bad games. It is better to get them out of your system in January than in March.

 

[CO_hawk]

7. Wouldn't be so bad if we didn't lose to Minnesota up 7 with 45 seconds left.

 

[mooresville hawk]

7. Wouldn't be so bad if we didn't lose to Minnesota up 7 with 45 seconds left.

That was a disappointing loss as well, but for another reason. I thought Iowa played well for most of the Minnesota game, but did not make the plays they need to make down the stretch. Regardless, I did not include it in my analysis of last night's game as I do not think it had an impact.

 

[CO_hawk]

That was a disappointing loss as well, but for another reason. I thought Iowa played well for most of the Minnesota game, but did not make the plays they need to make down the stretch. Regardless, I did not include it in my analysis of last night's game as I do not think it had an impact.

It didn't. But pull that win out and other loses have less of an impact. Indiana deserved that win last night. I thought our second string was good, but Indiana throttled them.

 

[TheRealHerky]

7. Wouldn't be so bad if we didn't lose to Minnesota up 7 with 45 seconds left.

Honestly I think the meltdown here would be worse had the Hawks won that game.
But, the 2 losses to average teams is going to make any post season run more difficult due to lower seeding.
It appears to me that Sweet 16 is this teams ceiling unless their defense really improves.

 

[hawk-i bob]

Zero field goals made from 12:00 mark in the 2nd half until JoeT layup with 1 minute left in the game...11 minutes without a bucket....end of story.

 

[SDHawkDoc]

Zero field goals made from 12:00 mark in the 2nd half until JoeT layup with 1 minute left in the game...11 minutes without a bucket....end of story.

Iowa's D is varying levels of not good. That's no secret. Teams look forward to getting a lot of easy buckets vs them.
What that translates to is that they probably won't be able to overcome a really off night shooting. And that's what we saw in the second half. Virtually zero offense from the perimeter.
We've probably not seen the last sh!t show of the year from the Hawks. Let's hope, though, that any more of those type of nights happen sooner rather than later. They will need to be firing on all cylinders offensively come tourney time.

 

[Ihawkhoops]

IU played crazy intense D and had more energy than Iowa despite trailing for over half the game. More disappointing than the loss was the complete lack of fire by everyone except Garza. Joe W. showed again that he is a spot up jump shooter who needs space and cannot create his own offense. Jbo, when not making shots, needs to sit. Hard call to make when a shooter needs to shoot I get it. Connor needs to make better decisions late in the shot clock. Lost track of how many times he drove, had a decent look and either kicked it out or turned a good look into a higher degree of difficulty shot by hesitating.

IU wanted the game more than Iowa and deserved to win. Yes the officiating was a bit sketchy in parts with Iowa getting called for a lot of touch fouls while IU was body checking the guards, but Iowa's guards were very soft last night in all phases of the game. Fran needed to Frankensetin the line up in the second half and go with a more athletic group of guys IMO. Garza made a lot of really poor decisions against double and triple teams but in his defense, the other 4 guys were standing around. Losing at home not good, but they have some time to get CJ healthy and revisit what went wrong. Pretty sure if Fran coaches here for 20 years his teams will get still get beat on that slip screen.