I'm a bit late on this, as personal life has been hectic, so just a short version for today:
As a thought starter, here's a questions for all of you.....
Using Lunardi's current bracketology, if Iowa can get back to a 1-2 seed (win the B10 tournament for example), which current 8 or 9 seed listed below would you (A) most want to see play Iowa; (B) least want to see play Iowa:
- Teams are extending on Bohannon and forcing him to drive, as has been discussed. This has been effective the last 2 games because: (A) Without CJF, there is one less elite shooter for Bohannon to kick out to on the drive; (B) Bohannon's lack of size and length not only make it difficult for him to shoot off the drive (other than the floater), but also to pass once he gets in among the trees. Not every team has the personnel to do this without giving up other things, as extending on Bohannon does cause a defense to lose gap control with that particular defender (ie: larger driving lanes between him and the others as he won't be able to help as much on drives). However, without CJF who is at least ok on dribble drives, and with Joe W being inconsistent on drives, and Joe T being a bit wild on drives, this is a good tradeoff for teams that have above average athleticism on defense - which is what Indiana and Illinois have. As does MSU ......
- Given MSU's coaching and roster, I think they will be pretty effective as well against us tonight, as they can do what the last 2 teams have done defensively. If CJF plays it may be less effective, so we shall see. However, MSU's offense isn't as good as Illinois (Indiana just had a hot game on offense), so we may still be ok for this one. I do expect MSU to find some specialist baseline shooters and exploit our zone by shooting more 3's in the corners - it's a good plan for how a weaker offensive team might upset a team like Iowa.....just shoot 6 for 11 on baseline 3's.
- Iowa did a good job against Illinois in terms of shooting 3's (40%), rebounding (13 offensive rebounds to Illinois 10), turnovers (8 to Illnois 14) and blocks (4 to Illinois 1). These are all really, really good, actually, despite the loss. Illinois leads the conference in rebounding defense and is second in rebounding offense, so we more than held our own. However, with 14 more FG attempts than Illinois, we shot only 43% overall compared to 50% for Illinois (43% from 3). This speaks to 3 things for me: (A) Illnois got to the foul line 17 times and made 14 (a bit more than normal), while Iowa only got there 6 times. (B) Iowa shot only 21 of 47 inside the arc, or 44%. I think this is indicative of Illinois forcing Iowa to drive which isn't a strength, and with being physical in the post. (C) Our own defense wasn't adequate - either inside or outside the arc. All that being said, and even with a starter being out, we still had a 50/50 chance of winning very late in the game.
- Wieskamp, Garza and Connor showed up individually. At times Wiskamp wasn't as good defensively as we needed. What was missing was a 4th person - Bohannon was schemed out, and Murray was solid but I thought going into the game he might score 14-16 points. I thought Perkins was good in limited minutes with 2 points, 2 assists, 3 rebounds and no turnovers, along with good active defense. I think Nunge is probably the guy I would look to as the 4th player, and he did have 4 blocks and was active underneath, but just isn't as efficient on offense yet to give us that 10-14 point performance when teams take away other things. He will get there, just patiently waiting
As a thought starter, here's a questions for all of you.....
Using Lunardi's current bracketology, if Iowa can get back to a 1-2 seed (win the B10 tournament for example), which current 8 or 9 seed listed below would you (A) most want to see play Iowa; (B) least want to see play Iowa:
- Drake
- North Carolina
- Xavier
- BYU
- Minnesota
- Boise St
- Louisville
- San Diego State
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