Fran must have sold him a bill of goods, and maybe was covering his bets on Freeman being ready right away. As it is, the big O may just play starters minutes.....
Cmon. We've played ONE game, and he's less of a factor then Josh? Thats a pretty damn low bar. Maybe we play into the B1G before we write the kid off. Word was he was in street cloths during the game, so maybe he's dinged or something.
Yeah, that trio are decent to good players individually but they aren't good together.
Yeah I’d put Freeman and Dembele at the 5 and Krikke and Patrick at the 4.
We’ve played one game and he’s hurt, saying he’s less of a factor than Josh is misleading and speculative. Maybe give him a chance to produce? In any event, he’s from Iowa City and living the dream playing for the Hawks, I respect that.
Granted.
A guy like Freeman, with his athletic ability, should concentrate on being a defensive stud. For once, it would be nice if opposing team guards were not able to get into the paint so easily.
This is a very very very small sample size obviously, but through 2 days in college basketball, EvanMiya (analytics site) has Iowa's starting 5 as the most efficient offensive lineup in the country and it's not even particularly close. And yes, his rating system adjusts based off the quality of opponent, so it's taking into account that they played North Dakota.
But that lineup is just plain too slow. It may look good vs these low level teams. But come BIG season or vs ISU/Creighton etc. They’ll have to hit nearly 40 from 3 and/or not turn the ball over to have a chance.
And if that's true, the numbers will reflect that once those games come. That's kind of my point--right now that lineup is offensively the #1 lineup in the country. Again, that's adjusting for the opponent too. I'm a data-driven guy and right now the numbers do not back your argument at all because it shows that this unit was the better defensive unit last night too.
This is good information and you are correct that the sample size is too small for conclusions at this point. In past seasons, I would watch the games with an excel spreadsheet and track how all of the different lineups performed on offense and defense - basically curate this information manually. It's a major time commitment and perhaps it's time for me to give it up in favor of an evanmiya membership. I thought the second stringers looked a lot better defensively against Quincy than they did against North Dakota. Neither Dembele nor Freeman blocked a shot against UND and we only had two blocked shots as a team. That's probably my biggest criticism with our performance last night. I think Dembele/Freeman have a higher defensive upside than our starting front court players but they aren't quite there yet, which is natural given their youth and inexperience.
This was specifically in reference to Mulvey, which I bolded in my response. He's not from IC nor new to the program that I'm aware of.
The starters do one thing really well so far draw fouls.
The defensive up side is night and day different but the freshman bigs, at least last night, fouled a lot. They'll figure that out after about half a season and then it won't even be close.
It struck me last night how much further along in their skillsets Freeman and Dembele are than freshman big men used to be. You look at guys like Earl and Street and both were pretty raw as freshmen. Hell, Earl looked pretty damn raw as a redshirt freshman.
What would you consider a acceptable defensive number that you would be happy with, with Iowa continuing to score around 80 points per game?
I found myself thinking as I was watching him that’s he’s the kind of big Duke always seems to get.
Agree, that's a big part of why I'm excited.
Still can't stop penetration. North Dakota was quite bad. We will be very exposed by Creighton, OU, USC.
Thats not likely to ever change given the lack of attention to detail on defense.
