As someone said earlier, I think the fan base needs to be respectful of Oregon but seriously quit pissing your pants. Iowa is a top 5 team and with the goals the team has, should be able to take care of business.
I believe that Iowa's late defensive issues vs. GCU were a combination of things. Garza getting in foul trouble with some terrible calls meant he really couldn't defend the post like he normally would. GCU's inside game also meant that Iowa was crashing the guards down a ton to double team on defense to contest shots AND rebound. While this tactic probably slowed GCU, their bigs were still scoring and we were leaving outside shooters. In essence, our man defense became a zone or a triangle and 2. This allowed GCU to get too many open outside looks. In fact, there were a few times in which you could tell our defenders intentionally did not close out on the shooters to maintain an inside position. I believe that will not happen against Oregon because the inside help will not be necessary.
Three players whom I see as potentially influential in this game will be Keegan Murray CMac, and PMac. Keegan had four blocks against a largely front court oriented team in GCU; no reason to think he can't do the same against the smaller Oregon front court. I think he'll be even more important though coming out to guard them if they jump outside. Same with PMac, I thought his size influenced the game against GCU on both ends and I see the same against Oregon. CMac I thought made a subtle difference on defense against GCU by maintaining defensive stance against bigger guys. I thought he had some tricky tack foul calls against him but he certainly didn't back down. Against Oregon, he will have a more favorable match up against Oregon by not having to give up a ton of size.
On the offensive side, we hit our scoring average but the truth is, we did not really get into our game. Wieskamp scored over half his points from the free throw line, JBo had three threes but for the most part, our guards were not on their game; is may be partially because the refs were letting GCU guys sit in our guards' jockstraps through much of the game. But if our offensive inside-out flow can get rolling then it will really put the pressure on Oregon in our favor.
I am getting an Illinois loss vibe - we won't have the speed/athletes to hang with them (unless Jbo and Weezy go off big time).
