Yeah. That was a real head scratcher. We went into hold the ball and wait for them to foul when PSU was still playing straight up defense.
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Two things from tonight that puzzled me
- Thread starter jonesy5960
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Yeah. That was a real head scratcher. We went into hold the ball and wait for them to foul when PSU was still playing straight up defense.
Kind of like 12U AAU or maybe Tball? There are so many things that both McCs do that are important to a winning team. People, not necessarily the exact post above, that have this "play Ahron Ulis" more or "Keegan should play 30 minutes", Bohannon must be benched, etc....
To the outside world these opinions seem crazy. The team took off last season when C McC began starting. He plays tough ball, gets the offense in its best form-feeding Luka. He plays decent defense, and he helps keep the whole team running smoothly. He bales out other player's mistakes.
P McC is by far the most athletic player, other than maybe Joe. He covers a huge area of the court on defense, etc... Ke Murray is obviously the most ready to play freshman and he plays a lot of minutes for a freshmen. I love the kid, for his play and he's a legacy. The boys are playing winning ball consistently, some of the best basketball Iowa has seen in the last 22 years. If it ain't broke, don't break it.
They are all Hawks, so will cheer for them to do well. But to compare Connor to Woodbury is not fair. Woodbury was a legitimate good defender who provide position defense and was part of the best defensive teams of the Fran era. He has been getting paid to play basketball since graduation. They play different positions, so they do things differently. But Woodbury had a career PER (Player Efficiency Rating) of 16 and Connor's is 12. By comparison, Murray's PER is a ridiculously good 26. Better than Wieskamp, better than everyone not named Garza on the Iowa team. It hurts Iowa when Murray is not on the floor 20-25 minutes per game. Connor's PER is the lowest of any rotation player, and he's played the 4th most minutes of anyone on the team. I don't get wound up on who plays minutes as Fran determines who plays and I can't do a darn thing about it. But Murray is a better 3-point shooter, better free throw shooter, much better defender both on the perimeter and inside. Murray doesn't handle the ball too much. If I'm Fran, I play Murray more.
This...I really hope this team can break some salty pressure in the Big Dance - we will have to if we want to make a deep run. I know our stats show that we rarely turn the ball over, but man today was really sloppy....
I don't want to make too much of the turnovers. JW was a train wreck in the first half and had 6 and Garza had 3. Both were trying to do too much. The odds of those 2 coughing up 9 turnovers again are long. The entire rest of the team had 7.
It was a W. Not Iowa's best performance, but PSU has been playing pretty well the past few weeks. They have some damn good defenders, but no one who can consistently throw it in the basket.
if you are talking about first half ok. But 2nd half absolutely zero reason when he made the brief switch. One we got torched playing zone in 1st half and secondly they had gone 7 min with out making a basket. So again if we are talking about decision in the 2nd half you alluded to “they were going to drive us to death and get us into foul trouble and make layups” maybe have them prove it first instead of switching up our D that had literally shut them down and with out a basket for 1/3 of the 2nd half. Also weiskamp was the only one in any foul trouble with 3 or more.
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His time will come (JT) but not this year. Big turn over in 2nd half, missed two free throws and can't shoot three pointers. That's why he's on the bench in the second half..JMO And I don't see his D is that much better than JBO or CM. JBO might not be a flashy driver but does make a ton of great passes to the big guys..
When Connor is hitting his shots, combined with the on-court leadership he provides, he's well worth the minutes he gets. Unfortunately, he's not been hitting his shots at the pace he did (at least at times) last season. This season he's had one game that I recall in which he hit shots regularly and made a very significant impact on the game. As it is right now, I'd like to see Keegan get more minutes.
I don't know what Patrick's average minutes have been, but absent that information it seems that he's getting about the minutes he should to boost his development. He's a promising player; I don't know that he's going to be a star, but he should be a valuable player. Probably few here will recall Duke's Kenny Dennard, who wasn't a big scorer but hustled all over the court and was effective in many phases of the game, at about the same height but more bulk than Patrick. Dennard became one of the least-liked players among opposing teams because of his unrelenting hustle and aggressiveness. I could see Patrick becoming a valuable jack-of-all-trades player of that kind, using his length and mobility in a variety of ways--which is not to say that his ceiling couldn't be even higher than that.
As an aside, I see a lot of people here who spell the name of Fran's oldest son as "Conner," when his name is correctly spelled as "Connor." If you're a fan of Connor, spelling his name correctly is one of the most fundamental ways to show some respect.
I don't know what Patrick's average minutes have been, but absent that information it seems that he's getting about the minutes he should to boost his development. He's a promising player; I don't know that he's going to be a star, but he should be a valuable player. Probably few here will recall Duke's Kenny Dennard, who wasn't a big scorer but hustled all over the court and was effective in many phases of the game, at about the same height but more bulk than Patrick. Dennard became one of the least-liked players among opposing teams because of his unrelenting hustle and aggressiveness. I could see Patrick becoming a valuable jack-of-all-trades player of that kind, using his length and mobility in a variety of ways--which is not to say that his ceiling couldn't be even higher than that.
As an aside, I see a lot of people here who spell the name of Fran's oldest son as "Conner," when his name is correctly spelled as "Connor." If you're a fan of Connor, spelling his name correctly is one of the most fundamental ways to show some respect.
You realize connor is a 6'5" 4, right? It's why he has few turnovers besides the 3 he had last game. And Jbo has as many rebounds as him per game as a 6'1 point guard. The offense doesn't run through connor, he's struggling to even feed Garza at this point. Basically his only job.
The idea that connor deserves close to twice the minutes as keegan at the 4 is just plain dumb or biased
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and it’s a good thing PSU could not make free throws at a good clip or knock down pretty wide open shots with 1-9 going on out there because the fate of the game may have been different..PSU played some leveled up D.. Iowa made more shots. Michigan plays that kind of D with a far batter offensive team.. Hawks better be prepared to bring everything they’ve got Thursday and try everything and everybody to match up on D and shoots lights out to boot..
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Connor and Keegan are two vastly different players. I most certainly would NOT want Keegan playing the point on offense, and I would not want Connor consistently playing the 4 position on both offense and defense.
Both do the things they're asked to do. I will say that Keegan's overall ceiling is higher (in my opinion).
Solid post, not sure why people are upset after every win. Just kind of silly at this point.
This is what gets me. They wait until like 12 seconds left on the shot clock to get the offense going. Then it’s too late because they can’t drive and we end up with a JBo or CMac desperation three.
Can you show any correlation between Joe T getting more minutes and games won? I doubt that it exists.
This game was not typical. Not by any means. And your time-line is not correct. Weezy had a TO in that time. Also, not all of that was on JoBo. The other players stopped moving/running the offense. Enough blame to go around, including the coaching staff.
I really think that the second half poor shooting for PSU was largely due to tired legs and decent defense. I really felt that in this game Iowa's depth actually wore a team out mid-second half. JMO
Just to add the last 4 minutes were terrible in the half court offense. FM better scrap that strategy because if PSU had been making shots it would have been Minnesota all over again,
Just to add the last 4 minutes were terrible in the half court offense. FM better scrap that strategy because if PSU had been making shots it would have been Minnesota all over again,
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100 agree on your analysis. Fran running his version of the old NFL ‘prevent defense‘ (which actually prevented some wins). with jobo instead of Mike Gesel. Yikes.
My point is that CMac and Garza played last 12min, CJF last 10, joe and a jobo the last 8min
in addition to Frans ‘prevent offense‘, Fran seems to have the same tendency in close games when ahead to try and milk out he win with a single group, there are no more fresh bodies, energetic defenders, or aggressive rebounders.
i Find this odd as Fran likes to play 9-10-11, but in the final quarter of the game, he tends to ride the same tiring horses.
when saying it worked out well, thhis unit did open the margin from 2 points to 11 in about 2 minutes, and then held on to win, that results in a win = worked out well.
Frans prevent offense is actually a topic for another thread
The second to last Iowa poss was a 3/4 court pass to Fredrick for an uncontested layup. The last poss was Wieskamp being fouled.
Iowa sent PSU to the line 3 times in the final five minutes. PSU was in the bonus this entire time. Five total PSU FTs in the last five minutes. 1) made one and one. 2) missed front end of the one and one. 3) Made both in the dbl bonus. Not quite sure I’d describe that as “frequent” but everyone’s entitled to their definition of frequent.
Exactly,.. Comparing Connor and Keegan is like comparing a screwdriver and a wrench in an attempt to determine which is the better tool,.. Connor is primarily a facilitator while Keegan trends more towards being an athletic opportunist,.. Both are valuable.
Connor plays more positions, more versatile player. They aren't completely interchangeable. I'm sure there's more than the box score that tells the story
Pretty spot on, I’ll add it’s Fran’s team to coach the way he wants. Time for the Hoosiers quote:
”My team is on the floor !”
Good post. I had the same thoughts last night. I think Fran must see him as a calming influence on the offense when things start getting disjointed. Jbo was facing some intense ball pressure last night once he cross half court and PSU made it really uncomfortable for him. Connor took some of that pressure off and I don't think Murray is there yet with his handles. It was more of turnover mitigation for a couple stretches last night.
I will say that I believe Connor is the "smartest" Basketball player we have. When he fouls, they are unmistakable hard fouls and stop fast break points and there are no "and one" opportunities. He knows what's going on out there.
Yesterday he did something a couple of times I hadn't noticed him doing much of previously, and that was tapping a rebound back out with one hand instead of trying to get a rebound he likely isn't going to get. Would like to see more of that, even though he might not tap it to one of our guys. Nunge does this pretty well too.
All that said, I won't say he is all that valuable, and I would prefer Keegan get more run, but Connor has far better handles at this point from a turnover standpoint, which he should because he's a guard.
I didn't say anything was "on" anyone.
It just illustrates the lack of a dribble drive threat on the court to counter pressure defense.
Iowa will not be able to beat teams like Michigan without a ballhandler on the court who can overcome pressure.
I'm 99.9% certain that there a correlation between minutes played by Ogundele and games won, it just happens to be be meaningless in the big picture. Joe played great against the Zags, but every other game where he's at 15 minutes or more was a blowout.
That's not exactly correct. With his athleticism and length Keegan can play 2-4. Connor lacks the size and athleticism necessary to defend 3-4 and lacks the quickness necessary to defend 1-2. That's one of the reasons he gets so few rebounds. He's kind of a tweener that isn't entirely suited to defend any of these positions. Our defense is at it's worst when he and JBO are on the court at the same time. From an offensive perspective he lacks the quickness and athleticism to dribble drive and the shooting ability to worry people on the perimeter. He's not a bad player. He's just doesn't have the physical attributes to be a very good player. Keegan does. That's why he's a team leader in nearly every statistic imaginable.
Your timeline was what I was responding to. A lot of JoBo there but nothing for context.
Agree, coaches keep their jobs by wining games, so he’s got the right to play who he wants and how best he thinks they can win, and they did win with his guys playing nearly the entire ‘4th quarter’.
PSU was 13-17 from the FT line while Iowa was 12-22. I’m guessing that is better than PSU’s season average from the line.
I'm also reasonably sure that most coaches will tighten their rotation down the stretch of close games. You go with your guys you trust the most.
In all honesty. Keegan has been struggling finishing in a number of games in the paint. He'll be fine and is a very important part of the teeam going forward, so I wouldn't read much into his minutes.
