Apparently Seth Towns is healthy enough to play for OSU? He played for like a minute I’m the first half, missed a 3 and flew in wildly trying to get an OREB. But he also only played after Sueing and Young had 2 fouls. Not sure what Holtmann’s plan is to work him back into the lineup but he may start playing soon I guess
What is the answer for Fran, do you think? He’s clearly a pretty good offensive coach and a poor defensive one (so was Beilein). He has had a few decent defenses - mostly when he had Adam Woodbury (who despite being fo prone and a bad offensive player seems to have been good defensively) and Mike Gessell. I seem to remember some outfits in the Roy Marble era being good at forcing turnovers (this may just be my recall of our loss at Iowa in 2014 when they chopped us into kindling).
I’ve always been divided as to whether Beilein’s defensive Renaissance was driven by assistant coaches like Yaklich or the willingness to recruit players like X and Matthews (probably both?).
I’m not sure there is a coach who could get this Iowa team to defend - but they sure are full of one-way offensive players.
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A really good point that I thought I saw upthread is that for as skilled as Iowa is, they are really full of below average B1G athletes. Their skill can paper that over on offense, but really limits their ceiling on D.
Right - frankly I think that was our short-coming for awhile too. There aren’t that many good two way players, Veilein cares about shooting and skill so that’s what we got.
Outside Wieskamp I don’t think they play a Big 10 “athlete”.
I think the struggle with Iowa is that everything has to be built around Garza because he’s that ridiculously good on offense. The problem is that he’s also one of the reasons they are so limited on defense.
If you put a great defensive five on that team, maybe some of those perimeter issues could be eliminated. But then the offensive ceiling would be gone too.
Add in that I don’t think Fran is a good defensive coach and you have some really difficult issues.
One play that struck me was about midway thru the first half. Timme fought inside and got a basket with some half-hearted defense at best from Garza. Before the ball was even thru the basket, Garza was SPRINTING down the floor and got position and scored about 5 seconds later. To me, that showed the level of importance he/they put on O vs. D.
Dude looks like he’s exerting so much effort when he thunks his way down the court.
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Prediction: Iowa gets knocked out of NCAA tournament by a B1G team. I do think they have the offense to make a run to the second weekend though. But I am not high on them in the conference.
I’m not sure what “full of below average B1G athletes” exactly means, but that concept just seems off to me. If they were generally not particularly athletic (by B1G standards, averages, whatever), there is no way they’d put up the offensive numbers that they do. They would get consistently locked up by more athletic defences, and that is just not going to happen.
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… I think we know what it means…
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Well, they do have the best offensive player in the country. That makes offense easier across the board
They also have guys like Bohannon who is coming off multiple hip surgeries.
When I think of pack-line I think of stopping dribble penetration. How does it do against post teams? I’m guessing they focus on getting up on the guy making the entry pass?
I also tabbed a white guy as the one guy who pop athletically?
They’ve got one very skilled, extremely strong guy who can have his way inside against basically anyone who struggles at the very least to move side to side. Weiskamp is a guy I think who could play on the wing in the NBA.
The rest of the team is…sort of just there? Nunge may be ok? Bohannon can barely move. Fran’s younger son was by all accounts a promising player, but I think two years or so of fighting serious health battles took something from him. Who else on the team pop athletically to you?
Touissant is lightning. Nobody on Gonzaga could stay in front of him.
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Fredrick will play in the NBA he’s solid. He had a real poor game though. The worst part is Iowa has a rep and deservedly so of being poor defensively. So every big time opponent they play people want to poke holes and make every game a referendum on what they are. They look much better than last year and Garza looks better than last year which is hard to believe. If Garza was able to get guys like Kispert/Watson/Timme in foul trouble quite easily Garza will feast on this conference.
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I tend to see “athleticism” as the ability to move - back and forth and laterally and to jump quickly and with speed. Obviously there is a sliding scale with sheer size - like Franz Wagner is a tremendous athlete for his size and the combination of the two is what makes him such a good defender. Eli Brooks is a good enough athlete (quick feet, big vertical) that it and his intellect can cover for his lack of size defensively.
Iowa’s offense to me revolves around Garza creating mismatches, and that’s a result of Garza being stronger than anyone on the floor. He generally gets to where he wants and can shoot through heavy contact.
Ultimately, with this group, I think 70% of Iowa’s defensive struggle is personnel driven. They play a number of guys who are one-way players and those are offensive players (I’d argue Bohannon is a no-way player right now but hey).
But he plays very limited minutes because he turns the ball over all the time and Iowa has less athletic guards who are poor defenders who play those minutes.
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A few Big Ten games today…
- Illinois -2.5 at Rutgers
- Michigan State -7 at Northwestern
- Saint Louis -3 at Minnesota.
I like St Louis -3 but I’m really curious how Rutgers/Illinois goes.
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This may not look good in hindsight, but I will take Rutgers and the points.
If one trusts BartTorvik/KP, you should hammer northwestern +7. (Currently +4 on KP and +1.5 on BT, would likely be NW by a slight margin on BT without preseason adjusting).