Can’t wait for next year when all five of their starters are 26 years old
5 Likes
The trouble with the “played great after being down 20” situation is that the down 20 came first and the game changes from that point.
2 Likes
I definitely didn’t say they played great in the 2nd half. What changed?
Teams play differently when they are up 20. Differently when they are down 20. Etc.
Foul trouble helped which is a legitimate thing that you can point out as an Iowa strength but how those situations are handled also changes when a game isn’t competitive.
Joe Toussaint coming in and playing well in a blowout doesn’t really change anything about how I feel about Iowa.
They are better than they were last year but they are significantly overrated as a top ten type of team.
I think most would agree after watching that game that Gonzaga played well and Iowa played poorly. I also think most would agree that Gonzaga is the best team (or 2nd best to Baylor) in the country. Everyone agrees Iowa’s defense is terrible.
It could have been uglier, but it wasn’t. I am shocked it wasn’t a larger deficit with how poorly Iowa shot. But if the takeaway is supposed to be “today proved how far away Iowa is from great teams”, then I think there might be some confirmation bias at play. IMO it doesn’t make much sense to say Gonzaga’s run counts, or Gonzaga’s missed twos count, or Gonzaga’s foul trouble counts, but Iowa’s run doesn’t, or Iowa’s missed threes don’t.
Gonzaga is great, better than Iowa. Iowa’s defense will be a problem all year. Iowa likely won’t shoot this bad very much and I don’t think many teams in the Big Ten are as potent as Gonzaga offensively.
Curious what ten teams are clearly ahead of Iowa? Doesn’t feel like the lower half of the top 10 has much of a great case with all the blue bloods being down.
It was Gonzaga’s worst 2-point shooting game of the year and only six of their 2-point attempts weren’t dunks and layups. That’s the lucky part of today’s result IMO.
No luck involved that Iowa shot 4 for 22 from three?
Yeah, there’s always variance in 3-point shooting far more than layup shooting percentage. If Gonzaga shot poorly on twos because it attempted a bunch of 2-point jumpers, that would be expected.
Gonzaga missing a bunch of layups is the strange outlier in the box score is all I’m saying.
If your recipe is shoot a bunch of threes and hope the other team misses layups. It isn’t a great one!
1 Like
That’s totally fair
I don’t really follow the national rankings so I’m not sure off the top of my head, so me saying that is more of a “I wouldn’t pick them in the Sweet 16 this year” statement.
In the Big Ten, Illinois and Wisconsin are comfortably better IMO and I’d say at least 2 or 3 out of Rutgers, Michigan, Michigan State, Indiana end up with better seasons than Iowa.
Also this Wisconsin box score is just a pack line clinic. No shots at the rim, tons of mid-range twos.
2 Likes
I don’t think Gonzaga played all that well compared to what they’re capable of. They had some real sloppy play leading to turnovers and got lucky they didn’t have more off some deflections they were able to recover. Other than his three point shooting Suggs had a bad game. That combined with their poor finishing at the rim, they weren’t that sharp today other than from three.
1 Like
Suggs had 27, 7 and 4 on 8-17 shooting, I just don’t see how that can be characterized as a bad game. I thought he was phenomenal.
1-of-7 on twos and 7 turnovers are both not great. That’s how you end up with a 102 ORtg when you make 7 threes.
Suggs had a 102.3 ORTG and 32% TO rate, which could have been higher as he had the ball deflected a couple more times. I said he was bad at everything other than shooting threes, and he was.
Notre Dame is the ACC’s gift to the Big Ten. Purdue would be the third Big Ten team to beat ND.
8 Likes
Oh how I have missed being able to spend a weekend day with a Bacardi, 2 liter of coke, and a pack of blue moon watching sports for 10 hours straight. Really enjoying today even without a Michigan game.
4 Likes
It’s the lack of a Michigan game that makes it enjoyable. At least for me 
5 Likes
This is an incredibly fair point.
1 Like