To nitpick: Any chance you can incorporate individual stats in these?
Regardless, love these previews.
Agree that Iowa is a collection of talented pieces that didn’t come together as a team until late last year. If they can build on that, they could have a good season.
After reading this and seeing all the pieces Iowa has returning, I feel like their best case could be better than 8th or 9th in the conference. Cook, Bohannon, Moss, Garza, Baer + all that depth is a really quality roster, I could easily see them ending up 4th or 5th in the league if they stay healthy and Fran doesn’t have too many meltdowns
The defense is just so so bad though…
@romeowolv Yes, I need to do that. My fault. Here’s a nice little breakdown from 3 Man Weave.
I think there are reasons to think the defense will improve:
- They were somewhat unlucky in terms of 3pt% against - 303rd throughout the year, 14th in conference (at 43%!!!);
- They’re minutes are going from freshmen/sophomores to sophomores/juniors, who might try a little harder to get back on defense; and
- Fran has had some defensive clunker seasons, but he’s generally had significantly better ones than last year.
Seems likely they’ll be better to me, probably significantly, but the question is how much and can they do it without sacrificing much offense.
If the defense can improve, this is a really solid Iowa team. They’ll go a solid eight-deep and have a very ‘low-key’ top four on the team. Bohannon, Moss, Garza, and Cook are all pretty good in their own right but together should be a strong team unit. Moss is one of my Big Ten serious breakout candidates.
Yeah, the pieces are all there, but they had the 2nd worst Big Ten defense in the past 16 years. That’s really bad.