Post game analysis-this team

[GoSTATE71]

This team has unbelievable chemistry. We looked good without Ejim but its evident how great Ejim is going to be this year. He was unstoppable. Monster on defense, rebounding and scoring. Naz Long has stepped up. Kane is a man child same with Hogue. Thomas/Morris are freshman but should be solid for us.

Please dont flame me for saying it, but if we beat BYU on the road Tuesday, are we a top 25 team next week? Actually, can we beat a top 25 team this week? Lots of ranked teams went down this week.

Very, very pleased with tonights performance. The crowd was awesome, just incredibly loud the whole time. The students were into it, the older crowd was up the majority of the game too. Love this team. Beating a very solid Michigan team this early in the season was very unexpected. To be honest, I thought we'd lose by about 10 so this was a pleasant surprise. Lets get this momentum going into BYU! Go STATE!

 

[BallSoHard4Cy]

I wasn't paying attention to the box score, did we only go 7 deep? I don't think i saw Edozie, Gibson, Kj, or SDW play...

 

[CyArob]

I wasn't paying attention to the box score, did we only go 7 deep? I don't think i saw Edozie, Gibson, Kj, or SDW play...

Correct.

 

[Go2Guy]

Lotta upside to this team. Morris & Thomas will contribute a lot more than they did tonight. Hogue is an excellent defender (but doesn't need to shoot from Trey) and Kane had some TO and at times had trouble running the O from a 1/2 court set.

 

[BallSoHard4Cy]

Correct.

Surprising. I would've thought that with the way we were shooting SDW or KJ would've gotten in.

 

[CyCloned]

I heard Dicky V. use the word defense when talking about ISU! Thought the defense was a lot better for the most part. A couple guys got lost on defense, but good intensity and pretty good at playing within the new touchy rules. Decent team defense for all the new guys.

 

[Die4Cy]

Lotta upside to this team. Morris & Thomas will contribute a lot more than they did tonight. Hogue is an excellent defender (but doesn't need to shoot from Trey) and Kane had some TO and at times had trouble running the O from a 1/2 court set.

Hogue has impressed me a lot through three games. I expected him to be a contributor, but he's very solid defensively and is filling it up more than I expected through the early games.

 

[CyArob]

Hogue has impressed me a lot through three games. I expected him to be a contributor, but he's very solid defensively and is filling it up more than I expected through the early games.

He reminds me of a freshman or sophomore Ejim.

 

[inCyteful]

I heard Dicky V. use the word defense when talking about ISU! Thought the defense was a lot better for the most part. A couple guys got lost on defense, but good intensity and pretty good at playing within the new touchy rules. Decent team defense for all the new guys.

Doc Sadler hire - will make CFH rather wealthy.

 

[MNclone]

Hogue has impressed me a lot through three games. I expected him to be a contributor, but he's very solid defensively and is filling it up more than I expected through the early games.

Hogue played a good game but he needs to know that his role on this team is not 3 pt shooter.
The guy has some serious grit though. You could tell that the Mich guys were sick of getting knocked around.

 

[erikbj]

Naz is the biggest suprise, his shot looks really good. I am guessing houge goes to the bench to provide depth for melin and niang.

What long has done with his game in the off season is amazing!!!!

 

[CLONEing around]

Great thing about this team is how much room for improvement they still have. Kane got caught trying to do to much a couple times. Hogue made some bad shot selections. Niang got frustrated early and was trying to force things instead of kicking it out to open shooters. Thomas needs to get better at getting open without the ball. And even with all those things, they still play really well together and are playing good team defense. This team could be really good.

 

[deanvogs]

Good win for ISU. Kane looked good, Ejim was a beast, and Niang showed up at the end when they needed him. Long can really shoot it. Morris and Thomas just need more time, they will be up and down as FR usually are. All in all, very good showing for ISU.

 

[Rural]

Melvin being the object of an ESPN love-fest for 24 hours is going to be great.

We can be really good on D but we blew a bunch of covers in this game.

 

[clonedude]

Great thing about this team is how much room for improvement they still have. Kane got caught trying to do to much a couple times. Hogue made some bad shot selections. Niang got frustrated early and was trying to force things instead of kicking it out to open shooters. Thomas needs to get better at getting open without the ball. And even with all those things, they still play really well together and are playing good team defense. This team could be really good.

Yeah, I'm thrilled we won the game, but I'm even more excited in knowing we did it without playing our best basketball at all.

Niang wasn't particularly good until the end when we really needed him. Morris and Thomas didn't really do anything at all. Kane was a beast, but did have some careless turnovers. We actually, as a team, had several really careless turnovers. We also took some bad 3's tonight too.

So, all in all, we just beat the #7 ranked team in the country without even playing our best. That tells you that we have a pretty big ceiling.

 

[Goothrey]

The ceiling appears to be pretty high for this team and being that it is a Hoiberg coached team, that means we will probably reach that height.

 

[Cyismymonkey]

I was impressed with our performance both offensively and defensively. Having said that I think this team has plenty of room for growth.

 

[acgclone]

My $0.02...

Hogue obviously missed some 3's but he was wide open on a couple of them, and he was 4-4 last game, so I can't blame him too much. Overall, he's a beast. 10 boards, 12 points. I never would have thought he would put up those kinds of stats versus Michigan 2 months ago.

Kane is a beast. Not much more to say about that. He can basically do it all and will put up good stats for us in all categories.

Ejim was insane tonight. I'm blown away by how good he looked. He's always been athletic, but he looked much more comfortable with the ball in his hands tonight. Hoiberg hyped his improvement, and it's obviously true.

Thomas didn't stick out, but that's not surprising for a FR playing in his 3rd career game against #7 Mich. He's going to be a great one for us when he gets more comfortable and confident. Even though he didn't score much tonight, I think you can see how he could easily be a 10-14 ppg type of guy by the end of the year. We'll need him to open up our offense a little down the road, and when he does that, our offense will be VERY tough to stop. Part of it tonight was I think Fred didn't really run a lot of looks to get him some shots, which is understandable.

Morris looked a little bit like a FR too tonight, which is to be expected. Overall, with a game like this, you just want your FR not to really screw up and he did that. You can see the potential. He does have to clean up some of the lazy passes though, but I'm sure he will.

Naz. Same thing as Ejim. They hype about him improving is looking correct. He's been a bright spot. If he can average 10-12ppg, we're in the tourney no questions asked.

Niang. Rough start, but clutch as hell down the stretch. He's still shaking the rust off, and the end of the 2nd half might be what he needed to spark his fuze. Having Ejim back is huge for him, IMO.

Right now, this is clearly the quickest I've seen a Fred Hoiberg team come together. They seem to play with a much higher b-ball IQ than I anticipated at this point, and compared to what we've seen by his past couple of teams.

Depth, might be our biggest concern. Right now, we only can really go 7 deep. Hopefully SDW and Edozie/Percy can at least improve throughout the year and give us some serviceable minutes in games where we need depth due to foul trouble.

 

[LivntheCyLife]

Two thoughts:

1) Kane is a stud and is going to be a go to guy with this team. The big question for me will be the team's ability to get Thomas/Long/Hogue involved in the offense. I think our offensive spacing and ball movement could use some improvement, especially when Kane is handling the ball at the point.

2) I'd like to see CFH get better at stealing a couple minutes rest for Niang and Ejim. There will be games where Gibson or Edozie are going to need to play so I'd like to see at least one of them getting a couple minutes pretty much every game.

 

[awd4cy]

This team is farther ahead than any November team with Hoiberg.