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How the Hawks Outplayed Us

Great game, great win; lots of positives (NIANG!!). Not to be a negative Nancy, but three things stick out to me on the poor side last night.

Two of them, poor transition D (Ejim?) and poor FT shooting are obvious. Who exactly was supposed to be guarding White all night? Was it Ejim?

The third was how exactly did McCabe get such a wide open look at the tying 3? Don't recall exactly who was on the floor for Iowa on the last play, but the guys we should have been on like glue were McCabe, Uthoff, and Gessell. McCabe and Uthoff should have been easy. McCabe got as good a look as you could ever hope for.
 
Half the ISU players looked like they were in slow motion. Thomas played scared. Ejim looked slugglish.
 
I don't think Iowa outplayed us at all. Our transition defense was horrible, but I wouldn't call that being outplayed. I also thought Ejim looked pretty bad all night from an effort stand point. obviously his numbers were good and he was the only one making free throws. Overall I thought our defensive intensity was lacking, but I would say that has been the case more often than not with hoiberg teams.
Our Inbounds play defense was maybe the poorest I have seen in a long time as well. We must work on that.

I give Iowa tons of credit. They are very good. to come into Hilton and almost steal one just shows how good that team is. I hope we are both 4 seeds or better and if we have to rematch it will be in the final 4.
 
Nothing was falling from the outside and Iowa was fouling the drive. With 90 second left, ISU was 17-30 from the line. Hit a few more of those and ISU is leading more of the game.
Early in the game Iowa State was sending 4 back on D when a shot went up. There weren't very many fast break points in the first half. This led to a lot of hawk rebounds and in the second half, Iowa State went after more rebounds and it led to fast break points for Iowa.
At the end of the game Iowa State hit clutch shots and Iowa didn't. Iowa state owned the last 90 seconds.
 
Dingus said:
The third was how exactly did McCabe get such a wide open look at the tying 3? Don't recall exactly who was on the floor for Iowa on the last play, but the guys we should have been on like glue were McCabe, Uthoff, and Gessell. McCabe and Uthoff should have been easy. McCabe got as good a look as you could ever hope for.
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I've re watched that play a few times, because I too was very confused. It looks like Iowa St. was in some kinda zone, because you could see the players pointing out who's coming across.

I think it was Kane that got pinned on a down screen, and like usual last night there was poor communication on who was supposed to step out.

But all this is kinda contradicted in the post game interview, when Fred said they were suppose to foul. Well its kinda hard to intentionally foul when you're in a zone.

Something definitely wasn't communicated or executed right on that possession, but thank goodness it didn't go down.
 
TXCyclones said:
But, if we'd hit just our free throw average that was a 12 point win.
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People need to realize this teams free throw average would have equated to ONE more made free throw. This is just a bad free throw shooting team hitting a tad less than 68% from the line.
 
This was the type of game that is becoming more common during the CFH era. ISU is down for much of the game, then all of a sudden with with 12 to 4 mins left ISU goes on a big run. Its all most like his team does their thing and keeps it close then CFH goes after their weak spots and gets the win, not giving the other coach much time to make adjustments. He flat out, can out coaches other coaches late in game.
 
TXCyclones said:
Iowa played well enough, and our rhythm was certainly disrupted. But, if we'd hit just our free throw average that was a 12 point win. Also, again last night, our newcomers forced some really poor and ill-timed shots. This was maddening as we'd done such a great job of passing it around the perimeter, and then someone would get impatient and force a really dumb shot, and then everyone would move away from the basket rather than go for a put-back rebound. Fred's got some good film to work with here, and I hope he does so!

On the upside, remember where we were a year ago at this time! We're still learning to play together, but this should be a good learning game!
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ONe thing i remember about Hawk's defense last night: they seemed to always have one or two defenders between passing lanes even at the top of the key. the zone was really tough for us last night. I don't know how we didn't have open guys the way they did that.
 
mitya51 said:
ONe thing i remember about Hawk's defense last night: they seemed to always have one or two defenders between passing lanes even at the top of the key. the zone was really tough for us last night. I don't know how we didn't have open guys the way they did that.
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That is where their length helps them.
 
ISU isn't setup to match Iowa's size. We knew it coming in and it shouldn't have been a surprise when they dominated the boards.

For the most part, I thought ISUs half court defense was very good. We lost guys occasionally which led to easy shots, but Iowa always seems to be able to sneak someone along the baseline in all their games so that's not too concerning long term. We challenged the ball up top and stayed in good position down low to keep from fouling.

The transition defense needs work. One more than one occasion, we had two guys stopping the ball and no one getting the other guy running the floor. Naz seemed to be the cause several times. This is easily corrected with communication but not surprising with these young guards. As has been mentioned the bigs did not run the floor at all. Obviously depth played a role here since Niang and Ejim couldn't sit long. Against running trams like Iowa I'd like to see Edozie get in the game more to help give a breather. Thankfully, I think we've seen our toughest transition opponent last night.
 
HititHard said:
Marble is a good player and White really hustled and played his rear off. Whites performance was Lafesteresque.

We really need to get this free throw problem solved.
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Maybe like .5 Lafesteresque...unless I missed him going over the 50 point mark, but I thought I was watching pretty closely.
 
MNclone said:
Nothing was falling from the outside and Iowa was fouling the drive. With 90 second left, ISU was 17-30 from the line. Hit a few more of those and ISU is leading more of the game.
Early in the game Iowa State was sending 4 back on D when a shot went up. There weren't very many fast break points in the first half. This led to a lot of hawk rebounds and in the second half, Iowa State went after more rebounds and it led to fast break points for Iowa.
At the end of the game Iowa State hit clutch shots and Iowa didn't. Iowa state owned the last 90 seconds.
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Great points.
 
The better team wins. Unless someone throws up a prayer half court shot or something freaky similar, the team that outplayed the other wins. I will certainly admit that Iowa looked a lot better than I thought they would, but I also have no problem saying that we were the better team. We had guys that were having off nights and still found a way to come out on top. They had their best player having a CAREER night and still lost. Only at ISU do we feel guilty about and apologetic about wins.
 
Iowa reminds me of our team last year, they may have more talent that team even but they are similar in the way they play. Last year we were a team that played in spurts, took a lot of quick shots and in a handful of games went cold and couldn't finish games off. You see that with the hawks this year. They played good enough to win but got complacent at the end, for the life of me I don't know why they didn't run everything through Marble the last few minutes. Regardless of how good/bad we played, they had us, they just couldn't finish. That's the difference between us and them IMO, we've just been gutsier in crunch time.
 
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