We've played the #16 and #1 defenses in the nation in conference play so far, according to Bart Torvik. OSU is next, ranked #73.
*** Official #2 Houston vs IOWA STATE Game(Day) Thread ***
- Thread starter CycloneRulzzz
- Start date
I just think they foul a lot and against KU way more of them are going to be called.
There’s good defense there but especially the perimeter defense, a lot of that’s just fouling. An nba crew or the typical pro KU crew would have forced them to change the way they play, especially all the fouling 35 feet from the basket.
You're spot on here, it was absolutely the diehards last night. After the second possession that we scored on and everyone was on their feet already going crazy cheering for our guys on defense, I thought "ok, it's going to be a wild night, this is top level stuff even for Hilton."
Then at the end, a majority of the crowd wasn't leaving early to get out of the parking lot, we stayed until well after the hand shake line to show support for our guys and unique memory. Awesome stuff.
Or they could have been facing the best defensive team and best offensive rebounding team in the nation. That could have had a bit to do with that, maybe.
Of course, Houston is also the best defensive team in the country and while they face good defenses, they aren't as good as Houston. Kansas has a really good defense but they get them at home. OU is the fourth best D in the conference. There are going to be a lot of games where they get way better looks than against Houston.
Bold take considering we just “next stepped” on the #2 team in the country and one of the top programs in the country over the past 3 years.
This is completely random, but does anyone here know Thom McDonald the commissioner of Iowa Junior college athletics? My friend was given tickets from a friend who was a big Houston fan last night and they were directly behind the Houston bench. As soon as we sat down we had the privilege to sit next to this gem. His first words to us were are you guys ISU fans. We said yes, and he goes on to say you guys won’t have “sh@t to cheer about tonight”. Five minutes into the game he goes on a rant about how he paid for these tickets and we deserve to be in the balcony where the poor people sit. And how he will get us kicked out of her sooner than it took us to sit down. Mind you we werent being arrogant or disrespectful whatsoever. Then Kelvin Sampson daughter comes up to my friend telling us to leave these aren’t your seats and makes a scene. The more I learned about Thom the guy is an ISU graduate. I’ve never in my 33 years of life met a more entitled POS in my entire life. Sorry for the rant, but I had to put this out there. I was in complete shock with how a guy that is the commissioner of Iowa Junior college athletics treated my friend and I and could care less that he was doing it.
Oh, I think we can. Our problem at times the last couple years was not that we were going 3/15. It was that we were going 6/30. This team has better overall shooters AND a better sense of how much of our offense needs to come in the paint.
We have to shoot better, have to show constant movement to create shots and opportunities when our shooting IS rough (our bigs did a good job with this late, particularly King), and we have to play hard AND smart on defense.
There are times you get beat on defense and sometimes the smarter play is to concede the basket and learn to fight for another day. Ward picked up 1-2 bad fouls, particularly on the drive where the Houston player beat his man (and Ward rotated). This limited his minutes when he was an extremely effective player when on the floor. We saw it last year where the constant bodying, especially near the lines and up high, took guys like Lipsey out of the game.
I love the intensity, but we need to be smarter with some of our fouls and be a lot smarter with our doubles/traps/collapses on defense. We give up way too many open shots from these instances when it's really not necessary. Figuring those two things out would swing a solid handful + of possessions/points our way.
Make the other team beat you. Don't beat yourself.
Iowa State can't get in without more Q1 wins. The biggest reason is for them to win enough conference games to get in some of them will have to be Q1. At the start of conference play 12 of their 18 conference games were Q1.
We had good looks last night; we are just not making them. No one is saying that Houston is not great at defense, but there are times you have to make shoots. I am not talking 12/15, but you have to hit more than 3/15 to win on most nights. If we had lost last night, everyone would be looking at the 3/15 from 3 point and saying that is the reason we lost, but since we won, people are glossing over that fact.
At first I was going to disagree but you're right. You CAN overcome a bad outside night if you don't shoot yourself out of the building. There really weren't an abundance of 3s that were bad shots and the ratio of FTs to 3s taken illustrates we did a really good job of avoiding that pitfall.
Especially with a snow storm crowd. I think that's overlooked or discounted a lot (since the game is inside), but it's just a different vibe
They are also an incredible shot blocking team. There are times you feel really irritated when a player gets blocked as you feel it was a bad decision or preventable. I honestly thought at least half of our blocked shots were pretty good decisions and at least half of those were ones I didn't think they would get to.
It's tough to play against a team that can erase a lot of good looks/decisions with shot blocking.
Highest Free Throw Rate that Houston has given up all year - AND we made them!Looked at stats and how huge was free throw line. 1/3 of our points came from line. If we shoot our average we probably don't get it done. So we'll done team. Keep it up.
I thought there was absolutely no way we could win this game without getting hot from 3 - I said we needed to make 10 pregame to have a chance. We made 3. The consistent aggression to the hoop, especially from Tamin and Gilbert, was absolutely huge. They didn't get every call and it led to some turnovers, but it set the tone throughout the game and paid off.
As mentioned upthread - Tamin getting the ball to Milan with 10 seconds left was a very smart play. And Houston really messed up by not getting the foul on Tamin there.
Well shoot, we may have to relinquish our " one of the toughest places to play 5 minutes before tip-off" award,
I would be pissed enough to email the AD’s office. I am guessing this guy gets these seats because we want to have a good relationship with the JUCO’s but that doesn’t give him the right to abuse our fans.
If you aren't worried, cool. Big12 is gauntlet and the offense can't have long droughts of no buckets.
We went 3/16 and lost in the road. We went 3/15 and won at home. The difference was the defense and being at home. We’re good enough defensively to overcome this shooting. Go look at the tape from game 1 to game 2. We almost completely filled that defensive hole that allowed OU to have a bunch of open 3 looks from the wing. Houston got a couple of those but they were further off the line and had just that little bit more pressure to throw it off.
I said that pregame in this thread - Houston's defense is absolutely bonkers - they are #1 in block rate AND #1 in steal rate - and hold teams to ~20% on 3pt shots and ~40% on 2pt shots. Doing all 4 of those that well is unheard of.
It seemed like they had a ton of blocks, but their 15% block rate last night was their lowest since before Thanksgiving. So I agree completely that they blocked a number of very good shots. Same with offensive rebounding - it seemed like they got a ton of offensive boards, but it was one of their lowest ORB% games of the season.
They are really just that good. I wish we didn't play them again at their place.
