*** Official #2 IOWA STATE vs West Virginia Game(Day) Thread ***

[cyclonestunners]

that is stupid? Look, he does play great most of the time, but are you going deny he is careless and out of control at times? Are we not allowed to critique the player at all? If a fan says he has room for improvement you go to "glad you're not a coach" card. Geez.

No it's when you're saying he should change how he plays, when his style of play is also what makes him good and hard to cover.

 

[cyclonestunners]

that is stupid? Look, he does play great most of the time, but are you going deny he is careless and out of control at times? Are we not allowed to critique the player at all? If a fan says he has room for improvement you go to "glad you're not a coach" card. Geez.

No it's when you're saying he should change how he plays, when his style of play is also what makes him good and hard to cover.

 

[iseedit]

You think they weren’t playing hard? I agree with CW postgame that they’ll probably decide to tweak the rotation because those minutes aren’t sustainable, but don’t see this happening.

At certain points in the game. Depending on situations, time and team fouls, you'll see us really amp up on defense and get a steal or cause a turnover. I didn't see as much of that yesterday. If Lipsey ends the game with 4 fouls, you know he gave you everything he had on defense. Same with Gilbert. Heise had 0 fouls which tells me he wasn't being aggressive enough when he was out there.

 

[AuH2O]

TJ's strategy the first couple years was conceptually similar (keep score and possessions low via defense) but it was not Huggins ball, which was what we saw from WVU last night. Constant grabbing clutching pushing shoving etc. They were hooking/pinning Jefferson's off-arm down as soon as he caught the ball in the post and riding him like that until he shot or passes and not getting called for it. We didn't do that that kind of ****.

There was a possession where Tamin had the ball barely past halfcourt, trying to dribble while facing the basket and spent the whole possession repeatedly swatting Small's arm away as he was arm-barring him the whole time.

Sorry, ISUs first two years under TJ were just a variation of the "they can't call them all" approach. Tons of hand-checking, restricting movement away from the ball, and initiating contact with hips, chest and mid-section on traps like crazy.
The idea that ISU was so different than WVU yesterday is total homerism nonsense.

 

[madguy30]

Starting him gives you the option to take him out after 3 minutes to coach him on the bench of what the play is like without disrupting much of the rotations the guys have grown accustomed too. It's all about routines that have been proven to work really well. All it takes is 1 little hiccup in the routine to cause some havoc which I think we seen yesterday.

Get accustomed to playing 28-30 minutes and playing really hard during your time in. Now see that you're gonna have to play 36-38 minutes and you'll start conserving energy while you're on the floor at certain times. That's typically not the style of play we've been playing this year.

Is this ZRF or a relative of Nojus?

28-30 minutes? 36-38?

 

[Malone]

I really think Nojus needs to be starting. It would give him the boost of confidence he needs being thrown into the wolves and it would essentially be able to keep the rotations nearly the same as what they were with Milan playing.

Nojus will make Freshman mistakes but it's really nothing we didn't see from Milan last year or haven't seen this year from anyone. He'll give up a back door cut, he'll turn the ball over, he'll commit a dumb foul but his ability on offense is what we're gonna need going forward. Heck, just him catching a pass from someone would be an improvement over the past 2 games then what we've gotten out of Watson. I don't think he's caught a pass yet and that makes guarding him pretty easy and disrupts moving the ball around. Que hero ball.

I agree with this in part.

When we learned about Mommy’s injury most were calling for Watson to get more pt. Watson is in year three and we know what he is, and it doesn’t come close to replacing what Milan provides. And we found out yesterday that we SORELY miss what Mommy provides. Watson is a spot minute defender/rebounder and it’s 4 on 5 offensively when he’s in.

You have to moneyball it the best you can and replace Milan in the aggregate with the pieces you have. That’s not possible right now, but we’d be a lot closer to that if Nojus was getting 10-15 minutes to build his confidence. It would also bolster the potential of this team for the endgame part of the season.

Watson provides little of what we need and, while I understand the staff’s decision to give him run with Milan out, I strongly disagree with it.

 

[iseedit]

Is this ZRF or a relative of Nojus?

28-30 minutes? 36-38?

I'm neither but definitely a fan of Nojus. I think the kid's game has a lot of upside potential.

 

[madguy30]

I'm neither but definitely a fan of Nojus. I think the kid's game has a lot of upside potential.

Are you saying he should play 36 minutes?

 

[rosshm16]

Just throwing out some numbers here. Rank-ordered minutes per game by ISU players, Big 12 conference games only:

2022: 36-33-30-25-22-19-13-12-08-05-00
2023: 36-33-31-25-21-17-16-12-08-05-02-00
2024: 31-31-29-29-23-22-17-10-07-01-00
2025: 35-33-32-31-21-18-16-16-03

The 00's are where someone played but averaged less than 0.5 minutes per game.

 

[rosshm16]

Sorry, ISUs first two years under TJ were just a variation of the "they can't call them all" approach. Tons of hand-checking, restricting movement away from the ball, and initiating contact with hips, chest and mid-section on traps like crazy.
The idea that ISU was so different than WVU yesterday is total homerism nonsense.

You didn't watch much HuggyBall if you think that's how we played D in 2022-2023. It's not.

 

[FinalFourCy]

I agree with this in part.

When we learned about Mommy’s injury most were calling for Watson to get more pt. Watson is in year three and we know what he is, and it doesn’t come close to replacing what Milan provides. And we found out yesterday that we SORELY miss what Mommy provides. Watson is a spot minute defender/rebounder and it’s 4 on 5 offensively when he’s in.

You have to moneyball it the best you can and replace Milan in the aggregate with the pieces you have. That’s not possible right now, but we’d be a lot closer to that if Nojus was getting 10-15 minutes to build his confidence. It would also bolster the potential of this team for the endgame part of the season.

Watson provides little of what we need and, while I understand the staff’s decision to give him run with Milan out, I strongly disagree with it.

Gilbert, Lipsey, and Jones played 37, 36, 37 minutes

Structurally speaking, Milan doesn’t change much. Given we don’t play him at the 4 a lot, Milan getting time largely takes one of those three elite guards off the court, making our defense and playmaking worse.

It is more about hoping at least someone has a hot hand.

And for that reason I agree we should have been trying to find as many minutes for Nojus as possible before yesterday. And same for Watson, for the Illinois type games when we need length and athleticism

You don’t need to be 10 deep, but given you can always use more shooting, and there are times we’ll need more perimeter size and athleticism, it’s shortsighted to play 8 guys in blowout buy games

 

[CyNews]

Heise looked lost on the offensive (very indecisive wether to shoot or pass) end of the floor. Milan spacing was missed on the offensive end. Tough loss- too many turnovers and 1-17 from behind the 3 point line.

Yet we were still right there.

 

[iseedit]

Are you saying he should play 36 minutes?

No absolutely not. Those minutes were referring to Curtis, Tamin and Gilbert

 

[MTCyclone43]

Yet we were still right there.

That is a nice consolation if ISU was playing for a ribbon. However, I expect they were playing to win.

 

[StLouisClone]

I really think Nojus needs to be starting. It would give him the boost of confidence he needs being thrown into the wolves and it would essentially be able to keep the rotations nearly the same as what they were with Milan playing.

Nojus will make Freshman mistakes but it's really nothing we didn't see from Milan last year or haven't seen this year from anyone. He'll give up a back door cut, he'll turn the ball over, he'll commit a dumb foul but his ability on offense is what we're gonna need going forward. Heck, just him catching a pass from someone would be an improvement over the past 2 games then what we've gotten out of Watson. I don't think he's caught a pass yet and that makes guarding him pretty easy and disrupts moving the ball around. Que hero ball.

Nojus is 2-13 from 3 this season, and those 2 makes were against KC and against Colorado during garbage time of our 99-71 win.

Demarion Watson is 6-24 from 3 during his career. He was actually 2-2 last season.

 

[NoCreativity]

All it takes is 1 game to understand why some of us were concerned back in December about Watson and Nojus not getting any PT for a month.

 

[madguy30]

All it takes is 1 game to understand why some of us were concerned back in December about Watson and Nojus not getting any PT for a month.

You just couldn't do it. You can't keep from thinking 10 minutes in November would have mattered yesterday.

 

[ClubCy]

All it takes is 1 game to understand why some of us were concerned back in December about Watson and Nojus not getting any PT for a month.

Didn’t seem to matter against Kansas.

 

[alarson]

All it takes is 1 game to understand why some of us were concerned back in December about Watson and Nojus not getting any PT for a month.

Ah yes, a game where we would have won if only we would have shot 15% from 3 instead of 5% is definitely cause for freaking out and blaming it on some meaningless playing time back in december.

 

[rosshm16]

Watson looked good in his 10 minutes against KU. I actually missed that he played at all yesterday, maybe it was in the bit where I turned it off due to frustration with the stripes.

He's a corner-three away from being a very dangerous rotation player, wish he could develop that.