I'm far more concerned about the stints where we seem to be unable to secure the ball. But far and away, I think our biggest issue is missed free throws. However, doing a little research says we only missed four against BYU? Is that correct, because it seems to me we missed more than that. Maybee it's just a cumulative effect of the overall poor peformance at the line this year. If we could execute some consistancy with ball security and free throws, I don't htink there is a team that stands in our way. I will say, in spite of these shortcomings, this team is still fun to watch and with only four losses in arguably the toughest basketball conference in the nation, I am proud of what TJ has done in such a short tenure. I honestly feel TJ gets us a national title.
Scoring Droughts
- Thread starter cayin
- Start date
True, but we all want an elite 8 or final four team, and it seems like the past couple of years we had the talent to achieve that, and they didn't. Last year it was injuries to the back court, this year it's losing games away from home that we shouldn't be doing.
ISU basketball seems to be a little snake bitten that we get off to great starts and then blow it when we need to step up. Every year its seems we get a key injury or face a team equal to us in the tournament and get beat. Winning at crunch time is what it's all about, Michigan State looks average for the first half the seasons, then turn the corner the 2nd half and start dominating teams, when is ISU going to start doing the same?
He was a last minute pick up because ISU thought they had a guy but he bailed and the other guy got a season ending injury. Nelson was always destined for the role he is currently in, unless more injuries happened.
To the bolded, ISU just dominated #9 KU and beat #2 UH. Won 2 of 3 vs ranked teams. That's pretty good.
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Michigan State lost one game before the new year and it was to Duke, how did they look average? Also they just recently lost to a really not good Minnesota team.
It is certainly fair to call out that other teams too have scoring droughts. I just think it is REALLY hard to win on the road. For TJ's program to continue to ascend, the next big step is winning more consistently on the road. For context, we have very few ranked road wins through TJ's tenure, because it is flat out hard to win those games.
Out of curiosity, I asked Gemini to look at the last 3 conference seasons. Apologies if any inaccuracies here as I did not double check the AI overlords on this one..
As last year's tournament unfolded there looked to be a pretty glaring difference in overall athleticism between ISU and the EE/FF teams.
That included Ole Miss even if ISU were healthy.
So do we want ISU to lose early?
They started slow in November in 23/24 and still got beat by a more athletic Illinois team that cranked up their defense for a game after riding out their offense the last 6 weeks of the season..
Some point blank misses in the 2nd half, which the coaches have no control over, were difference makers.
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Iowa State just swept Kansas and Houston on February 14th and 16th. How is that not late season success?
Momcilovic with 13 points in the last two games is unacceptable. Don't know if that's on Milan, the Staff or both. And if other teams are going to commit that hard to shutting him down, there should be other ways to punish them.
It is great. Love it. Definitely shows how "good" the team and program is.
It is just 2 wins in mid-February though. There is (hopefully) 1.5 months of season left. If we were to lose a bunch of games to close out the regular season, and not do well in the Big 12 tourney and have have an early exit in the Dance, it would be a bit disingenuous to overinflate these specific 2 wins as "late season success".
BYU looked to have a size/length and speed advantage at every position the other night. A few shots fall here and there it goes better.
ISU beat Houston despite his numbers with other guys hitting shots so they found other ways.
ISU has its limitations and some nights will go better (made shots) than others.
Then don't watch?
The only thing I will say is that we seem to be fine at neutral courts going 4-0 so far this season. (Miss state might as well been a home game though)
It is concerning how poor we seem to be on the road against Q1 teams outside of that Purdue game. Hopefully KC treats us well and this teams gets some more confidence in March.
Both at home, how is losing to TCU and BYU late season success? The point of playing the season is to put yourself in position to win the conference title, after beating Houston and KU we put ourselves in that position, but then losing to BYU moves us down again and eliminates all practical chance to win the conference, even if we beat Arizona down there.
This team has yet to get to the elite 8, last year we were the darling pick to get to the final four and lost in the round of 16, people are saying the same thing about this years team. Being good enough is one thing, but you actually have to accomplish the goal and get there. Last years teams could not do that, mostly because of injuries, we will see how this teams does in the future.
Sure it is, but losing to TCU, BYU and Cincinnati takes away from those wins. Every team in the league is going to have one or two bad games, we have had four, all on the road. We were due for a loss at KU, they played great that night, but then we followed that up with a 2nd loss at Cincinnati, a head shaking loss at TCU and then again the other night at BYU. In the TCU and BYU games the other team did not play a great game, like KU did down there. They played average at best and we played poorly.
It looks to me that both Houston and ISU suffer from the same flaw, when they are not getting turnovers which leads to easy scores, both teams are going to struggle against better competition. The difference between the schools is Houston has lost both of their games to equal teams, while we have 3 loses to teams not as talented as ISU.
Maybe being the 'darling pick' doesn't actually hold any weight and is something people say and the reason these 'lost opportunities' happen is an overall talent issue.
Otherwise ISU would have won more regular season titles and made deeper runs and not lost to middle/lower tier teams going back to Fred's years.
Yes they can beat Houston etc on a day but the Michigan's, Dukes etc have the guys to sustain performance.
we beat AZ and it doesn't matter what UConn our Houston do, we'll be a 1 seed.
Respectfully, I disagree on Houston. I don't think our "flaws" are the same. Similar types of programs and defenses, sure. But they've got 4 and 5 star athletes at every position, every year. They showed in the national title (game) run last year that they can play any style and win any style. And just look at that chart I posted earlier; they have lost only 5 road Big 12 games in nearly 3 full seasons. That is insane. There are the elite of the elite. They have not had a single loss in 3 years as bad as our bad losses this season alone.
With all that said - it is almost even more impressive that TJ has us in a position to get a 1 seed (gotta beat Arizona) ahead of Houston.
This is spot-on. Yeah, Iowa State could've pulled out the TCU and maybe the BYU games. But to only have failed to be the "more assertive, more aggressive, more physical, more desperate team" four times is phenomenal. When people here say Iowa State is at an athleticism disadvantage, okay, fine, whatever. But by and large we are talking about marginal differences. Does St. John's not have stellar athletes? Purdue, Kansas, Houston? Some people in game threads act like Momcilovic and Jefferson are Kayden Fish out there. No offense to Fish, but getting shut down by a lottery pick is a lot different than being the fifth or sixth guy off the bench. So, okay, Iowa State doesn't have a lottery pick. I still find it pointless to act like they're doomed because they don't have Arizona's roster. Almost nobody does. And even Michigan and Arizona have lost games. No one can dictate their terms every single game. What I'm thinking about now is you won't play a conference opponent in the first weekend, and you'll be just as desperate as everyone else in the tournament. I'm not saying anything is guaranteed, but I think it has to continually be pointed out that these are mostly small differences, and when certain things tip in Iowa State's favor they beat teams like Houston
Houston is ISU with better players, from one year to the next is what I am saying. Neither team has a dominate front court with size that they can keep rolling in new players, both teams have to get points off turnovers to be very successful. ISU and Arizona did not turn the ball over much at all against Houston and both beat them, we lost at BYU because we were out rebounded and did not get points off turnovers.
The way to beat both of us is to protect the ball, be physical and hit your shots, do not allow either team to get easy points. Easy points is the difference in our games. We beat KU because we could turn them over, we didn't do that to BYU or TCU and lost both.
We are two games behind Arizona and one game behind Houston for the league, tied with KU and TT. Right now we are the last of the 4 seeds, so we have to win out otherwise it will go to someone else.
ISU is one of those teams that its sum is greater than its parts, outside of Jefferson no one is thought to be a 1st round selection let alone a lottery pick.
