So, where do we go from here?

[cyfan92]

Agree with some of this. If you think Gabe is coming back and not starting you are smoking crack tho. Depending on who we land, both Tre King and Kunc could start and be more than serviceable.

I thank Gabe for his time as a Cyclone. However, we need to upgrade the shooting drastically on this team. Have to keep Hunter (27% 3 point shooter). Between Grill and Gabe.. I'm taking Caleb's 2 more years of growth.

Using Bart Torvik's player ratings. Gabe was the worst rated player on the 2021/22 roster. Grill was #5 on the team. Analytics aren't everything (See Conditt's rating below). SO if Gabe wants to play a bench role on the team next year. I'd be open to that



Here is the explanation of his player ratings system.. https://www.bigtengeeks.com/new-stat-porpagatu/#update19

 

[bawbie]

His percentage has been going down since his freshman season. It is encouraging that he's improving on his 2pt%. I think there's potential for him to rebrand himself as tough dribble drive, and pull up guy. But he's gotta get stronger, and better at ball handling.

That 86%->66% drop on FTs is insane. He took more FTs last year too - so it wasn't a sample size thing. That just makes no sense

 

[cyclonehomer]

I thank Gabe for his time as a Cyclone. However, we need to upgrade the shooting drastically on this team. Have to keep Hunter (27% 3 point shooter). Between Grill and Gabe.. I'm taking Caleb's 2 more years of growth.

Using Bart Torvik's player ratings. Gabe was the worst rated player on the 2021/22 roster. Grill was #5 on the team. Analytics aren't everything (See Conditt's rating below). SO if Gabe wants to play a bench role on the team next year. I'd be open to that

View attachment 97306

Here is the explanation of his player ratings system.. https://www.bigtengeeks.com/new-stat-porpagatu/#update19

Agree with a lot of this. I think George gets rated fairly well by most analytics because he was extremely efficient shooting the ball in comparison to most of the team and had an excellent assist rate as well. It also helps that he was one of the best free throw shooters on the team, too.

If he had stuck around I think a role coming off the bench likely would have been best, but I also think he was pretty underrated by the fan base this season. I don't really know if I could put any of the guys (maybe Caleb?) below him higher than him. When basically any overall metric I've seen had George as a top 4/5 player on the team, I can't say it doesn't hold at least a little weight for me.

 

[Jkclone15]

I thank Gabe for his time as a Cyclone. However, we need to upgrade the shooting drastically on this team. Have to keep Hunter (27% 3 point shooter). Between Grill and Gabe.. I'm taking Caleb's 2 more years of growth.

Using Bart Torvik's player ratings. Gabe was the worst rated player on the 2021/22 roster. Grill was #5 on the team. Analytics aren't everything (See Conditt's rating below). SO if Gabe wants to play a bench role on the team next year. I'd be open to that

View attachment 97306

Here is the explanation of his player ratings system.. https://www.bigtengeeks.com/new-stat-porpagatu/#update19

Does this system take into account defensive efficiency? ISU was a top 10 team in 3-point defense this year and I think a large part of that was Gabe guarding the other team's best perimeter shooter night in/night out.

 

[Sigmapolis]

I have a sinking feeling the team might outwardly "take a step back" next year.

That won't be the case to any keen observer, though. I'm sure the talent is going to be upgraded and a young core developed that is going to win a lot of games for the Cyclones throughout their careers, sort of like how things were when Niang, Mitrou-Long, Morris, and Thomas were underclassmen.

They're just going to lose a lot of productivity (e.g., Brockington) and experience in the Big 12 (e.g., Conditt) that is going to be hard to perfectly replicate. If there is a guy who can do it is is TJ, but even then, last year required many things to break right for the season to come out as it did. They didn't lay any eggs in the non-con and avoided any harrowing matchups, which they're not going to be able to do next year playing in Portland against a loaded table of teams in the PK85. They did not have any significant injuries. They managed to win just enough Big 12 games to squeeze into the tournament as a #11. Then they played two good games in Milwaukee to make a surprising Sweet Sixteen. Which was great but winning games in the tournament is really hard and even a good team next year might not be able to do that. This is still a team that almost lost to Alabama State.

I hope everybody is going to be patient. This program is neither rebuild nor reloaded at this point. I would be happy with next year if they win a similar amount of or even more Big 12 games, if the defense metrics stay where they are and the offensive ones improve, and if the younger players show promise even if they lose more games in the non-con and exit early from the tournament or even not make it into it at all.

 

[cyclonehomer]

Does this system take into account defensive efficiency? ISU was a top 10 team in 3-point defense this year and I think a large part of that was Gabe guarding the other team's best perimeter shooter night in/night out.

It's extremely hard to boil down any individual defender's impact. I've used evanmiya.com to look at lineups with and without specific players to try to isolate that kind of thing, but even then it's very hard to get a complete picture of a single defender analytically.

 

[bawbie]

I have a sinking feeling the team might outwardly "take a step back" next year.

That won't be the case to any keen observer, though. I'm sure the talent is going to be upgraded and a young core developed that is going to win a lot of games for the Cyclones throughout their careers, sort of like how things were when Niang, Mitrou-Long, Morris, and Thomas were underclassmen.

They're just going to lose a lot of productivity (e.g., Brockington) and experience in the Big 12 (e.g., Conditt) that is going to be hard to perfectly replicate. If there is a guy who can do it is is TJ, but even then, last year required many things to break right for the season to come out as it did. They didn't lay any eggs in the non-con and avoided any harrowing matchups, which they're not going to be able to do next year playing in Portland against a loaded table of teams in the PK85. They did not have any significant injuries. They managed to win just enough Big 12 games to squeeze into the tournament as a #11. Then they played two good games in Milwaukee to make a surprising Sweet Sixteen. Which was great but winning games in the tournament is really hard and even a good team next year might not be able to do that. This is still a team that almost lost to Alabama State.

I hope everybody is going to be patient. This program is neither rebuild nor reloaded at this point. I would be happy with next year if they win a similar amount of or even more Big 12 games, if the defense metrics stay where they are and the offensive ones improve, and if the younger players show promise even if they lose more games in the non-con and exit early from the tournament or even not make it into it at all.

Next year is very much going to depend on 3 things:

Progression from the current players - especially Hunter and Grill - a leap forward from Enaruna would be good too

Freshman coming in ready to play - Lipsey will be Hunter's backup, but Eli King and Watson being Big XII ready would be huge

Win the portal - need probably 3-4 contributors and 1-2 starts from the portal. Tre King is obviously a good start.

 

[Tpups21]

Getting better offensive players to buy in defensively like this year’s roster might be a challenge for Otz.

 

[Sigmapolis]

@bawbie

Your quote reminds me of this quote...

"Yeah it works in practice, but will it work in theory?" ~every professor ever

 

[bawbie]

@bawbie

Your quote reminds me of this quote...

"Yeah it works in practice, but will it work in theory?" ~every professor ever

lol - I had seen that quote a couple of times and was wondering who said it, so I did a little googling and the consensus was that it was originally from a 1990s computer science text book

 

[WhoISthis]

I have a sinking feeling the team might outwardly "take a step back" next year.

That won't be the case to any keen observer, though. I'm sure the talent is going to be upgraded and a young core developed that is going to win a lot of games for the Cyclones throughout their careers, sort of like how things were when Niang, Mitrou-Long, Morris, and Thomas were underclassmen.

They're just going to lose a lot of productivity (e.g., Brockington) and experience in the Big 12 (e.g., Conditt) that is going to be hard to perfectly replicate. If there is a guy who can do it is is TJ, but even then, last year required many things to break right for the season to come out as it did. They didn't lay any eggs in the non-con and avoided any harrowing matchups, which they're not going to be able to do next year playing in Portland against a loaded table of teams in the PK85. They did not have any significant injuries. They managed to win just enough Big 12 games to squeeze into the tournament as a #11. Then they played two good games in Milwaukee to make a surprising Sweet Sixteen. Which was great but winning games in the tournament is really hard and even a good team next year might not be able to do that. This is still a team that almost lost to Alabama State.

I hope everybody is going to be patient. This program is neither rebuild nor reloaded at this point. I would be happy with next year if they win a similar amount of or even more Big 12 games, if the defense metrics stay where they are and the offensive ones improve, and if the younger players show promise even if they lose more games in the non-con and exit early from the tournament or even not make it into it at all.

Possible, but this reminds me of the narrative that it was going to be a long turnaround.

Rosters are year-to-year now. Some years you have more work than others, but consistently making the tournament is about plugging holes each spring. Do we have more work than last spring? Is it a harder sell?

The offense was not good. If that was solely because of a lack of talent, and we’re going to be less talented next year, and hence worse- which would be 2020-21 level- hmm, that’s some disappointing recruiting imo.

But there’s also a lot of room to improve in the sense of not being reliant on needing a guy like IB to make tough mid-range jumpers. That’s incremental improvement everywhere else, and even better coaching. Our offense had too much a McD with Brackins vibe for what we’ll need.


IB was a good defender, but I don’t see any reason why the roster can’t have the material to be very good on defense next year. My question is do we let it slide a little, maybe top-30, in order to not be bad on offense.

 

[cyfan92]

Does this system take into account defensive efficiency? ISU was a top 10 team in 3-point defense this year and I think a large part of that was Gabe guarding the other team's best perimeter shooter night in/night out.

It tracks steals, blocks and defensive rebounding. Limited on the defensive side. But defense is more about team effort than individual effort.

 

[cyclonehomer]

Possible, but this reminds me of the narrative that it was going to be a long turnaround.

Rosters are year-to-year now. Some years you have more work than others, but consistently making the tournament is about plugging holes each spring.

The offense was not good. If that was solely because of a lack of talent, and we’re going to be less talented next year, and hence worse- which would be 2020-21 level- hmm, that’s some disappointing recruiting imo.

But there’s also a lot of room to improve in the sense of not being reliant on needing IB to make tough mid-range jumpers. That’s incremental improvement everywhere else and better coaching. Our offense had too much a McD with Brackins vibe for what we’ll need.


IB was a good defender, but I don’t see any reason why the roster can’t have the material to be very good. My question is do we let it slide a little, maybe top-30, in order to not be bad on offense.

Agree with this. Even if you ran it back with the same exact roster, I don't think you can necessarily pencil in a top 5 defense. Maybe they would have done it, but I think it's fair to expect more in the top 25ish range as a good goal and benchmark. If you can stay in that great-elite range defensively and hit even the middle of the pack on offense for the B12, I think that's good enough.

I agree with Sig's main point that it's not like next year is Sweet 16 or bust. But I do believe with a top 75ish offense compared to what we saw this year and a slightly worse defense, ISU can absolutely finish top half of the B12. That's sort of more the goal I think is reachable next year and would make me feel great about the program (not that I don't already.) Easier said than done, but improvement from Hunter and more ball skills throughout the rotation are pretty realistic goals for the off-season to me.

 

[WastedTalent]

I have a sinking feeling the team might outwardly "take a step back" next year.

That won't be the case to any keen observer, though. I'm sure the talent is going to be upgraded and a young core developed that is going to win a lot of games for the Cyclones throughout their careers, sort of like how things were when Niang, Mitrou-Long, Morris, and Thomas were underclassmen.

They're just going to lose a lot of productivity (e.g., Brockington) and experience in the Big 12 (e.g., Conditt) that is going to be hard to perfectly replicate. If there is a guy who can do it is is TJ, but even then, last year required many things to break right for the season to come out as it did. They didn't lay any eggs in the non-con and avoided any harrowing matchups, which they're not going to be able to do next year playing in Portland against a loaded table of teams in the PK85. They did not have any significant injuries. They managed to win just enough Big 12 games to squeeze into the tournament as a #11. Then they played two good games in Milwaukee to make a surprising Sweet Sixteen. Which was great but winning games in the tournament is really hard and even a good team next year might not be able to do that. This is still a team that almost lost to Alabama State.

I hope everybody is going to be patient. This program is neither rebuild nor reloaded at this point. I would be happy with next year if they win a similar amount of or even more Big 12 games, if the defense metrics stay where they are and the offensive ones improve, and if the younger players show promise even if they lose more games in the non-con and exit early from the tournament or even not make it into it at all.

I think it's highly unlikely they go undefeated in the non con next year, but depending on how the roster comes together, I would hope they can improve to around .500 in conference.
So lose 2-3 non con, but win about 9 in Big 12, and still be around 20 wins going into Selection Sunday.

 

[cyfan92]

9-3 in the non-con vs 12-0 this year isn't a huge issue. Need to get to 9-10 conference wins if we want to make Des Moines in March.

With IB leaving, I think Des Moines is a MASSIVE stretch unless we land several 5-star type transfers

 

[Sigmapolis]

Possible, but this reminds me of the narrative that it was going to be a long turnaround.

Rosters are year-to-year now. Some years you have more work than others, but consistently making the tournament is about plugging holes each spring. Do we have more work than last spring? Is it a harder sell?

The offense was not good. If that was solely because of a lack of talent, and we’re going to be less talented next year, and hence worse- which would be 2020-21 level- hmm, that’s some disappointing recruiting imo.

But there’s also a lot of room to improve in the sense of not being reliant on needing a guy like IB to make tough mid-range jumpers. That’s incremental improvement everywhere else, and even better coaching. Our offense had too much a McD with Brackins vibe for what we’ll need.


IB was a good defender, but I don’t see any reason why the roster can’t have the material to be very good on defense next year. My question is do we let it slide a little, maybe top-30, in order to not be bad on offense.

I agree with much of this, but I'll quibble a few points...

I agree that rosters are going to be fluid going forward, but I still think the plan for building a program for TJ is to have a core of guys who stay year-to-year, continually add experience and skill, and set the cultural tone for the locker room while transfers cycle in and out. That there will be four-year guys in the genre of Ejim, Niang, Mitrou-Long, Morris, and Thomas that the transfers would supplement.

Right now, the roster only has one guy like that in Hunter. Hopefully the incoming class adds to that. But it is going to take some time until those guys are the upperclassmen leading the team.

I think the program significantly overachieved last year. I think even if the roster has some pretty significant upgrades in talent and experience, which you are already in a deficit with Brockington and Conditt leaving, that it could "regress to the mean" and feel somewhat disappointing in discreet W/L accomplishments compared to this year even if the underlying program is ultimately improving.

I know some people make fun of me and my interest in advanced metrics, and they have a point. "Nobody cares if the team was #6 in Torvik defensive efficiency -- they care they're going to be hoisting a banner for 'Sweet Sixteen' in Hilton next fall. How are you such a total and complete NERD!?!"

I think the metrics are going to be very telling for next year, though. Iowa State was #44 overall on Torvik, #184 on offense, and #6 on defense. I'm willing to see the defense slide slightly -- only slightly -- if that means a significant increase on offense and a move into the middle of the Big 12.

The Final Four teams are ranked (overall/offense/defense) --

Kansas (3, 6, 13)
Duke (6, 1, 51)
Villanova (8, 9, 18)
North Carolina (16, 17, 35)

Not that I'm predicting a Final Four anytime soon, but if you want to at least be in that conversation, you probably need to be in the top 20 in efficiency. They've got a long ways to go.

 

[isucy86]

With the IB news. In order to get the Des Moines site for 2023 March Madness. Here is our lineup

Hunter
Transfer
Transfer
King/Jaz
Transfer

Gabe K
Grill
Jones
Enaruna
King
Watson
Lipsey
Transfer

Lots of work to do! The success of the team and IB are great selling points for ELITE shooting guards! WE NEED to get shooters and a NASTY/Athletic Center

IMO if Gabe comes back, pretty good chance he starts.

The difference is where Gabe fits in the scoring hierarchy. This year he was our 2nd/3rd option in offense.

Gabe can be a solid starter on an NCAA Tournament team if he is a 4th/5th option. So they key as you point out is a scoring wing and solid post guy through the portal.

I also think Gabe can get his shot back over the summer.

With Brockington gone, it would be nice to have Gabe's leadership back. Especially if we lose Conditt, Walker, Jackson and Enaruna. Be nice to have some continuity of leadership to continue culture TJ & staff instilled this season.

 

[Nococy]

one thing i trust about this staff compared to the previous one is that i think they can find quality transfers on short notice. they probably knew weeks ago who was staying and going. the previous staff seemed to be caught off guard quite a bit

 

[cyclones500]

Just not convinced Enaruna and Jones will be back. I guess only time will tell.

Enaruana and Jones sounds like the title of a law firm (or a '70s TV police duo).

 

[GlenEllynClone]

I would think Jones would be back. Enaruna is doubtful, the way his playing time diminished the 2nd half of the season.