The wheels are off and Iowa is slumping. A lot of teams go through that. I am not going to pretend that I know what's going to happen. All I can say is there are no layups on the schedule other than the 2 against Nebraska. Iowa is not fine. They aren't in trouble either. If Iowa goes on a tear and wins some games over the next 3 weeks, this will all go away. If it doesn't, Iowa fans are going to be pissed and understandably so. Get it figured out. Until they do, I won't consider this team more than a 1 and done team and my expectations are higher this season. My only hope is that this teams best basketball is still in front of it. I have doubts that it is.
Fran has started to lose his shit publicly with reporters, and that's historically a sign that he's lost control of the situation.
Yesterday Emmert asked him after the game why he sat Garza (normal question that he should expect as a P5 basketball coach), and he told the group of reporters "You guys are unbelievable," told Emmert it was a "ridiculous question; you should know better, Mark." And didn't answer the question. Now I totally understand why he was mad, but you can't do shit like that because it shows you're at the tipping point of losing control.
Morehouse (who is now retired and does not hold back) had a pretty good discussion thread going on Twitter about his run-ins with Fran which were sometimes undeserved, and he talked about some other coaches who got asked way tougher questions but were way more professional. Basically the consensus is that he's a total asshole, and the other thing that just about all the people said was that he's not someone who they'd want to know in "regular" life. I'm totally fine with that kind of personality as long as he's a clean program coach (which I think he is), because he's there to coach, not be friends.
But, I do think he emotionally shows his hand when he gets the red face going and snaps at people. It's not unlike when people were questioning him a couple years ago about his job and he got pissed and said his "body of work" spoke for itself. He's telling everyone he's run out of things to try and that ain't a good look.
As far as the Hawks...here's my take on it. This team is no different than an overinflated stock market and the bubble has burst. An overinflated stock market is valued way too high by people going off of pundit's made-up expectations instead of reality. It's ok to think at the beginning of a season that a team is going to perform at a super high level. But as the season goes on and it doesn't you have to realize that the team simply wasn't as good as you thought it was to begin with.
And to the people who say this team is so awesome compared to any other...they're not--period. Great teams win important games. Admit that you overshot expectations and move on. Posters like
@HaydenHawk56 and
@Stanzi think just because a bunch of reporters pulled a #3 out of their asses at the beginning of the season that this was a mid-nineties Duke team set to take over the world. Well, it ain't.
If it was they would be winning; it's really that simple. This is a good team no doubt, but the true test of whether a team is elite is how they perform. And this squad isn't holding up to the Big Ten.
You cannot make headway in P6 basketball with a defense performing worse than 150th in Division 1. It's impossible...Well guess what, Iowa has been ranked that bad since almost day 1.
You can't give up 8-10 free throws below your average against good teams and lose a game by 5 points, when if you simply hit your average free throws you would've won the game by 5.
Franuary, or Fran Fade, or whatever you want to call it is real. CBB reference will show anyone that right around January 15th Fran's conference winning % falls off a cliff. It's maths.
This isn't a Hawkeye team getting worse and failing out of nowhere, it's an above average team that is playing to it's ability. But the homers can't see that because they were blinded by bullshit rankings and hype videos, and they're getting pissed. At the end of the day this team is going to make the tourney, and suggesting otherwise is exaggerated, cry baby horseshit.
