Don't get me wrong, I like to see fire from at least one head coach at Iowa, but are Fran's antics bothering anybody else? I don't mind taking the T to get your team fired up but why wait so late in the game when the result is already out of reach? Furthermore, Fran's fire is great but when we get these outbursts so often and nothing changes (players don't get yanked and sat down for more than a few minutes, line ups don't get changed) I think they lose their effect. I can picture the players saying "here we go again." This team needs a wake up call...I don't know what it is but anytime I see the Gray Teamers out there they are busting rear and fired up. That would be nice if the top 10 guys would exhibit the same tenacity. Don't know about the rest of y'all but I am mentally exhausted from watching this team.
Fran Knight
- Thread starter OKHawk
- Start date
HaydenHawk56
Well-Known Member
I wish this team could play defense like Bobby Knight's good teams.
It pains, it pains me to say this, but I'm starting to say we are seeing chinks in the Fran Armor. I think he is an over all upgrade from Lick and Alford, but he is not Mr. Davis, Lute Olsen, Miller, etc. He will still get more time ample to prove himself because this year is still improvement and moving the program forward. Getting to the NCAAs should have been emphasized in-directly much more out of the Iowa media machine. The Big Ten Title talk, the Final 4 talk were way to big for this team and the program at this time. We are basically only still days out of the dark years of the program.
Nonetheless, the chinks I'm seeing out of Fran:
A. His team's play tight and somewhat lack an identity. Yes they are uptempo, yes they score a lot of points. But, sometimes it seems like we are being held back from being the aggressive uptempo team we could be. For example, if you are going to press and you have all of this length and different line-up combos thrown out there, why not full court press more to force turnovers? Half Court Game.....a faster paced Alford Motion Offense that does not feed the post enough. See below.
B. Unbalanced floor combinations. To many good players sitting on the bench in key stretches and to many role players playing key minutes. Need to balance role players and starters on the floor at the same time. Which to me is one of his problems of not being a very good in game coach so far at Iowa. I don't mind the subs to keep fresh, but the line-ups are too drastic at times. Yes with fouls and stuff things don't always go as planned. But, you can't have Marble, Mike both out for long stretches at the same time. Those are your floor generals (or as close to it, they are still not very effective floor leaders over all because they don't communicate enough with the other players) to keep these guys settled down and still attacking effectively (as much as they can as marginal go to players).
C. The T's Fran gets. As you mention above, that don't seem to fit at key junctures in the games. They seem uncalled for and out of place (See tonight at MSU and at Wisco when the T was not needed).
D. Player's don't communicate well in games. Where is the floor general to rally the troops? Where is the excitement and passion? Where are the team huddles? Mr. Davis's teams communicated with each other on the court. His zone defense might have got lit up at times, but his zones did have his players with their hands up and communicating (the sagging and late rotations to shooters though still hurt Davis's 3-2 flexible zone defense).
E. Defense has become an issue. Yes, you can throw in the stats of the sisters of the poor to make things look better, but Iowa's defense is almost non-existent at this point. Hands down, huge gaps, no communication. Offense may stall, but defense never quits. Davis's teams might have got lit up from time to time, but it looked prettier than this mess.
F. Mental Toughness of his team. Mr. Davis's teams might have got craved up by the MSU's of the world, but Tom's teams would come back from 20 down against xyz team (ranked or otherwise). When Fran's teams get down, they seem to stay down, especially against the ranked teams. Once again, where is the full court zone pressing for this team? 3/4 court is a fine change up, can slow the other team down, but it has not produced a lot of turnovers. Let this team use its wingspan and have fun. My God, Grinnell's teams have fun stealing the ball. Do we look like we are having fun? Alford kind of lost teams along the way like this team......not as bad....but Alford light here.
G. Half-Court Offense. Marble shoots from the left, Marble shoots from the right, Marble dribbles down the lane, Marble for 3, mix in some random shots and drives by Mike, Josh, White, Jared, etc. Little post feed action......and our bigs struggle making lay-ups and dunking the ball. Marble is a marginal go to player that will graduate next year. We have become a jump-shooting team that relies on Marble and our bigs are making marginal development. We need a more diversified attack when are are not scoring in transition which I would say is the strength of a Fran coached team at Iowa. We need to develop our post players and get them the ball.
F. Recruiting. I don't think he has done a terrible job, but I do think he needs to get more beef in here moving forward. Of course, it would be nice to get a Woolridge type player in here to depend upon in the clutch.
In another thread someone compared Fran to Raveling. An elegant speaking Raveling perhaps. That is probably where we are at right now. Probably fair.
You know, Fran's teams are kind of like throwing pretty looking silly putty at a wall and seeing what sticks instead of taking that pretty putty and molding it into what it needs to become. Game in and game out he is throwing that putty at the wall and that putty keeps sliding further down the wall.
It pains, it pains me to say this, but I'm starting to say we are seeing chinks in the Fran Armor. I think he is an over all upgrade from Lick and Alford, but he is not Mr. Davis, Lute Olsen, Miller, etc. He will still get more time ample to prove himself because this year is still improvement and moving the program forward. Getting to the NCAAs should have been emphasized in-directly much more out of the Iowa media machine. The Big Ten Title talk, the Final 4 talk were way to big for this team and the program at this time. We are basically only still days out of the dark years of the program.
Nonetheless, the chinks I'm seeing out of Fran:
A. His team's play tight and somewhat lack an identity. Yes they are uptempo, yes they score a lot of points. But, sometimes it seems like we are being held back from being the aggressive uptempo team we could be. For example, if you are going to press and you have all of this length and different line-up combos thrown out there, why not full court press more to force turnovers? Half Court Game.....a faster paced Alford Motion Offense that does not feed the post enough. See below.
B. Unbalanced floor combinations. To many good players sitting on the bench in key stretches and to many role players playing key minutes. Need to balance role players and starters on the floor at the same time. Which to me is one of his problems of not being a very good in game coach so far at Iowa. I don't mind the subs to keep fresh, but the line-ups are too drastic at times. Yes with fouls and stuff things don't always go as planned. But, you can't have Marble, Mike both out for long stretches at the same time. Those are your floor generals (or as close to it, they are still not very effective floor leaders over all because they don't communicate enough with the other players) to keep these guys settled down and still attacking effectively (as much as they can as marginal go to players).
C. The T's Fran gets. As you mention above, that don't seem to fit at key junctures in the games. They seem uncalled for and out of place (See tonight at MSU and at Wisco when the T was not needed).
D. Player's don't communicate well in games. Where is the floor general to rally the troops? Where is the excitement and passion? Where are the team huddles? Mr. Davis's teams communicated with each other on the court. His zone defense might have got lit up at times, but his zones did have his players with their hands up and communicating (the sagging and late rotations to shooters though still hurt Davis's 3-2 flexible zone defense).
E. Defense has become an issue. Yes, you can throw in the stats of the sisters of the poor to make things look better, but Iowa's defense is almost non-existent at this point. Hands down, huge gaps, no communication. Offense may stall, but defense never quits. Davis's teams might have got lit up from time to time, but it looked prettier than this mess.
F. Mental Toughness of his team. Mr. Davis's teams might have got craved up by the MSU's of the world, but Tom's teams would come back from 20 down against xyz team (ranked or otherwise). When Fran's teams get down, they seem to stay down, especially against the ranked teams. Once again, where is the full court zone pressing for this team? 3/4 court is a fine change up, can slow the other team down, but it has not produced a lot of turnovers. Let this team use its wingspan and have fun. My God, Grinnell's teams have fun stealing the ball. Do we look like we are having fun? Alford kind of lost teams along the way like this team......not as bad....but Alford light here.
G. Half-Court Offense. Marble shoots from the left, Marble shoots from the right, Marble dribbles down the lane, Marble for 3, mix in some random shots and drives by Mike, Josh, White, Jared, etc. Little post feed action......and our bigs struggle making lay-ups and dunking the ball. Marble is a marginal go to player that will graduate next year. We have become a jump-shooting team that relies on Marble and our bigs are making marginal development. We need a more diversified attack when are are not scoring in transition which I would say is the strength of a Fran coached team at Iowa. We need to develop our post players and get them the ball.
F. Recruiting. I don't think he has done a terrible job, but I do think he needs to get more beef in here moving forward. Of course, it would be nice to get a Woolridge type player in here to depend upon in the clutch.
In another thread someone compared Fran to Raveling. An elegant speaking Raveling perhaps. That is probably where we are at right now. Probably fair.
You know, Fran's teams are kind of like throwing pretty looking silly putty at a wall and seeing what sticks instead of taking that pretty putty and molding it into what it needs to become. Game in and game out he is throwing that putty at the wall and that putty keeps sliding further down the wall.
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I think Fran is a great coach, but he hasn't really gotten his players to Iowa yet. Hopefully, he can sign a couple of real athletic guys this spring. His sophomore class is just starting to mature. Jok surprised me by his speed in the Michigan State game. Fran has had time to develop relationships with players now, and they should start seeing results. Uhl and Ellingson both look like great additions. It will be interesting to see who Iowa recruits this spring. One of Frans weeknesses in coaching is that he seems to be to loyal to his upperclassmen. I would of enjoyed seeing more of Jok and Meyer this year. On another board some guy was making a joke that Iowa should go after Buba Palo for his fifth year.
SonofaSailor
Well-Known Member
Excellent post, I really agree with bold parts...we had all this depth supposedly...let's put the press on and run teams out of the gym for 40 minutes...Mr. Davis's teams might give up a run to the other team...but come the second half...lots of teams would tail off because they were tired...
And Fran's T's are anger...pure and simple...nothing strategic about that...I sometimes feel the team is a reflection of their leader.
HawkeyeMike23
Banned
For those saying he is not Tom Davis, take a look at Davis first four years:
14-4 30-5
12-6 24-10
10-8 23-10
4-14 12-16
Imagine how much he would have been destroyed on message boards back then, a coach whose team has gotten worse each of his four years here? Would he even have gotten a fifth year in today's climate?
14-4 30-5
12-6 24-10
10-8 23-10
4-14 12-16
Imagine how much he would have been destroyed on message boards back then, a coach whose team has gotten worse each of his four years here? Would he even have gotten a fifth year in today's climate?
sodakhawkeye
Well-Known Member
Great post. Mr. Davis status continues to rise in retirement in many eyes. He did a lot of great things for Iowa basketball, but some people have him on this lofty pedestal
sodakhawkeye
Well-Known Member
It was a strange T. Bo didnt even look at him, didnt say a word to him, just gave him a soft T. It just looked different to me.
linus19
Well-Known Member
There must have been something building throughout the game that finally drew the T. That's the only thing I can think of.
He's been here for 4 years and still doesn't have "his" players...? You serious Clark?
HaydenHawk56
Well-Known Member
I think it is more or less a reflection of how the team looks in these losses. Like I said, Fran is still going to get more time to prove himself (as he should). I do think he has done a wonderful job getting Iowa to be competitive again. And I agree his results this year are very Mr. Davis like in an average Mr. Davis year.
However, I remember Mr. Davis's teams having a lot of fight and more positive emotion than what we are seeing with Fran's best product to date (or should be this 2013-2014 edition). I have to believe if Mr. Davis was coaching this team, we don't lose as many games at home. On the road, ya, we probably still struggle under him. But, besides the twitter fiasco, McCabe's armbar, and Fran's Ts, the home losses have been the most disappointing up to this point.
I think where I still give the edge to Mr. Davis over Fran is how his teams looked and played on the court. For the most part, I never really thought we were in completely in or out of a game with him coaching. With Fran thus far, if things are going bad in a game (and against a ranked opponent) I don't have a lot of faith the team can mentally turn it around. I think the X factor is emotion, communication, better fundamentals on defense, more diversity in the half court offense, and a full-court press the complements your uptempo transition game. Mr. Davis has the clear edge to me here.
"However, I remember Mr. Davis's teams having a lot of fight and more positive emotion than what we are seeing with Fran's best product to date"
1. This team has shown plenty of fight. Last night was the first game they really took a beating in. Mr. Davis's squads, particularly ones where he recruited all of the players, took their fair share of beatings. Fran has had them competitive in about every game for the last two years, except for three (I'm going off memory- the NIT title game last year, some per-conference game last year, and this game).
2. Positive emotion is something people say when they don't have any real facts to back up an argument.
1. This team has shown plenty of fight. Last night was the first game they really took a beating in. Mr. Davis's squads, particularly ones where he recruited all of the players, took their fair share of beatings. Fran has had them competitive in about every game for the last two years, except for three (I'm going off memory- the NIT title game last year, some per-conference game last year, and this game).
2. Positive emotion is something people say when they don't have any real facts to back up an argument.
glidinghawk
Well-Known Member
The only Knight-like antics I saw last night were from the shrimp coach for MSU. The fist slam to the scorer's bench was a typical Knight move.
I didn't see much of a tirade from Fran last night.
HaydenHawk56
Well-Known Member
Disagree here. Observable behavior and non-verbal reactions can tell a lot of things. The dejection of our players and flow can tell us a lot in these games.
ChosenChildren
Well-Known Member
HawkeyeMike23
Banned
I'll give this to Mr. Davis, he never had problems with his players spouting off on twitter. He knew how to keep them in check there.
HaydenHawk56
Well-Known Member
Mr. Davis and other coaches back then were fortunate enough to not have to worry about the cyberage. I'm sure it is quite frustrating to have to deal with these things now. However, I would say xyz college coach now needs to come down pretty hard for kids who embarrass the program on the internet. It was a great move by Fran to shut that machine down. Now, he needs to work to control his players on the court.....even if that means having the courage to not play certain ones to make a point why it is far more important how you conduct your attitude in your wins and losses than what the scoreboard says at the end of the game.
HawkeyeMike23
Banned
You know what's really frustrating? The fact that we all were deprived of a Chris Kingsbury twitter account.
HaydenHawk56
Well-Known Member
Kingsbury was a hell of a talent. Wasted potential. Could stretch a defense with his uncanny range like no other in the Big Ten for his time.
But, he flamed out and never returned for his senior year. Give Mr. Davis credit there having him hit the road.
