It's hard and rather pointless to play MVP games when a total team effort was needed to pull of a stunning upset....
BUT, it's fun at the very least!
After watching the game over again, Cartwright deserves the trophy. Now, White deserves credit for pulling up back from the brink. Marble deserves credit for his Jerry West impersonation. Gatens and Basabe are in there as well.
But, come on people, Bryce was the conductor yesterday! He did for the Hawks for every....single....second....he was on the floor!
First Half: BC comes in and immediately impacts the game. Jimmy Jackson says, "This is important game for Bryce Cartwright" and BOOM GOES THE DYNAMITE, pull up in transition. Bryce was so GOOD the first half that Marble only played 9 minutes! Rewatching the film this is still somewhat confusing because Marble did not play badly the first half. In fact, he was subbed out after hitting a 3 point play. At least partially responsible for the him not seeing the court more was Cartwright playing so damn well!
Second Half: Wisky storms out to a 7 to 0 run. Fran subs in Cartwright and White. The Hawks look dead in the water. Cartwright sees White, dribbles at him, goes Steve Nash creating a screen with his body, and feeds White for the 3 ball. While White was scoring the points at this junture, Cartwright was again finding people to get it going.
As the half progressed, White's impact lessoned, but Cartwright's continued to grow. The Badgers were tired, on their heels, and couldn't keep up with the lightning rod that was Bryce Cartwright! Time and again he drove into the paint to score or create havic! This continued all the way until it was Marble time!
As a last thought, let me remind you of this. Cartwright had 5 assists and 1 turnover. The 1 turnover was a beautiful no look pass to White that was fumbled out of bounds (his 1 TO should have been an assist). In the first half he had BACK TO BACK fantastic passes to Basable (who unfortunately blew both opportunities ---lay ups!!!) that should have been assists. Normally I don't play those games, but those were all passes that should have been converted as lay ups!
Flawless performance by Cartwright. His best at Iowa. The best I've seen in a long time by any Iowa player.
