Thoughts on Thursday's Iowa-Ohio St. game along with links to interviews, photos and box score:
LINK
Well, I think you can see that Dailey is gonna play. He made a lot of mistakes, played questionable defense, but showed some ability, made some plays, and has big upside. Garza will play, did nothing glaringly wrong tonight, had some moments. JBo needs to play the game like he did the last two minutes. Drive when they overplay, he showed a nice floater. Cook needs to just be Cook. If I'm Mac the rest of the starters and minutes go to who will play D and follow the gameplan. F the stupid 11 man rotation. It's not working. Play the guys who do what they are supposed to do. Heck at this point I might start playing a kid from the scout team if he follows the game plan. Send a message Mac.
If any of you think your alone in your discust and frustration I want you to do something. When you click on Robs story in this thread go to the picture he has attached to his article. Blow the picture up by expanding it and just look at the expressions of every single fan watching the game. It’s terrible. You are not alone.
I’ve said it on here several times over the years since Fran got here and it didn’t go over to well. It’s not good to play so many players as it messes up chemistry and prevents players from developing their roles on the team. In fact it prevents the team from becoming a team and gelling together. In the past I have referred to what Fran has been doing as a gimmick. Gimmicks are used in place of straight up head to head competition when you don’t have the talent to play straight up against your apponent. Most talent laced teams play their best five and then have their number one backups that come in and give breaks. The rest of the squad only sees the floor during mop up times when the game has already been decided. They have to wait their turn for the upperclassmen to move on and graduate and then it’s their turn to play if their good enough. Some times a few of them will take it on the chin when a freshmen or sophomore dynamo comes in and starts even though they are juniors or seniors. That’s life and sometimes life just isn’t fair.
Maybe next year if Wieskamp is as good as advertised Fran may finally have a good enough squad to play a traditional starting five. Cook, Garza, Bohannon, Baer and Wieskamp. It’s not going to be a speed ladened team but should be excellent in the half court. The rest will have to vie for playing time. If the rest of this season goes as bad as it looks and next year is a bust too then Fran must be replaced.
There is one huuuuuuuge problem with this post.
The last sentence.
Barta's set the bar so low when defining the word "bust" that next year won't get him fired.
Reason 1) The team will be more veteran and have more "star" recruits so they'll likely improve from this year.
Reason 2) Barta's definition of a "bust" season would be approx. 5 wins on the year. And we all know that he'll beat that number.
Iowa will remain an afterthought as long as Barta is AD. I assume that will be at least 10 more years. Ugh.
Ohio State was 17-15 last year and 7-11 in conference. This year they are 13-4 and 4-0. And there 3 top scorers are 2 juniors and a senior. Their 4th leading scorer is a sophomore. Another year of (body and skill) development, experience and maturity makes a ton of difference.