Iowa couldn’t get the ball inside

[ssckelley]

The strength of this team is obviously Cook and Garza inside surrounded by some shooters, however I think Pitt showed other teams the book on slowing down this offense (UMKC did this as well).

Relentlessly pressure our guards while fronting and side fronting our bigs. That will keep the ball out of the post and force Iowa to pass it around the perimeter. Iowa has hardly any penetrators to strike fear into and opponent and make them think twice about this strategy.

Yep, this comes from not having a true point guard. Rarely anything good happens when JB drives to the basket, the hope is he draws a foul. This team appears to live or die by the 3 pointer.

 

[lightning1]

Iowa very much has guys that can go off from the perimeter, but the way for us to do that is establish the bigs inside and then kick it out. Pitt didn’t pack it in the past, they pressured our guards so they couldn’t post entry and it led to bad possessions and turnovers. Iowa doesn’t have the penetrating guys to be a drive and kick team unfortunately.

Ball reversal and more active post players. Pitt's guards played defense to deny the entry pass. It was impressive. They're dogs. The kind of dogs that I'd love to have on our team.

 

[JG10Hawk]

Pitt was pressuring and denying the post feed passing lanes, so Iowa countered with running a lot of their baseline offensive sets last night to get shooters open from the corner and wings where the passing lanes were open.

I wish Fran would run more post iso plays for Cook/Garza when teams are playing man. Fran doesn't do this enough given the post talent he has if you ask me. Iowa should be able to feed the post at will with a tall PG like Connor and running these types of sets.

 

[WinOneThisCentury]

I thought this was the year Cook makes the 18 foot jump shot consistently. He could have taken 30 of those last night. His game gets cut in half when defensive players give him two feet of room to take away the dribble drive. He has to hit shots...to make people come out. Otherwise, you have to get him on the block...and hope you can get him the ball down low. He has to hit shots.