Long Season

I just don't think we have the talent this year. Baer is our third best player and he'd probably be coming off the bench on most teams in the league
Some people like to see the glass as half full and others like to see it as half empty. I personally like to be optimistic, but the truth will be whatever it is. If Iowa has a great basketball team the winter is a lot shorter to me, and if Iowa hasn't got a great basketball team the winter still will be a little shorter with basketball. If I win the powerball, I can go to Hawaii and not think about the winter at all.
 
Some people like to see the glass as half full and others like to see it as half empty. I personally like to be optimistic, but the truth will be whatever it is. If Iowa has a great basketball team the winter is a lot shorter to me, and if Iowa hasn't got a great basketball team the winter still will be a little shorter with basketball. If I win the powerball, I can go to Hawaii and not think about the winter at all.

I hate to keep bringing up White's senior year, but after the UNI game, I had no idea who could even score the ball. Fran has had 6 teams so far. 4 of them got better as the year went on, and 2 of them tanked after reaching the top 10. Since I have no illusions of reaching the top 10, I would say odds are in favor of improving.
 
Of course no freshman is going to replace Jok's scoring. He is one of the best scorers in the nation. I would mention that CW and/or JB might improve between now and next year, but I would be wasting my time with you. You "know" that that can never happen.
Don't put words in my mouth. You should be taking notes, not talking shit.
 
So you think he had a point guard available that could have helped us win but he chose to bring in Dailey instead? Unless you worded you're post wrong, you must think that because that's what it says. "His decision to bring in the best available (which was Dailey) is going to cost us an entire season". That means you think he had a point guard in the works that was good enough to help us win this year but Fran chose not to bring him in because he wasn't as good as Dailey.

You also say he should have brought in a true big instead of a wing, but he did in Kreiner who doesn't play. That means you must think he had a better big that Kreiner in the works but brought in Kreiner instead. Again, you either make no sense at all or your post was poorly worded.
Of course there were PGs available. You'd have to ask Fran why he didn't recruit them. There are good PGs in the next couple of classes but he doesn't want them either.
 
It still makes zero sense to me why Fran can't recruit a solid point guard. It's the one thing Iowa bball has been missing in Fran's entire tenure at Iowa. This team is starving for a facilitator in the worst way.

Fran has immediate playing time and a run and gun offense to sell and for some reason PGs still don't want to come here. Blows my mind.
It's not hard to understand. They see the coach's son coming in for the '17 class. They know he's going to get the minutes for the next 4 years. They know it because they have seen it at every level since they started playing organized basketball. That's the risk you run when your kid is coming to play for you. It can kill 6 or even 7 years of recruiting at that spot. A kid from the '15 or '16 class won't come because they don't want to lose their spot to a FR because he's the coach's son.
 
It's not hard to understand. They see the coach's son coming in for the '17 class. They know he's going to get the minutes for the next 4 years. They know it because they have seen it at every level since they started playing organized basketball. That's the risk you run when your kid is coming to play for you. It can kill 6 or even 7 years of recruiting at that spot. A kid from the '15 or '16 class won't come because they don't want to lose their spot to a FR because he's the coach's son.

Connor isn't a PG though
 
I would lay some money that Iowa will not finish the conference above .500

If you have pretty much zero PG contributions and talent...and can't figure out or don't want to box out for rebounding...well...that is not a good recipe...

Rebounding is effort and can be learned...PG play is pretty athletic...of which, we are void...
 
I forgot White and Marble weren't good recruits for him even though they were first team all conference

They turned out to be good players, but they weren't good recruits he had to fight for. And do you really want to use a player who committed to Todd Licklighter as an example to prove Fran is better at recruiting off guard than he is shooting guard?

My whole argument is Fran doesn't have some unexplainable inability to land point guards as well as other positions. There are multiple ways to end up with good players on your team. You can have in state players who grew up hawk fans and will come no matter what. When that happens does it make you a good recruiter? You can have a legacy recruit who will come no matter what (or at least you have the inside track). When that happens does it make you at good recruiter? You can get a late bloomer that gets way better after getting on campus. When that happens, does it make you after good recruiter? You can stumble upon a kid no one knows about and be his only offer. Does that make you a good recruiter? (that one actually does if it happens all the time).

Fran is who he is. A coach who doesn't bring in the highest ranked recruits but does a good job of putting a pretty good product on the floor. No matter how good a coach is, most fans will always point out reasons why they always aren't better. One thing he isn't is a guy who is somehow worse at the ability to recruit one position on the floor than he is the rest.
 
They turned out to be good players, but they weren't good recruits he had to fight for. And do you really want to use a player who committed to Todd Licklighter as an example to prove Fran is better at recruiting off guard than he is shooting guard?

My whole argument is Fran doesn't have some unexplainable inability to land point guards as well as other positions. There are multiple ways to end up with good players on your team. You can have in state players who grew up hawk fans and will come no matter what. When that happens does it make you a good recruiter? You can have a legacy recruit who will come no matter what (or at least you have the inside track). When that happens does it make you at good recruiter? You can get a late bloomer that gets way better after getting on campus. When that happens, does it make you after good recruiter? You can stumble upon a kid no one knows about and be his only offer. Does that make you a good recruiter? (that one actually does if it happens all the time).

Fran is who he is. A coach who doesn't bring in the highest ranked recruits but does a good job of putting a pretty good product on the floor. No matter how good a coach is, most fans will always point out reasons why they always aren't better. One thing he isn't is a guy who is somehow worse at the ability to recruit one position on the floor than he is the rest.

Yes he does, he's had all conference SG's, wings and posts but never had better than an honorable mention all conference PG and PG is by far our weakest position this year. The proof is in the pudding, he can't recruit good PG's.
 
Yes he does, he's had all conference SG's, wings and posts but never had better than an honorable mention all conference PG and PG is by far our weakest position this year. The proof is in the pudding, he can't recruit good PG's.

You really don't think looking at how he landed them is relevant?
 
If our defense doesn't dramatically improve we're not going to be close to winning half of our conference games. Jok just put up 42 and we still lost to a mediocre team

THIS!!!!

Teams don't actually have to stop Jok. If the other team knows how to play tough defense we will not be able to stay with them if they have just a little bit of offensive talent because they will be able to stop us, even if they let Jok score, but we won't be able to stop them because we can't (as of now) play a lick of defense.

Normally the upper classmen are the ones that will play good defense and get the younger players to come with them on the way. We only have two upper classmen playing and they will never be confused with first team all-conference defensive players.

It will be a long year if they don't learn to play better defense.
 
Turnovers and Tyler Cooks defense and rebounding did us in against Memphis.

I counted Cooks guy in the man-2-man scored about 26 points through a variety of issues including losing his man, position on post-entry pass layups and missed defensive rebound put backs. He did fine on the offensive end scoring 17 but that's a -9 outcome which is about the difference in the game.

For Jok I charted about 13-15 points for his man and that's with heavy minutes. So 42-15 is plus 27. I thought Peter looked adequate defensively.

The other liability was Baer. He makes no mistakes offensively but he cannot contain his man off the dribble. In limited minutes he gave up 8 points and it should have been 12. All the same issue in that he's too slow to guard the 3. I think Baer had 5 points so that's a -3.

Ellingson gave up 8 of which 2 3's that may not have been his fault. With 3 points scored that's between -2 to -5.

Surprisingly to me Uhl did a nice job defensively only allowing 4 points. The others were pretty solid for the most part. J Bo gave up 4 points and scored 5 for a + 1.

The other issue was turnovers which came in 2 waves in about a 2-3 minute stretch in each half. They lead directly to 12-14 points. We also missed both FTs (Pemsl) in the second half stretch which was basically a turnover. Most of these turnovers were lazy/sloppy passes.

Lots to work on but it's definitely interesting watching it a second time and focusing on the defensive end turnovers.
 
Turnovers and Tyler Cooks defense and rebounding did us in against Memphis.

I counted Cooks guy in the man-2-man scored about 26 points through a variety of issues including losing his man, position on post-entry pass layups and missed defensive rebound put backs. He did fine on the offensive end scoring 17 but that's a -9 outcome which is about the difference in the game.

For Jok I charted about 13-15 points for his man and that's with heavy minutes. So 42-15 is plus 27. I thought Peter looked adequate defensively.

The other liability was Baer. He makes no mistakes offensively but he cannot contain his man off the dribble. In limited minutes he gave up 8 points and it should have been 12. All the same issue in that he's too slow to guard the 3. I think Baer had 5 points so that's a -3.

Ellingson gave up 8 of which 2 3's that may not have been his fault. With 3 points scored that's between -2 to -5.

Surprisingly to me Uhl did a nice job defensively only allowing 4 points. The others were pretty solid for the most part. J Bo gave up 4 points and scored 5 for a + 1.

The other issue was turnovers which came in 2 waves in about a 2-3 minute stretch in each half. They lead directly to 12-14 points. We also missed both FTs (Pemsl) in the second half stretch which was basically a turnover. Most of these turnovers were lazy/sloppy passes.

Lots to work on but it's definitely interesting watching it a second time and focusing on the defensive end turnovers.

Interesting post. For all the talk about pg, Cook's defense might be our biggest weakness.
 

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