Miller: Matt Gatens Unlikely Lightning Rod

SpecialKHawk said:
We cannot be playing a guy 35 minutes a night at the shooting guard position who is 9-39 shooting three's down the stretch. Especially when a fair number of those 39 looks were wide open.

Shorten his minutes and make his primary role shooting the three. If he hits, he plays. If he misses a couple he goes to the bench. It's that simple.

And yes I expect 50% shooting when the three's are open looks. When contested I expect 30-33%. He's hitting 32% for the season from 3 and hit 32% last year. Last year I could understand given the offense and the talent. This year there have been a number of great looks - no excuse.
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LOL....who do you suggest picks up his minutes? I believe you mentioned Marble earlier, but he is already starting at the 3. And if you think Gatens is struggling shooting the ball then I think you need to check Marble's stat sheet. The kid's got more airballed 3's in the last 10 games than he has made 3's.

People are pointing their finger at the wrong person. Yes, Gatens can play better, but he is not even close to the main problem on this team. Everyone had high hopes for May and he has given us nothing during Big Ten play. Marble has played well for a freshman but his offensive game is not better than Gatens. Cole has played well but he is averaging less than 8 pts a game...he's a senior and it would have been nice to see him in the 10pt/8reb range, but he is at 7.7/6.

Basabe and Cartwright are the only two players playing at or above expectations.
 
JonDMiller said:
Really?

Matt Gatens this year: 52-158 (.329) of his three's this year.

Keaten Nankivil is currently #2 in the Big Ten in 3pt %. Last year, as a junior, he didn't break 30%

Demetri McCamey of Illinois is in the Top 4 in the Big Ten right now, hitting more than 46%. Prior to this year, he had never made better than 34.1% of his threes.

Jordan Taylor from Wisconsin, a phenomenal player, is 6th in the Big Ten on three's this year. Last yea, he made just 32.7% from thre

Now, let's play name that Past Hawk as it relates to 3pt shooting % in a season.

A) This player made just 65-211 (.308) during his junior season
B) This player made just 44-137 (.321) during his freshman season
C) This player made just 70-201 (.348) during his senior season
D) This player made just 55-178 (.309) during his junior season
E) This player made just 93-269 (.346) during his senior season
F) This player made just .320 from three during his junior season and less than that as a freshman


Below is the answer key, and the number to the right is where they rank at Iowa all time in three point field goal attempts
v
v
v



A-Kingsbury (#2)
B-Kingsbury
C-Horner (also .277 as a freshman) (#1)
D-Brody Boyd (#4)
E-Justin Johnson
F-Dean Oliver (#6)
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Only problem is that Gatens has devolved since his freshman year (3pt .403%), whereas Jordan Taylor has improved (this year 3pt .443%). It's pretty easy to pick out a bad year for any of the greats out there, but the truth is over the past two years Gatens has shot a constant .328~9% behind the arc. No massaging of the numbers can change that.
 
Herk said:
Only problem is that Gatens has devolved since his freshman year (3pt .403%), whereas Jordan Taylor has improved (this year 3pt .443%). It's pretty easy to pick out a bad year for any of the greats out there, but the truth is over the past two years Gatens has shot a constant .328~9% behind the arc. No massaging of the numbers can change that.
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He's also been asked to shoot a TON more. When he was a frosh he was asked to take what was given, and most of his looks were when wide open. Flash forward to last year and a ton of his looks were forced or with 5 seconds left on the shot clock. This year he playes 1/3 of the season one handed.

Stats don't exist in a vaccuum. You need to get a little perspective.
 
PatrickAdamovicz said:
I don't care about the percentage a player shoots at, I'm more into when do those players make them. At what point in the game? Iowa hasn't had a player this year hit the big shots down the stretch in tight situations.
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I don’t think you understand statistical variance. When the % of a successful outcome is less than 40% it’s not uncommon to see an unsuccessful result occur 5 or 6 times in a row. It just happens. A player can easily go 0-4 in certain situations and he’s a bum right? Well the reality is all it takes is for him to hit his next 2 and all of a sudden he’s performing right at his statistical average.

The other problem is this is all subjective.

It’s like those that argue Jeter is captain clutch and A-rod is a bum when it matters. Really?

Jeter is a career .314 hitter. Career in the post season he’s hitting .309. He’s captain clutch.

A-Rod is a career .303 hitter. Career in the post season he’s hitting .290. He’s a bum in the clutch.
 
Herk said:
Only problem is that Gatens has devolved since his freshman year (3pt .403%), whereas Jordan Taylor has improved (this year 3pt .443%). It's pretty easy to pick out a bad year for any of the greats out there, but the truth is over the past two years Gatens has shot a constant .328~9% behind the arc. No massaging of the numbers can change that.
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Kingsbury was a career .350 shooter behind the arc and he is remembered in god status. His junior season was about ten percentage points worse from three than his soph season. More examples of that too. He never played on a team where he had as much riding on him as Matt does.

None of this stuff is in a vacuum
 
JonDMiller said:
Kingsbury was a career .350 shooter behind the arc and he is remembered in god status. His junior season was about ten percentage points worse from three than his soph season. More examples of that too. He never played on a team where he had as much riding on him as Matt does.

None of this stuff is in a vacuum
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Kingsbury wasn't God status because he made a high %, I don't think any true Iowa BB fan would say Chris was a high % shooter. He was God status because when he got HOT, there wasn't a better shooter in the nation. He could drain 5 or 6 in a row from 40 feet out. He had massive range. That was the reason he was so revered as a 3 pt shooter, not because of his %.
 
Matt Gatens is a great Hawkeye.

All these stats, and comparisons going on. Who cares. It's paralysis by analysis at this point.

Gatens has missed his wide open shots, over and over. That's a big problem when you're a SHOOTING guard. That's the reason for my criticism.
 
ICbornNraised said:
Matt Gatens is a great Hawkeye.

All these stats, and comparisons going on. Who cares. It's paralysis by analysis at this point.

Gatens has missed his wide open shots, over and over. That's a big problem when you're a SHOOTING guard. That's the reason for my criticism.
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You realize the best SHOOTING SHOOTING guards in college basketball will miss 6 out of 10 wide open shots right?
 
DuffMan said:
You realize the best SHOOTING SHOOTING guards in college basketball will miss 6 out of 10 wide open shots right?
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Duff, you know I appreciate your posts and insights, but there's no way you can argue this.

The best shooting guards in the nation shoot from 45-50% from 3 pt land overall. And a lot of them are contested shots. I don't have any stats to back it up, but if you are taking uncontested wide open three pointer shots, the best shooters in the nation make those 80% of the time.
 
storminspank said:
Duff, you know I appreciate your posts and insights, but there's no way you can argue this.

The best shooting guards in the nation shoot from 45-50% from 3 pt land overall. And a lot of them are contested shots. I don't have any stats to back it up, but if you are taking uncontested wide open three pointer shots, the best shooters in the nation make those 80% of the time.
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You have no clue what I'm capable of arguing. I once argued for 3 months that New Coke was greatly superior to the original formula.

Agreed in wide open situations a good shooter should make 50+% of wide open looks, and Matt has been struggling to do that lately. I get irritated when people make broad assessment about things based on 5 game sample sizes.

Shooting a 3 pointer is a lot like hitting a baseball. The best in the world do it between 30 and 40 percent of the time. When that's the case you are going to have slumps, it just happens. Couple that in with a nagging injury or other factors sometimes things happen.

That doesn't necessarily mean he's incapable of getting it done when it's all on the line, it just means he hasn't been getting in done the last 2 or 3 weeks.
 
Again, its more important at what point of the game do you make the shot. Its very similar to foul shooting. I've seen 80% foul shooters become 50% foul shooters in the final 2 minutes of games and have also seen 50% foul shooters become 80% shooters the last 2 minutes of games. I'd take the latter obviously. I'm not going to site the instances that Iowa has missed wide open looks down the stretch in tight games, but there have been many.
 
storminspank said:
Kingsbury wasn't God status because he made a high %, I don't think any true Iowa BB fan would say Chris was a high % shooter. He was God status because when he got HOT, there wasn't a better shooter in the nation. He could drain 5 or 6 in a row from 40 feet out. He had massive range. That was the reason he was so revered as a 3 pt shooter, not because of his %.
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Great point. The guy was unstoppable when he was hot.

One caveat that bears mentioning on the discussion of Kingsbury: He had considerable, and notorious, personal demons he battled his junior year at Iowa, which brought down his career shooting percentage dramatically. He was rarely hot his junior year for those reasons.
 
hawkIhoops said:
No doubt I have been disappointed with Gatens performance as most have. I don't expect the kid to set the world on fire, but he is a junior on a young team and let's be honest, McCaffrey looked to him play a prominent role in the offense and his perimeter game outside of garbage time isn't very impressive.

With that being said, he plays hard every night and isn't to blame for the delusional Iowa fans that annointed him savior of the program. There are two lessons I hope people learn from Gatens: 1) We need a lot of help next year and in coming years to compete in the big ten. 2) Iowa high school basketball is not close to being on par with other states, period. Basabe was a nobody in NY, but would have won Mr. Basketball here hands down. Gatens, like McCabe, was a dominant high school player in Iowa, but that does not translate to the big ten.
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Yes, it's certainly not like Iowa had the number one recruit in the entire country playing here last year. Getting a little carried away there.
 
DuffMan said:
You have no clue what I'm capable of arguing. I once argued for 3 months that New Coke was greatly superior to the original formula.

Agreed in wide open situations a good shooter should make 50+% of wide open looks, and Matt has been struggling to do that lately. I get irritated when people make broad assessment about things based on 5 game sample sizes.

Shooting a 3 pointer is a lot like hitting a baseball. The best in the world do it between 30 and 40 percent of the time. When that's the case you are going to have slumps, it just happens. Couple that in with a nagging injury or other factors sometimes things happen.

That doesn't necessarily mean he's incapable of getting it done when it's all on the line, it just means he hasn't been getting in done the last 2 or 3 weeks.
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:)
 
DuffMan said:
You have no clue what I'm capable of arguing. I once argued for 3 months that New Coke was greatly superior to the original formula.

Agreed in wide open situations a good shooter should make 50+% of wide open looks, and Matt has been struggling to do that lately. I get irritated when people make broad assessment about things based on 5 game sample sizes.

Shooting a 3 pointer is a lot like hitting a baseball. The best in the world do it between 30 and 40 percent of the time. When that's the case you are going to have slumps, it just happens. Couple that in with a nagging injury or other factors sometimes things happen.

That doesn't necessarily mean he's incapable of getting it done when it's all on the line, it just means he hasn't been getting in done the last 2 or 3 weeks.
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LOL I actually liked the New Coke more than the original. Talk about being in the minority.........
 
When you guys want to discuss Crystal Pepsi, come my way. :)

Actually reminds me of an Alford fark I did 5 years ago... I wonder if I could dig that bad boy up again.
 
DuffMan said:
He's also been asked to shoot a TON more. When he was a frosh he was asked to take what was given, and most of his looks were when wide open. Flash forward to last year and a ton of his looks were forced or with 5 seconds left on the shot clock. This year he playes 1/3 of the season one handed.

Stats don't exist in a vaccuum. You need to get a little perspective.
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Correct. Stats need analysis. Would you consider the player with these 3P % over his career as getting better or worse:

2007-2008 = .336 %
2008-2009 = .382 %
2009-2010 = .440 %
2010-2011 = .403 %

This player is ... Jimmer Fredette (possible Player of the Year). His 3 point percentage is down (still good) this year. What does this mean? Is he getting more attention from teams? Is he slumping?

Jimmer Fredette Stats, News, Photos - Brigham Young Cougars - ESPN
 
There is no way this team is better without Matt Gatens....no way. You can argue all you want that so and so should be playing instead of Gatens, but the reality is, Gatens is the best guy on this team at the 2 spot. You cannot convice me that a lineup with May and Marble in it is better than Gatens and Marble or Gatens and May. Gatens still receives a lot of attention from opposing teams because they know he is the biggest threat to burn them from the outside....Appling face guarded him the entire game at MSU.

All players are open to criticism but I cannot believe that anyone with an inkling of basketball knowledge would look at this team and pick out Gatens as being the main player holding them back. This team can be solid next year building around Cartwright, Basabe and Gatens but they need other guys to step up and fill in. If Iowa can get a solid shooting guard that can slash and score, they can bump gatens to the 3 which will help him defensively. They need a physical presence inside to replace Cole also.
 
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