parahawkeyes
Well-Known Member
The team that can do anything offensively against any level of competition you throw at it. How do you know when this team is slumping? It loses by 8 to the great team it's facing instead of one possession. Nobody ever actually "beat" this Iowa team, they merely survived them. This team didn't extend the same courtesy to opponents, beating all shapes and sizes of competition via the blowout. Take a moment to brainstorm every possible way a team can win. Finished? Iowa covered all of them didn't they?
^THESE ARE TRENDS THAT REMAINED CONSISTENT THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE SEASON!!^
Here's where I need help. All the metrics knew how good this team was because it was easy to use our eyes to verify the data they reported. WE ONLY HAD ONE PROBLEM: Translating superior play into Wins. No matter what was happening during the majority of the season, BPI, Sagarin and KenPom had us in the top ten. And you know what? Rightfully so. I deployed specific pieces of logic to predict exactly why we would see this transformation:
-It wasn't just metrics or close losses. PPG, REB, AST and FTA all were Top Ten team attributes
-Free Throws and/or 3pt shooting are classic ways good teams blow games. Improvement in either category crosses this team over into the Elite
-If not, our best raw talents are Gesell, Woodbury and Uthoff, who represent the only Iowa players heavily recruited on a national basis
-Basketball players improve the most by far between their Sophomore and Junior campaigns, no other years coming close
-Instead, marked improvements were exhibited by Olaseni, Oglesby and Gesell
-We have 3 Seniors, all of whom spent all four seasons with major playing time. One is our best overall player, another is our most toolsy skills player, the other a classic 6th man who hits 3s and is impossible to rattle
-Fran McCaffery MUST HAVE owed old college frat buddies an old bet, that's the only explanation for taking the Iowa job. I don't care if we were winless this season, it wouldn't be because of the coaching.
-No road venues should fall apart fu**ing up our schedule
Please, are all those reasonable expectations? Looking through them there are seven, and the only ones that failed to any degree are Uthoff, Basabe and McCabe, and only McCabe was bad by any extreme or consistent basis.
Where am I going wrong when I predicted we were fine no matter what was happening to us, all the way through my game prediction tonight? Even if I got the wrong answer as to why we were losing those big leads and close games, EVERYTHING ELSE UP THERE GOT BETTER!!
I will never give up on this team. I understand if a lot of people are frustrated, I get that way also. Wanna know what I do when it happens? I KNOCK IT THE FU** OFF!! If anybody knows how to take a tough defeat it should be us. I'm trying to figure out what I just witnessed. This all can't be explained by bad luck, can it? And I will reiterate, Fran has proven beyond any shadow of a reasonable, unreasonable or just plain fickle doubt that he's a great coach. He owes us nothing.
Please help me figure out why I should call off my lofty Tournament predictions that I made based on those points of logic. It would take an jet-powered sledgehammer of a crushing blow to derail this for me. That happened tonight, ladies and gentlemen. I'm stunned. Oh how I wish I could pin this all on Assembly Hall and Zach McCabe. LOL
^THESE ARE TRENDS THAT REMAINED CONSISTENT THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE SEASON!!^
Here's where I need help. All the metrics knew how good this team was because it was easy to use our eyes to verify the data they reported. WE ONLY HAD ONE PROBLEM: Translating superior play into Wins. No matter what was happening during the majority of the season, BPI, Sagarin and KenPom had us in the top ten. And you know what? Rightfully so. I deployed specific pieces of logic to predict exactly why we would see this transformation:
-It wasn't just metrics or close losses. PPG, REB, AST and FTA all were Top Ten team attributes
-Free Throws and/or 3pt shooting are classic ways good teams blow games. Improvement in either category crosses this team over into the Elite
-If not, our best raw talents are Gesell, Woodbury and Uthoff, who represent the only Iowa players heavily recruited on a national basis
-Basketball players improve the most by far between their Sophomore and Junior campaigns, no other years coming close
-Instead, marked improvements were exhibited by Olaseni, Oglesby and Gesell
-We have 3 Seniors, all of whom spent all four seasons with major playing time. One is our best overall player, another is our most toolsy skills player, the other a classic 6th man who hits 3s and is impossible to rattle
-Fran McCaffery MUST HAVE owed old college frat buddies an old bet, that's the only explanation for taking the Iowa job. I don't care if we were winless this season, it wouldn't be because of the coaching.
-No road venues should fall apart fu**ing up our schedule
Please, are all those reasonable expectations? Looking through them there are seven, and the only ones that failed to any degree are Uthoff, Basabe and McCabe, and only McCabe was bad by any extreme or consistent basis.
Where am I going wrong when I predicted we were fine no matter what was happening to us, all the way through my game prediction tonight? Even if I got the wrong answer as to why we were losing those big leads and close games, EVERYTHING ELSE UP THERE GOT BETTER!!
I will never give up on this team. I understand if a lot of people are frustrated, I get that way also. Wanna know what I do when it happens? I KNOCK IT THE FU** OFF!! If anybody knows how to take a tough defeat it should be us. I'm trying to figure out what I just witnessed. This all can't be explained by bad luck, can it? And I will reiterate, Fran has proven beyond any shadow of a reasonable, unreasonable or just plain fickle doubt that he's a great coach. He owes us nothing.
Please help me figure out why I should call off my lofty Tournament predictions that I made based on those points of logic. It would take an jet-powered sledgehammer of a crushing blow to derail this for me. That happened tonight, ladies and gentlemen. I'm stunned. Oh how I wish I could pin this all on Assembly Hall and Zach McCabe. LOL