Purdue or Iowa?

[99topdawg]

Even a blind squirrel find a nut every once and while.

Fran finds rocks.

View attachment 9982

And his team shoots bricks...

 

[Northside Hawk]

Slightly off topic, but watching a lot of these NCAA games has me concerned about the future of college basketball. I'm shocked at how many teams now try to mirror the NBA: every time down the floor the Center comes out to set a high screen...and that's the offense. Everybody else just stands around the perimeter. Or goes one-on-one. It's painful to watch. The only team that didn't do that today was Arkansas, and they were rewarded handsomely.
Makes me realize how spoiled I am watching Iowa's offense, where players off the ball ACTUALLY MOVE and RUN...geez. No wonder Iowa always ranks high nationally in offensive efficiency and scoring. It all makes sense to me now!

I'm the biggest Musselman supporter on this board, and I took a good hard look at him in action yesterday. Didn't take me long to realize why he's in the sweet sixteen for the fourth time in five tournaments. He makes all the proper in game adjustments.

Point one: Arkansas wanted to force tempo early, but were forgetting to rebound the ball. Kansas took a nice lead early with second and third chance possessions. Mussleman adjusted by committing to the defensive glass and not worrying about the transition game.

Point two: Arkansas' bigs set hellacious interior cross screens, and excel at making the extra diagonal pass to the weakside. Mussleman has this down to a science. It dove tails with your point of Arkansas looking inside. Which leads to.....

Point three: when Arkansas realized the threes weren't falling, they quit shooting them. There was no " keep shooting them they'll eventually fall" mentality. No time for that when your down ten in an elimination game. They simply stopped doing what wasn't going well. What was going well was the shot fake and drive, putting Kansas in foul trouble and Arkansas on the line. They were thus able to come back methodically and efficiently, even as they were down eleven.

Point four: Mussleman didn't worry about foul trouble. He knew there was no tomorrow to save foul plagued players for, so he rode them, like Lute used to. Valvano. He lost a couple late, but in the meantime was in position to win and not fifteen points down, because he let players play.

Folks it's no accident why certain teams seem to advance every year regardless of seeds or obstacles. Mussleman, Chris Beard, Rick Barnes, Izzo, Larranagna, Kelvin Sampson, Bo Ryan. It's called coaching. Sounds complicated but it's not.