Samir Sehic committed to Vandy today, joining other Iowa recruits, Baptiste, and Toye...as Stallings wraps up a good recruiting season that could have been Iowa's. Too bad. We are left hoping for one of our last couple of targets...c'mon Ed Morrow, and Anunoby....or Illikanen....we need two of these three.
Sehic to Vandy....
- Thread starter JHHawk
- Start date
BigD
Well-Known Member
The B1G question is how does that class rank with the other schools in the B1G.
jacknicholson
Well-Known Member
With Fran, BigD, rankings are not the whole story. He has the gift of finding the diamonds in the rough and turning them into very good players, who improve almost every season, Sophomore Jinx aside. We are slowly getting there. Fran does very well handpicking players who will fit his scheme. It will be a while until our recruiting classes rival those of Michigan State, Michigan, Ohio State and Indiana.....
We do need a beastly post player though.....
With Fran, BigD, rankings are not the whole story. He has the gift of finding the diamonds in the rough and turning them into very good players, who improve almost every season, Sophomore Jinx aside. We are slowly getting there. Fran does very well handpicking players who will fit his scheme. It will be a while until our recruiting classes rival those of Michigan State, Michigan, Ohio State and Indiana.....
We do need a beastly post player though.....
This is the KF approach, but it works in football better than bb ,imo. Football players can be built over 5 years, while bb players have to play sooner, and are not as likely to really develop into pro players if they are not gifted to start with. Also in football, you need 25-35 players, while in bb , he only has to land maybe only one top 150 recruit/yr. If we make the tourney every year,fine, do not care how we get there, but history shows that when you are not in the top 10 in the league in recruiting in bb, you will lose in the end. Fran has yet to land a single top 150 player from outside our Iowa footprint in 5 years...just not enough instate talent to live on.
1977Hawkeye
Well-Known Member
Exactly. You could land a couple of blue chippers in football but they are just a couple guys on the field along with 9-10 others. You could still have a lot of weak spots. In hoops, you land a couple big recruits and that has a far bigger impact.
jacknicholson
Well-Known Member
Do you think KF, can't seem to get away from him even in a basketball post, and Fran would take every 4/5 star player who wanted to come to Iowa. Doesn't matter who is coaching. It is a tall order. Raveling was perhaps our best recruiter ever in basketball, just couldn't handle the fishbowl.....
1977Hawkeye
Well-Known Member
Do you think KF, can't seem to get away from him even in a basketball post, and Fran would take every 4/5 star player who wanted to come to Iowa. Doesn't matter who is coaching. It is a tall order. Raveling was perhaps our best recruiter ever in basketball, just couldn't handle the fishbowl.....
True, it's never going to be easy to recruit to Iowa, but Raveling did it, and Fran is at least in the mix with these guys.. He just needs to find a way to seal the deal on a couple of them.
I try to remember the fact that Iowa, to this day, still hasn't won an NCAA game since 2001. Even if Iowa had beaten TN last year, I'm not sure how many people would've noticed. Regardless of what it's officially called, most people still widely consider that to have been a play in game (I'm not trying to start a debate about that).
Iowa has to make an NCAA run to the Sweet 16 or past to really get its name back on the map. Or at least start making the tournament every year, winning a game, etc. like we did under Davis most years. That would help. That NIT title game appearance was fun, but honestly was an afterthought to most everyone outside the state of Iowa, and any Baylor fans. I don't think it matters (not enough, anyway) that Iowa is merely competitive again.. We're still pretty irrelevant on a national level, except for a stretch last year where Iowa was ranked in the Top 15-20, but we all know how that ended.
jacknicholson
Well-Known Member
Totally agree, 77.....
Somehow we stayed in the Top 25 through the last week of conference play, then fell out the week of the conference playoffs. Despite the painful finish, that was improvement for the program. Winning a game in the NCAA somewhat consistently would do wonders.....
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1977Hawkeye
Well-Known Member
Totally agree, 77.....
Somehow we stayed in the Top 25 through the last week of conference play, then fell out the week of the conference playoffs. Despite the painful finish, that was improvement for the program. Winning a game in the NCAA somewhat consistently would do wonders.....
As bad as the end of the season was, guess I assumed we'd have been gone from the polls well before that. At any rate, yeah, Iowa did get some good national pub last year for a while.. Just wish they would've finished off the season better. Even finishing 4-4 or 3-5 would've been better than 1-7 or whatever it was. Ouch. And it kills me that Iowa let that TN game get away.. With Duke getting punked by Mercer, that was about as easy of a road to a Sweet 16 as you're ever going to get. Missed opportunity, that.
It felt very Alfordesque the way that team melted down, but I still have faith in Fran and am looking for better things than we saw last February/March. He's been coaching for ages and knows what he's doing, so I'm hoping last year's meltdown was just a freak blip on the radar. From what I've read on these boards, their may have been some tension between some guys on the team, all of whom are gone now (I think?) so here's hoping for better team chemistry in 2014/15.
As for recruiting, it's pretty obvious that Fran works his tail off, which has got to pay some dividends in the end. That's the way I see it.
Fran is to hard a worker for it not to pay off. Iowa is going to have a lot more mature team this year than last year. I know they lost the two power forwards, but hopefully White moves to the power forward spot. Iowa is going to be tough this year.
TheIowaHawkGuy
Well-Known Member
Fran is going to make Iowa basketball respectful but I'm not sure anything more than that. Just doesn't have the salesmanship to recruit the players needed to compete for Big 10 championships. Had Fran been our coach 8-10 years ago with his teams, Iowa would be right there but just so happens he's coaching during one of the toughest eras of Big Ten hoops.
I think Fran seems like a good talker, so would be surprised if it was his lack of salesmanship. But, it must be something because all the elements of a good bb recruiting program are in place for the first time since the mid-90s.
We have the facilities, the sold out arena, the playing style, the coach, the NCAA bid, ect...what is missing?
As an aside, former UK player Doron Lamb tweeted out yesterday that at UK, ''you can get anything you want''....maybe that is part of it.
The stat that bothers me is that since we landed Woody, the other 13 Big Ten schools have landed 55 top 150 commits, while Iowa has been shut out. Not good. Iowa is the only league school shut out in that period.
