So, is this game a snapshot of things to come against real competition?

HaydenHawk56

HaydenHawk56

Well-Known Member
First, very, very good to get a win at home against Notre Dame. Glad to see us outscore them to a win.

However, it looked like a playstation offense and defense (when you and your friend only care about offense)?

We are up there defensively in the nation, but mostly against poor competition.

I like it much better than Lickball and would take a high scoring offense any day over that borefest, but we won't always have 90 point games against good teams...especially with our streaky shooting.

What is it going to take for this team to grow defensively this year?
 


We defended last year. We'll be fine, Notre Dame is a pretty efficient offensive team. Give them credit.
 


One thing people tend to ignore is that Utoff is a liability on defense. He's the second-most dynamic offensive player on the team, so he's going to get minutes, but he needs to get sorted out on defense because he is out of position way too often.
 


HaydenHawk56 said:
First, very, very good to get a win at home against Notre Dame. Glad to see us outscore them to a win.

However, it looked like a playstation offense and defense (when you and your friend only care about offense)?

We are up there defensively in the nation, but mostly against poor competition.

I like it much better than Lickball and would take a high scoring offense any day over that borefest, but we won't always have 90 point games against good teams...especially with our streaky shooting.

What is it going to take for this team to grow defensively this year?
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4th game in 6 games...2 of them were overtime plus a24hr trip home....defense was bound to suffer. Frankly, im surprised we played as well as we did...
 


We also gave up high 80s to Nova. I hope it is not a trend and we can get the opponent scoring down at least 15 points are so against the better teams.

ND was tough, but they were getting things ridiculously easy in the low post at times. And, their guards cut through our zone at times like it was nothing.
 




Their big guy had a career night plus some against Woody, Gabe and just about everyone Iowa threw at him. That won't happen every night. Or at least it better not.
 


HaydenHawk56 said:
We also gave up high 80s to Nova. I hope it is not a trend and we can get the opponent scoring down at least 15 points are so against the better teams.

ND was tough, but they were getting things ridiculously easy in the low post at times. And, their guards cut through our zone at times like it was nothing.
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In my opinion, the switch to zone is what won it for us. The amish guy was killing us, but didnt do squat after we switched and we actually rebounded better in the zone.
 


SamBrownlee48 said:
One thing people tend to ignore is that Utoff is a liability on defense. He's the second-most dynamic offensive player on the team, so he's going to get minutes, but he needs to get sorted out on defense because he is out of position way too often.
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He blocks shots pretty well for being out of position
 


LawVHawk said:
Their big guy had a career night plus some against Woody, Gabe and just about everyone Iowa threw at him. That won't happen every night. Or at least it better not.
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That's because he was actually three leprechauns standing on each other's shoulders.

Seriously, with that beard he looks like a giant leprechaun. No wonder he is at Notre Dame.

Very entertaining game though and I'll take these kind of games, win or lose, over Lick ball.
 




SpiderRico said:
4th game in 6 games...2 of them were overtime plus a24hr trip home....defense was bound to suffer. Frankly, im surprised we played as well as we did...
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This. I'm not surprised we played as well as we did...thought the guys would give good effort. We more or less had no time to prepare for this game. ND has likely been prepping for Iowa since the Indiana State game...no reason to prep for any of their other opponents.
 


SamBrownlee48 said:
For sure. He is a lanky dude. But watch him out on the wing in the zone. There was more than a few times where Hawks gave up points because Utoff was in the wrong spot.
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He's got some things to work on that's for sure. This is likely the part of his game which will suffer the most from the 2 years away. I have very little doubt he will come around. I sure do like having him to shoot FTs at the end of the game...glass half full here.
 


SamBrownlee48 said:
One thing people tend to ignore is that Utoff is a liability on defense. He's the second-most dynamic offensive player on the team, so he's going to get minutes, but he needs to get sorted out on defense because he is out of position way too often.
Click to expand...

Absolutely. I've been very surprised at how poor Uthoff's defense has been this season. Watch him when we are in zone and his poor rotations are consistently leading to open shots. Uthoff's half court offense is going to be needed if this team wants to compete for an upper big ten finish and I think Fran realizes this and is willing to let him play through his mistakes on the defensive end.
 




I won't worry about it unless it happens again. Our defensive shortcomings tonight are not normally our weaknesses. I think I can write some of it off to a short turnaround after a long trip, as well as Notre Dame running a pretty efficient and effective offense. Villanova beat us with offensive rebounding and making contested threes, not with easy points in the paint and open threes where everyone looks too tired to close out in time. I expect it will take one good practice and we'll be back to normal.
 


We couldn't stop them for sure... but I don't think it was lack of effort. After getting burned for 14 3's against Nova we were extending way out to contest them.

Notre Dame would then do a great job of penetrating and finding the open man. They just executed and shot the ball excellent - there wasn't much we could do to stop them.
 




I wouldn't worry too much about Uthoff. He is improving and will be a major player on this team as the season goes on.....

His free throws at the end were essential to the win. He was cold-blooded.....
 


HaydenHawk56 said:
We also gave up high 80s to Nova. I hope it is not a trend and we can get the opponent scoring down at least 15 points are so against the better teams.

ND was tough, but they were getting things ridiculously easy in the low post at times. And, their guards cut through our zone at times like it was nothing.
Click to expand...

We gave up 72 in regulation to Villanova. We gave that up something like 8 times last season, yet nobody was concerned about our defense a year ago.

Good God, people. I know the expectations are high, but can we PLEASE stop turning the fishbowl dial all the way to 11?
 


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