The great HN basketball minds

We all understand what Fran is trying to do, OOTH. The question is, is it working? This was nearly loss #4 after leading by double digits.

Calling a TO to protect a lead is more logical than hoping Oglesby will wear out Rayvonte Rice.
 
I honestly think Fran's strategy during the Illinois game was more about the long run than it was about that game.

He flat out said his team wasn't tough enough to win the game against MSU. There wasn't a single player who said "Enough of this crap. I'm gonna step up and make a damn play for my team." They panicked and they let the situation overcome them. Mentally they couldn't get over the hump. There was a lid on the basket and they couldn't figure out how to get it off.

Illinois was the very next game. The Illini went on a run and Fran wanted to see if his players could overcome it themselves. They did. It wasn't pretty, but they figured out how to win on their own on the road in a B10 environment where they have had very little success in the past. When you have a team like Iowa who has consistently struggled to win close games sometimes you need to just let them learn how to do it. In some cases there is very little a coach can do in order to teach toughness. Calling a timeout and yelling at them only gets you so far.

People can call it bad coaching if they want. In my opinion that is ridiculous. I think it was a coach realizing he needs to let his team figure it out on their own. The situation that the Hawks battled through could pay dividends down the road.
 
Benddontbreak said:
We all understand what Fran is trying to do, OOTH. The question is, is it working? This was nearly loss #4 after leading by double digits.

Calling a TO to protect a lead is more logical than hoping Oglesby will wear out Rayvonte Rice.
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False a lot of people on here did not know why fran wasnt using his tos.
 
For every TO he doesn't use he gets a free bean burrito at Taco Johns right? Double digit leads be damned!
 
1977Hawkeye said:
Yeah. If ANY of us knew basketball that well, we would be coaching a team somewhere, and would have more important things to do than sitting here at our keyboards posting in this thread.

I don't pretend to be a coach or know all that much about X's and O's, etc, and I'm not going to take it personally when another HN user says I don't know the game, because they would be right, but I'm also sure that user is not qualified to coach our team, either.

That said, I'm sure every coach in the history of the game has made an in-game decision here and there that they'd like to have back, or has been second guessed. People like us still have our opinions and are going to debate it. It's a message board.

The "timeout" discussion also doesn't automatically mean that we think Fran sucks and doesn't know how to coach. I personally think he's a fantastic coach and is doing a great job, but I happen to think he was a bit stingy with the timeouts the other night when maybe it would have been a good idea to use one.
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I was a high school basketball coach for about 10 years. I do know a little bit about the game. However, I am not qualified to coach a team at this level. Never coached players this big and this strong and this quick and this skilled; I have coached players with at least 2 of these qualifications, though.

And I have to agree that you make in-game decisions that, when you look back at them on tape (am I dating myself by saying I watched tape of the games I coached?), you ask yourself "What the heck was I thinking?!?". And I believe those types of decisions should be criticized by your assistants and corrected as quickly as you can.
 
doclee said:
Conditioning: You may want to look at a close up of a player after a couple of minutes on defense. I don't think all that water pouring off of them is from a roof leak.
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Agreed. Defense is a much more physically demanding part of the game than offense. Now add to that the fact that we press and play a LOT of transition. You're talking about something that absolutely *requires* you to be in top physical condition, and even then you will get tired.

How many times do teams with a really good shooter end up guarding the opponents weakest offensive player? Why? Because then the shooter won't lose his legs and become an ineffective shooter. That even happens in the NBA; very few of the NBA's best shooters guard the opponent's best shooter.
 
Benddontbreak said:
We all understand what Fran is trying to do, OOTH. The question is, is it working? This was nearly loss #4 after leading by double digits.

Calling a TO to protect a lead is more logical than hoping Oglesby will wear out Rayvonte Rice.
Click to expand...

Please refresh my menory, I thought we won the game despite Fran's pathetic coaching, especiallly concerning his use of time outs. Seems like quite a few people on this thread know how to coach better than Fran. Perhaps they should talk to Barta, fire Fran and make a few million in the meantime.....
 
DP5555 said:
I honestly think Fran's strategy during the Illinois game was more about the long run than it was about that game.

He flat out said his team wasn't tough enough to win the game against MSU. There wasn't a single player who said "Enough of this crap. I'm gonna step up and make a damn play for my team." They panicked and they let the situation overcome them. Mentally they couldn't get over the hump. There was a lid on the basket and they couldn't figure out how to get it off.

Illinois was the very next game. The Illini went on a run and Fran wanted to see if his players could overcome it themselves. They did. It wasn't pretty, but they figured out how to win on their own on the road in a B10 environment where they have had very little success in the past. When you have a team like Iowa who has consistently struggled to win close games sometimes you need to just let them learn how to do it. In some cases there is very little a coach can do in order to teach toughness. Calling a timeout and yelling at them only gets you so far.

People can call it bad coaching if they want. In my opinion that is ridiculous. I think it was a coach realizing he needs to let his team figure it out on their own. The situation that the Hawks battled through could pay dividends down the road.
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Agreed, but we could have won the MSU game in regulation and overtime, especially with the hard foul on Gesell in OT. Of course the Kentucky game had already started on the very same channel, merely one of the reasons the Zebras didn't call the obvious foul, of course, they almost never do, no matter how hard. That should change to make the game more evenhanded.....

Despite the huge scoring drought, MSU was lucky to escape with a win. We were one shot away from winning and tying the game playing very poorly. That seems to me to be the sign of a very good team to overcome the huge obstacles and almost pull the game out.....
 
RocknRollface said:
Thats really not true at all. Theres probably millions of former players who know the game well but have no interest in coaching.
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There's probably millions of former players who THINK they know the game well but have no interest in coaching.

FIFY!

Many players play but never understand why they do breakdown drills or "stupid, boring drills" over and over and over. They never understand that each drill has a purpose in the overall scheme that the coach is trying to accomplish. They simply think practice is where you roll the balls out and let them shoot for a while and then scrimmage for about an hour. I learned breakdown drills and their purpose from one of the best: Lewis "Buzz" Levick.
 
Foval21 said:
Yes izzo saw his guys in a good rhythm so he let them play. Mccaffery should have realized Iowa was in a funk and needed to call a timeout to rally the guys and help them out. I am sure if the roles had been reversed izzo would not have let msu go 15 min without scoring and not called a timeout to try to get them out of the funk.
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We were in a rhythm. We were simply being hacked by MSU. All the timeouts in the book aren't going to stop the "Hack a Hawk" strategy that Izzo used to stop Iowa from shooting the ball. What so many people fail to realize that in that 15 minutes we scored from the free throw line (11-15 as I recall). That could have been several shots, but when you're fouled you don't get the shot opportunity.
 
PCHawk said:
Running a team out of the gym is plan A. You can't just stick with plan A whether its working or not. That's why they have things like halftime adjustments. That said, I don't think there was ever a need to call a timeout during the MSU game. They never went on any big runs and we were attacking the rim and getting fouls. Losing a 21 point lead without calling timeout is a little extreme tho.
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So in football when a team sticks with the run even though it's not working in the first half they should simply abandon it? Isn't it true that when you run the ball all game that the opponent's defense eventually tires and you can get nice runs? (Isn't that exactly Iowa's philosophy in football?)

So why can't that work in basketball? Keep running. Tire the opponent. A tired opponent will commit careless, tired fouls and eventually foul out. Especially when we have quality depth and can continue to run, run run.
 
Benddontbreak said:
We all understand what Fran is trying to do, OOTH. The question is, is it working? This was nearly loss #4 after leading by double digits.

Calling a TO to protect a lead is more logical than hoping Oglesby will wear out Rayvonte Rice.
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I'd submit that it DID wear out Rayvonte Rice. He was 0-5 from the field after the second half under 8 media timeout.
 
OUTofTOWNHAWK said:
Those you who think this guy should start or that guy should start. Name one player that has not had a bad game? They all will get a chance to play on every night. They all have a chance to prove how much they should be out there. Its like some of you dont understand how great it is to be this deep.

Ever wonder why Fran has some games where he doesnt use timeouts? He doesnt want to give the other team a break.

If you dont think McCabe should play then you dont understand the game. Hes not perfect but he brings a lot to the lineup.

If you dont understand that JO is one of the most important players on the team then you dont understand the game. JO isnt quite there and the team doesnt quite understand how to play with shooter but when they do they will be able to beat any team in the country. Right now they are on the edge of being very dangerous.



Its really easy to pick out those of you who have not played the game. Dont worry you could kick my butt in vidya games though.
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Ahem.....Told you so. Dude is not a player that should be logging minutes. He got pwned on defense and launched a hideous amount of 3s and still was logging minutes...WTF!?!?!??!?!?!
 
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