This one is on the staff

[GhostofBTT]

I respect everyone's opinion, but thought last night's gameplan was pretty poor. At this point in the season there aren't going to be any surprises (Basabe or Brommer going for 15 or Cartwright being hot from 3). IL has struggled in the half court during their tailspin, which has frustrated Leonard and led to guys jacking 3's.

Defensively they were so focused on Gatens we needed to make them play 25 seconds of D in order to get guys open looks, which we did for Oglesby in the 2nd half. Guys missed shots, made poor decisions, got intimidated by Leonard etc., but I think we gave them at least 6-8 easy baskets via our press. The press also put us in bad rebounding position, which led to two of those volleyball possessions where 2-3 IL guys got tips and we finally fouled or they scored.

There's four pages of people showing why you're wrong, so I'll just add this and be on my way.

 

[AdamHawk]

I never said slow down offense, I am referring to us running without purpose. When you don't have guys that can finish, running makes no sense. Who was capable of finishing against Leonard or Paul last night? Answer--nobody. Racing ahead rifling passes into the seats made no sense IMO. If it's there, you have to take it, but it wasn't and we tried to force it.

That's my point though, running is Iowa's offense. Slowing it down and setting up the half court is not. They take advantage of not allowing the defense to get set. Unfortunately, Illinois' athleticism allowed them to still make plays even when they were out of position. Give Illinois credit, they did what they had to in order to disrupt Iowa's flow and had them uncomfortable the majority of the night.

 

[gohawks71]

I thought Ferentz was calling the plays?

Fire O'Keefe and blitz more

 

[twinhawkfans]

IL ran through our press the whole game and got dunks or easy baskets. If you think it makes sense to press a team with the athletes IL has with the athletes we don't have, then you are clearly don't understand basketball.

Make them run their offense and let a team that has not been shooting the ball well try to win on the perimeter. Instead we allow Leonard to get easy hoops in transition and somehow ended up with Cartwright covering him a few times. We try to run and nobody can finish at the basket or we throw it away because IL is more athletic / we are trying to play too fast. McCaffrey isn't responsible for missed shots and bad decision making, but the pressure D made no sense IMO.

Ill actually had more TO than UI did, that is a product of the press. It's what you do with those TO that changes a game, and you can't put missed layups and failure to finish at the basket on the coach. But thanks for all of your intellectual, negative BS. Made me laugh on a monday morning!!

 

[EddyP]

I want to believe we're turning a corner...but games like these make the cynic in me say "we caught lightning in a bottle with gatens vs indiana and wisconsin"

That wisky team that beat OSU last night would have 30 pointed us.

It is what it is...I know nothing.

FIFY

 

[hawkIhoops]

Did you watch the game? Most of IL's turnovers came in the half court because they made lazy passes and McCabe was doing a good job denying Leonard. Most of their easy, uncontested baskets came against our press that didn't disrupt much other than our ability to defend the basket.

 

[CGHawk]

1) Why did we press IL? They are faster and more athletic at every position and we were doing a decent job in our half court D. At least 3 shot clock violations and IL struggled to get into their offense.

2) How do we not get Gatens looks for extended periods of time? IL played tough D, but what did he have 2 shots in the 2nd half? With him drawing doubles, we still couldn't figure out a way to get shots until mid second half when they ran some stuff of Oglesby.

3) White, Oglesby and Marble need to take more shots. Basabe, McCabe and Cartwright are non factors offensively. Cartwright is a liability, period.

IL played a pretty crappy game and we had plenty of opportunities to cut into the lead and possibly tie. Props to McCabe for contesting a lot of entry passes to Leonard and for (what I thought) was a decent defensive effort, but this was a winnable game that we gave away.

All of your points are connected IMO.

3) Marble wasn't exactly having his best offensive game. White wasn't doing much offensively tonight. McCabe was not going to score regularly on Leonard. They were forcing us to rely on our jump shooting ability. BC, not a shooter. So that leaves us with JO and Gatens.

2) JO wasn't exactly playing well at first and didn't start to find his stroke until later. So that leaves Gatens... So they really didn't have to worry about anyone else making outside shots all that much so what do you think they are going to do? Focus on Gatens. If it means you give someone else an open look from 3 in order to deny Gatens a good shot from 3pt range... do it until we start making them pay.

We didn't make them pay. So it made it pretty easy to guard Gatens and not let him breathe. Deny him the ball at all costs and pretty much shutdown our offense.

3) Since our half-court offense was pitiful for nearly the whole game... How are we going to get points on the board? Turnovers and fast break opportunities. We certainly weren't going to get many second chance opportunities on the offensive glass... we struggled to box out and rebound on the defensive end.

So the press was intended to put pressure on them and force them to make some turnovers and hopefully it would turn into some points for us.

Stealing the ball in a half-court defensive set allows their players to run back with our players a lot of the time and since you said they are faster/more athletic... we would need them to turn it over as close to their basket as possible and give us a better chance at getting an easy layup.

And even though we got beat a few times on the press... doesn't mean it was completely ineffective, but I will admit that we have done a better job at the press in some of the past games. Also, after we got beat a couple times we would switch out of the press and go into half-court immediately once we thought we didn't have a good chance of getting the steal/forcing the turnover.

This one is not on the coaches. Going by your 3 main points... It all started with one thing and had a domino effect from there.

The staff wasn't shooting 3/20 in the first half (obviously excluding Gatens).
The staff didn't give them second chance points by not boxing out.
The staff didn't miss layups.
The staff didn't throw away passes to the other team or miss passes, because of lack of communication/awareness.
The staff didn't get called for fouls.

The only thing you could maybe argue the staff didn't do well enough was get these guys fired up enough, but I'm pretty sure that Fran is as good as anyone at firing up his team. For some reason we came out flat and a lot of them stayed flat for a good amount of the game.

McCabe really worked hard at denying Leonard the ball and I think he did a good job... better than anyone else did. Gatens came out ready to play. Basabe also played with some energy. Other than that, we looked really flat/slow out there. There didn't seem to be much fire. I thought Marble looked sort of slow during the game, like he just wasn't really feeling it or something, but he got quite a few steals and drew some fouls so he found a way to help the team even though he seemed to be struggling more than normal on offense.

We have seen what the Hawkeyes look like when they are executing Fran's gameplan and I highly doubt he changed it up that drastically to the point where the players should look that lost and confused and show no composure on offense.

Simply put, we played very poorly tonight. That was a game we could have easily won, because Illinois was not playing all that great either.

I don't remember saying "What is Fran doing?!" all that often when I was watching the game.
Am I saying it is completely [Insert player's name here] fault? No. This was a team loss all the way. We just happened to have a bad game and that is going to happen sometimes.

 

[DodgerHawki]

We're all entitled to our opinion

cartwright will leave as my least favorite hawkeye player ever. hes had some bright spots but far, far more completely boneheaded plays. he just has no concept of intelligent basketball.

i said it then and ill say it now...when it comes to on-court production, give me kaylon williams any day of the week.

but he saved Iowa from being something like 5-26 last year. This year has been a disappointment, and I'm sure no one is more disappointed that him. He's basically been hurt most of the year with short glimpses of being healthy.

I have no ire for Cartwright. Has he been/was he great? No, but he seems hardly worth of "least favorite player ever" comments.

 

[Johnnyhawkeye]

I'm just giving it to Illinois for playing better defense than us last night, I thought we played some of the best d of the season forcing 17 turnovers, and I believe 3 shot clock violations?

We just didn't have an answer for their size underneath the hoop, we got beat more on rebounds being tipped to Meyers Leonard and Griffey then anything else. It wasn't from lack of effort, it was simply because they took full advantage of the size differential.

 

[hawkIhoops]

Maybe it was an overreaction to another uninspired performance by the team in a critical game against a reeling opponent. For as poorly as we played in the first half offensively, we were still in the game. Even a bad IL team would have been up by 20.

I get the whole height advantage issue, but why do we sit Olaseni and Archie? We get no scoring from the 5 spot and while McCabe held his own defensively against Leonard, we got smoked on the boards. You need length or quick jumpers against IL and we have neither. Unless Archie is hurt, I have no clue why he diddn't play in that game.

 

[Section136]

but why do we sit Olaseni .

Obviously because Fran has no idea what the hell he is doing.

 

[atomicblue224]

i dont know why i sleep with cory everson.

 

[ATLHawkeye]

I agree... This loss was 100% on the staff.

Fran should have called a timeout to tell the guys to make more baskets? If they would have made just six more baskets we would have won that game. Come on coaches, what were you thinking?