Vegas pretty much calls it again....Iowa good, but not great team.

I can’t help but think of the what if....

If we hang on and can win the 2 home games, Luka is POY for sure and we might have been able to get a double bye in BTT and might be looking at like a 4 seed in NCAA.

But then I try to put some perspective behind it. Nobody dreamed of Luka being a POY candidate. CJ has easily passed expectations we just need him healthy.

Send this whole team out to Hawaii with Frank and Luka and I think we’re Natty champs next year.
 
We win that game at Carver

Iowa was substantially better then MSU, I think it was pretty clear and that was without a starter. If this game is at Carver, Iowa might have won by 20. We were just quicker to the loose balls, got the rebounds, tipped the ball out - Iowa was just the grittier and better team. We didn't win and that's how it goes, but anyone who is discouraged after watching last nights game with this team and if you consider the circumstances of how this season has unfolded, that's a you problem.
 
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Izzo is a very good coach. He really defended Weiskamp and Garza and challenged the other players on Iowa's team to make shots. They could not do it on the road, unlike against Ohio State, when they made the shots. It is as simple as that.

We need a third scorer in there. CJ shooting well can be that guy. Bohannon would have been that guy.

Too many injuries this year
 
Any Iowa player or coach would have taken an Iowa lead with 5 min to play at Sparty. The game was lost on 4 mistakes on 3 consecutive possessions with 2 min remaining:
1) Pemsl makes a turnover;
2) Evelyn turns the ball over, then compounds that mistake by literally 2-hand pushing an MSU player giving them
2 more foul shots;
3) Connor takes a terribly forced shot which had no chance.
Game over. I love me some Pemsl, but I'm not sure he and Evelyn should be on the floor running the show coming down the stretch. Those Evelyn mistakes were huge, and it's not the first time he's had brain freezes like that. I understand Fran likes to see whether JT or Evelyn is playing the best, but Toussant started out the game great, made some big plays -- not sure he really was given a chance to show what he could do last night.

On another topic, Coach Fran's lack of timeout/rest awareness was again on display last night. At the end of the 1st half, Iowa had a timeout to give. Garza had played the entire first half and it was clear he was going to be called on to be on the floor the entire night. Sparty called a timeout with the ball and 1 min in the half. With Iowa on defense, Fran should have sat Garza for that defensive possession, then called a timeout when Iowa got the ball back for their final possession of the 1st half. That would have allowed a possession for Garza to not defend, and also get another blow during Iowa's timeout...in all, Garza could have probably gained an additional 5 min of time to just sit and relax on the bench. Instead, Fran puts Garza in on defense, he plays the possession, then when Iowa gets the ball Fran doesn't even call timeout at all, and Iowa goes into the locker room not even having used their 1 timeout...when he's got multiple guys playing huge minutes. No excuse for that BS.
 
Any Iowa player or coach would have taken an Iowa lead with 5 min to play at Sparty. The game was lost on 4 mistakes on 3 consecutive possessions with 2 min remaining:
1) Pemsl makes a turnover;
2) Evelyn turns the ball over, then compounds that mistake by literally 2-hand pushing an MSU player giving them
2 more foul shots;
3) Connor takes a terribly forced shot which had no chance.
Game over. I love me some Pemsl, but I'm not sure he and Evelyn should be on the floor running the show coming down the stretch. Those Evelyn mistakes were huge, and it's not the first time he's had brain freezes like that. I understand Fran likes to see whether JT or Evelyn is playing the best, but Toussant started out the game great, made some big plays -- not sure he really was given a chance to show what he could do last night.

On another topic, Coach Fran's lack of timeout/rest awareness was again on display last night. At the end of the 1st half, Iowa had a timeout to give. Garza had played the entire first half and it was clear he was going to be called on to be on the floor the entire night. Sparty called a timeout with the ball and 1 min in the half. With Iowa on defense, Fran should have sat Garza for that defensive possession, then called a timeout when Iowa got the ball back for their final possession of the 1st half. That would have allowed a possession for Garza to not defend, and also get another blow during Iowa's timeout...in all, Garza could have probably gained an additional 5 min of time to just sit and relax on the bench. Instead, Fran puts Garza in on defense, he plays the possession, then when Iowa gets the ball Fran doesn't even call timeout at all, and Iowa goes into the locker room not even having used their 1 timeout...when he's got multiple guys playing huge minutes. No excuse for that BS.

Pemsl's turnover ended up not hurting because we got the ball right back. At the time it was terrible tho. I think the play that hurt us the worst is when Joe T tried to split a double team and turned it over getting a layup at the other end. That play happened at a bad time where we were minutes away from potentially putting the game away. If I remember right. As far as the end of the half goes. We got Wieskamp a wide open 3 attempt, which is about the best you can hope for. Not sure a timeout would have helped there. I agree he probably should have done it. Just not sure it cost us in hindsight.
 
Any Iowa player or coach would have taken an Iowa lead with 5 min to play at Sparty. The game was lost on 4 mistakes on 3 consecutive possessions with 2 min remaining:
1) Pemsl makes a turnover;
2) Evelyn turns the ball over, then compounds that mistake by literally 2-hand pushing an MSU player giving them
2 more foul shots;
3) Connor takes a terribly forced shot which had no chance.
Game over. I love me some Pemsl, but I'm not sure he and Evelyn should be on the floor running the show coming down the stretch. Those Evelyn mistakes were huge, and it's not the first time he's had brain freezes like that. I understand Fran likes to see whether JT or Evelyn is playing the best, but Toussant started out the game great, made some big plays -- not sure he really was given a chance to show what he could do last night.

On another topic, Coach Fran's lack of timeout/rest awareness was again on display last night. At the end of the 1st half, Iowa had a timeout to give. Garza had played the entire first half and it was clear he was going to be called on to be on the floor the entire night. Sparty called a timeout with the ball and 1 min in the half. With Iowa on defense, Fran should have sat Garza for that defensive possession, then called a timeout when Iowa got the ball back for their final possession of the 1st half. That would have allowed a possession for Garza to not defend, and also get another blow during Iowa's timeout...in all, Garza could have probably gained an additional 5 min of time to just sit and relax on the bench. Instead, Fran puts Garza in on defense, he plays the possession, then when Iowa gets the ball Fran doesn't even call timeout at all, and Iowa goes into the locker room not even having used their 1 timeout...when he's got multiple guys playing huge minutes. No excuse for that BS.

I never get too worked up about time outs in our current climate of TV networks. If you've gone to a game in person, there are so many breaks in play it ridiculous. It almost feels like teams can't get into a flow.
 
Izzo is a very good coach. He really defended Weiskamp and Garza and challenged the other players on Iowa's team to make shots. They could not do it on the road, unlike against Ohio State, when they made the shots. It is as simple as that.

We need a third scorer in there. CJ shooting well can be that guy. Bohannon would have been that guy.

Too many injuries this year
I thought our non-scoring players actually played pretty well considering Luka "only" had 20 and Joe had 2. If you look at other games where we had 0 bench scoring, I was actually encouraged by what I saw out of CM, JT, RK CP and BE - offensively at least. I felt that they had better games than the combo of LG and JW
 
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