Will Cupcake Feast Doom Hawkeyes?

JonDMiller

JonDMiller

Publisher/Founder
The Iowa basketball team has played a schedule ranked 346 out of 351 through Sunday, November 17th. This, according to Ken Pomeroy.

Only Oklahoma State and Mississippi State have played a weaker slate among teams from high major leagues. Heck, only five teams have played a weaker slate, period.

Iowa has done what you hope a good team would do to these teams and that is pound them into oblivion. Iowa is averaging over 94 points per game, which is tops in the Big Ten. They are allowing just 54.5 points per game, third in the league. In fact, Iowa is near the top of most B1G stats. Here are where they are #1:

Scoring
Scoring Margin
Free Throw Percentage
Field Goal Percentage Defense
Defensive Rebounds

They are second/third in the Big Ten in:

Field Goal Percentage
Three-point percentage defense
Rebounding Offense
Rebounding Margin
Blocks
Assists
Steals
Turnover Margin
Assist to Turnover ratio
Scoring Defense

Tom Brands would approve of this level of domination. Iowa plays against Penn (250th) later this week in the last of their five cupcakes to start this season…will this strategy turn out to be the right one? Should Iowa have played better competition to begin the year? Where is it going?

There’s no doubt the slate is weak…it could barely be weaker. Iowa is playing teams ranked in the 300′s and high 200′s. At some point soon, this needs to stop. Iowa needs to look for programs who regularly rank somewhere in the 100′s, or they need to schedule a non-D1 team. As long as the RPI exists in its present state, that is the formula. That is how some programs (say from the MWC) are gaming the system. Do not schedule any more teams who you think are going to be outside of the Top 250. Maryland Eastern-Shore is a program you knew was going to stink, so go look elsewhere.
The good news for Iowa this year is their conference schedule is so strong, RPI is not likely going to be a factor for them. It was last year and Iowa’s schedule was less beefy in the out of conference than it is this year.

Speaking of that beef, Iowa will play Xavier (43) next week in the Battle 4 Atlantis and will face either UTEP (79) or Tennessee (40) in the next round, win or lose. If they should win two games they will likely face Kansas (4) in the final. After those games Iowa will host Notre Dame in the Big Ten/ACC classic. That’s adding some beef and will bring Iowa’s schedule ranking from 346 down into somewhere in the 100′s.

Drake is ranked 145th as of right now and that’s the kind of game you want in your non-conference from a ranking standpoint; mix in a team you should throttle but one whose ranking is in the 100′s. Iowa will play at Iowa State (27) and should Iowa win that one, it could turn out to be one of their best wins of the year from an RPI standpoint. Iowa still plays against Fairleigh Dickinson (348) and Arkansas-Pine Bluff (296), just two horrible opponents that kill your RPI. When all is said and done, Iowa ‘should’ have an out of conference RPI somewhere in the 100′s or possibly high double-digits depending on how they perform when they get to Big Ten conference play.

In the Big Ten, Iowa plays Michigan State, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio State two times each. Iowa will likely play the toughest schedule in the nation from December 31st to the NCAA tournament as they have 10 games against teams currently ranked in the Ken Pomeroy Top 20.

Iowa isn’t alone in the league as it relates to playing weak schedules thus far; Indiana, Purdue, Nebraska and Illinois have played schedules ranked in the 300′s through November 19th, with Michigan somehow at 291 despite having played on the road at Iowa State.

The last question is one we will see play out; is this schedule good for this Iowa team?

Aaron White and Devyn Marble are among the leagues leading scorers despite averaging just over 21 minutes per game. Iowa is playing a lot of players (10 are averaging at least 14.8 minutes per game) and Fran McCaffery is getting a chance to get lot of different looks at varying lineups. He has the deepest team in the Big Ten and this sort of thing is needed. One could say these opponents give him that chance, allows the team to blow the rust off and have established some chemistry and confidence along the way.

One could also say this team is hardly battle tested, despite the UNO scare and still has barely tasted adversity. I guess you don’t deal with adversity until you have to deal with it, so Atlantis is going to be an early season proving ground for this club. This event will not define them but it will test them.
Things will take care of themselves before all is said and done but Iowa can accomplish the same things (winning games and preparing for a season) against better yet still rollable opponents.

POINTS PER MINUTE
In writing the above, I was looking at some statistics for Iowa. Given the spread of minutes thus far I wanted to put things into a points per minute lineup. Here is what I found from Iowa’s Top Ten rotation.

.7116 Aaron White
.6578 Devyn Marble
.5588 Zach McCabe
.5355 Peter Jok
.4807 Jarrod Uthoff
.4785 Melsahn Basabe
.4729 Gabe Olaseni
.3594 Adam Woodbury
.3457 Anthony Clemmons
.2261 Mike Gesell

If you applied White and Marble’s numbers to a 30 minutes per game pace, that’s 21.3/ppg for White and 19.8 for Marble. White’s rebounds per minute numbers, extrapolated to a 30 minute per game average, would be 10.9. He’s playing at a different level this year, statistically and it also passes the eyeball test. Confidence, energy and everything; he’s playing like a first team All Big Ten star.
 
IA isn't diabetic so their sugar levels should be fine when tough games show up. IA has enough veterans for them to keep IA accountable when things matter.
 
JonDMiller said:
There’s no doubt the slate is weak…it could barely be weaker. Iowa is playing teams ranked in the 300′s and high 200′s. At some point soon, this needs to stop. Iowa needs to look for programs who regularly rank somewhere in the 100′s, or they need to schedule a non-D1 team. As long as the RPI exists in its present state, that is the formula. That is how some programs (say from the MWC) are gaming the system.
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Like say an Abilene-Christian team? After Friday, Iowa's next seven games could include Xavier, Tennessee, Kansas, Notre Dame, Drake and at Iowa St. Their schedule is fine, every single B10 team plays multiple 250+ ranked teams. UNC-Wilimington and UNO both have a decent chance of ending up in the top 200.
 
Abilene-Christian wont ding Iowa's RPI as they are a transitioning D1 team.

I dont think a tougher schedule was needed this year as you knew the B1G schedule was guaranteed to be tougher than last year because of the 1 plays Iowa had last year. Also had a pretty good idea Iowa would be playing a much better ACC opponent than Va Tech and you knew Iowa would play ISU on the road this year.

Im fine with it and am pumped for Atlantis.
 
The only semi complaint I have about how we've handled the schedule so far is that even though Iowa has used 39 different line ups, they've really only used two lineups for the vast majority of meaningful minutes the starting line up has been on the court for over 39:02 together and then the second five (Olesani, McCabe, Uthoff, Jok, Clemmons) has been on the court for 30:34 with the only other line up combo used for more than seven minutes together being the Meyer-Stokes-Ukah-Denning-Jok mop up crew. For example, Woodbury, White and Uthoff have not yet been on the court together this year.
 
I think the route Iowa has taken is fine and makes sense. It's nice to see McCabe 3rd on the points per list. Many have dismissed him this year...during the off season. I actually had him in my starting lineup. He brings a lot to the table IMO...4 year player, toughness, chemistry, leadership, etc.
 
Jon... what do you mean by doom?

Leave them out of the tournament? I expect this team to be well above the bubble.
Struggle in conference play? We should have enough tests with the Atlantis tournament that we will have played tougher competition.

The only argument I think you can make at this point is we may struggle in the Battle of Atlantis tournament becuase some of those teams like Xavier and Tennesse who have already played one another have faced some tougher competition.

But I'm not worried. Granted it's not against good competition but I think the team is playing well enough thus far and I think we have a team with a lot of expereience when you look at guys like Marble, Mel, McCabe who have started a lot of games in their career becuase they were forced to play at a young age. Same thing with Wooddy and Mike G and Clemmons. Although sophomores, I would call them experienced sophs becuase they were forced into PT right away.
 
Big Ten is tough as usual and I expect us to be in the range of an 8-9 seed this year so this won't matter. BUT, I could easily see us losing a couple close games and being a bubble team in which case our horrendous sos would doom us.
 
Did I hear correctly on TV broadcasts that a couple of these opponents were scheduled very late and with much difficulty, i.e. Iowa had a hard time finding opponents to fill out there schedule?
 
Barring a major injury (knocking on wood), I don't see anyway that this team ends up on any sort of realistic bubble that would necessitate wishing they had a tougher non-con slate. Playing at ISU, a top 30 ND team in the B1G/ACC challenge, and potentially 3 games against Top 50 RPI teams is more than enough in a 13 game non con schedule. In fact, when you factor in that we will play all the top teams in the league twice (some possibly 3 times depending on how the BTT bracket ends up), then a few cupcakes is no big deal. It would be nice to keep the worst teams to about a 150-200 RPI level, but sometimes that can be hit and miss. Bottom line....I have no issue with the schedule this year.
 
No--I think there is enough meat on the bones in that schedule such that the only thing that will "doom" Iowa is lack of wins.
 
I'm so sick of hearing about the schedule. We'll play tough opponents in the Bahamas, get ND at home, and play at ISU...not to mention we play in the FREAKING BIG TEN CONFERENCE. The Hawkeyes will be plenty challenged this year.
 
I don't see how it will. Basketball teams take a few games to work out some things, might as well get some wins while we do that. Plus, most of the team has played games against good teams (hell, the team that guys are playing in practice are much better than their opponents so they are still facing challenges.) They know what they need to do to beat better competition. Plus, they haven't accomplished much...yet. There's got to be a built in hunger within these players. We may lose more when we play better teams but it won't be because of the cupcake opening to the schedule.
 
djwoody98 said:
I'm so sick of hearing about the schedule. We'll play tough opponents in the Bahamas, get ND at home, and play at ISU...not to mention we play in the FREAKING BIG TEN CONFERENCE. The Hawkeyes will be plenty challenged this year.
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Cut Jon some slack... the football team had a bye week and the basketball team hasn't played anyone of significance. For a guy who operates a website based on supplying information about the Hawks there isn't exactly a lot of content to write about at the moment.

In my opinion, it's a fair assessment as I think we would all like to see Iowa play a few more interesting games to start the season. Obviously, I want them to keep scheduling games against winnable opponents because wins are important and the B10 is so tough, but there's no reason they can't schedule some teams who are at the very least a little bit tougher than the ones they have been destroying.
 
We play in the toughest conference in the world. Also play in some tough pre-season tourneys plus locked in w/ ISU (sometimes UNI, who can be good), plus ACC challenge, plus 18-game Big 10 slate, plus Big 10 tourney. Need a few cupcakes, b/c from here-out there are basically no 'breathers'
 
this is how people will react, much like the "fiery coach" element

If you win those hard games coming up, it will be "getting team chemistry in order."
If you lose, it will be "should have gotten them ready for real competition."

I'll trust that Fran knows what the team needs right now. But, i'm tired of the terrible teams and it shouldn't be that hard to play teams that are at least a little better. That said, the RPI will take care of itself here in a little bit.
 
koralakers said:
We play in the toughest conference in the world. Also play in some tough pre-season tourneys plus locked in w/ ISU (sometimes UNI, who can be good), plus ACC challenge, plus 18-game Big 10 slate, plus Big 10 tourney. Need a few cupcakes, b/c from here-out there are basically no 'breathers'
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I don't know man, the AFC is pretty solid this season.
 
I would love to know exactly what goes into setting up a schedule for Iowa. I suspect it is a difficult task to try to hit the sweet spot with all 200 or higher RPI teams, but I wish we could hit that spot a bit more often. Sure, we play a very tough league slate this year, but we did not win any of those tough games last year, so in the end, the losses to MSU, IU ect just did not get us over the top. Not an exact science, I understand, but it is not that hard to predict which teams will be decent...and this cupcake of 5 is way too sweet.
 
Doom= negative whininess

Cupcake= put down

Will= not determined

I just dont know how some of you make it through the day with that kind of attitude.

I think this schedule is perfect for how the program is. With the depth of Iowa they needed these games to decide who was going to play what role. Jumping into a hard schedule without know who does what would have landed this squad in a world of hurt. The only thing that has gone wrong up till now is Notre lame losing. #basketballpositivefacts #jddoomandgloom #2ndmostwhinyposterever
 
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