Takeaways: IOWA 86 NU 70
- Thread starter lou v
- Start date
Like Lou said, Iowa is just a bad matchup. They don't play a lot of defense, but we don't shoot the ball well enough to win a high-scoring game.
Iowa had 26 points with 3:30 left in the first half. They scored 60 in the last 23+ minutes. That's not far off the scoring pace of when they put up 112 the last time we played them. They shot 56% tonight. We're never beating them when they're producing offensively like that.
I was stunned when I saw that Sandfort was only shooting 29% on 3s coming into the game (he's up to 32% after going 5-7 against us).
Just gotta move on from this one and get a win on Thursday.
Sandfort is the latest skinny white buzzcut metronome of 3-point death in Iowa yellow sent by SkyNet from the distant future to torment us.
Its as much about our defense than it is about their good shooting.
Teams who move the ball well get great looks from 3 against us.
So they shoot better.
Unless they just can't shoot at all.
This has been the case all year, but we never alter our defensive approach.
Given that our defense has been our relative strength all year, why should we alter the approach?
It always makes sense to modify your defense based on your opponent, right down to who is actually on the court.
If you do the same thing every time, it makes it easier on your opponent to figure out how to attack. You want controlled unpredictability in your favor.
"Coach I never know when the double team is coming..."
I think Iowa's style of play along with this stretch of so many games in so few days caught up with us. The legs being tired made our rotations out of a double team a step slow allowing open 3's especially in 2nd half. It will be interesting to see how we do when they play in Evanston next.
Yeah. We had a great 17 minutes to start. Really played well. Then we started to slowly run out of gas, it seemed. The last 10 we seemed really flat.
I am not too shocked or broken up about this game. In fact, the play I saw for the first 17 minutes told me that this team can play at a really high level for an extended period.
I thought the Cats did a good job of doubling the post and fighting perimeter screens the first 15 minutes; they started to lose quickness at both points of defense the next 15 minutes, and were completely overmatched the last 10 minutes. To give Iowa credit, they have a good attrition strategy, using their press and substitutions with an aggressive transition game to wear down their opponents (in this case, the Cats). I do think adjusting the post double team from time to time to save legs on perimeter defenders would make some sense. To add to the torment, you could also see the leg fatigue in the second half as the Cats were unable to hit open looks they have been scoring on in the last few games where they pretty much dictated the pace. The Hawks are a bad matchup for the Cats. The smart move, to me, is to recognize that you will not be able to dictate pace for a full game against them and instead design a game plan that intermixes the post trap that the Cats use to force turnovers with a straight man defense, and substitutes more generously, particularly around the media timeouts. If it was a 20 minute game I think the Cats win 4 times out of 5. As a 40 minute game the Hawks have an advantage theCats need to minimize.
Don't agree.
As you get further into tournaments and playoff games, benches get shorterned. You know who is going to be out on the court.
Players have to execute. Team that does it the best wins
Beran scoring would be an example of being unpredictable.
I agree with this. Take a look at the box score and minutes played. Iowa only went 8 deep as well, but it seemed like they were constantly subbing. Having guys go for 3-4 minutes at a time is their MO. CCC tried to do it a bit early - Barnhizer was at the desk less than 2 mins into the game. But there were several times in the first half where there were no stoppages for many minutes.
Martinelli clearly is a step down defensively and Berry must also be missing some things on the defensive end that I can't catch because he could be playing a few more minutes to give Buie and Audige a minute or two more rest per half.
NU's starters averaged 28.8 minutes on 2 day's rest.
IA starters averaged 32.4 minutes, 3.6 minutes more, on 1 day rest.
Fire the responsible for condition or blame Covid if tiredness is to be blamed.
I thought the fouls on our most aggressive defenders are what zapped us. True we only had two more fouls than they did, but it seemed like our foul calls came much earlier and I felt it made us much less aggressive. Also true, we were missing more shots late in the game, so I suppose tired legs would have had something to do with it as well.
You don't think 4 games in 8 calendar days could have had a cumulative effect on NU?
I am not a doctor, going mostly by personal experience and gut feelings here. For me, If you are off two days at any point in the middle of it, that helps a ton. Two days makes a big difference compared to 1 day. And tiredness needs to be put into the perspective of how tired the other team is as we are not playing in isolation, we are chasing and being chased by another group of players. IA had 1 day of rest since their previous game.
I am more inclined to believe there are lingering Covid issues. Which manifested themselves more clearly against a team that plays the fastest in the B1G.
We couldn’t throw it in the ocean from 3. Most of our attempts were wide open. That was the ball game.