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[Jeremy]

Men's Basketball '05-'06 vs '06-'07
CycloneFanatic.com
Jeremy Lind
Opinion

While 90% of the fan-base understands that the Men's Basketball program is heading in the right direction, there are still some that question how this season is going. Hopefully this will help a little bit.....

For some reason there are always people that don't use logic when analyzing a team's performance from one year to the next, especially when controversies are mixed into the off-season. Let's take a look at last year's men's basketball team compared to this year's by analyzing the quality of the wins and losses for each.

Last year Iowa State entered the season 23rd in the country and things looked good with two prospective NBA guards (Stinson & Blalock) at the helm and a supposedly future NBA power forward (Taggart) on the inside. The non-conference schedule couldn't have been any easier and the conference as a whole wasn't as tough as previous years. Yet for some reason, Iowa State failed to garner even a nod from the NIT, let alone the NCAA. How could this happen? Let's take a look at the W's and L's...

(Note that the below rankings are obviously based on personal opinions and everybody would rank things differently.)

Terrible Losses: Iona, Fresno State, Nebraska, Baylor (incredibly bad)
Bad Losses: Kansas State, Colorado
Good Losses: Ohio State, Texas A&M, Texas, Texas Tech, Kansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State
Easy Wins: Mountain State, Portland State, Howard, Drake, South Florida, NW State, Colorado State, Tennessee State, Kansas State, Nebraska
Good Wins: UNI, Iowa, Missouri, Colorado, Oklahoma State, Missouri

This year Iowa State entered the season with a new coaching staff, new style of play and only two returning starters. While the future was bright, it was obviously going to be a rough ride with very little offensive power and extremely under-sized post players. Things have been bumpy and down-right sloppy at times but except for one or two games, the players have appeared to try twice as hard as at any time last year. Not only have the players found ways to stay in games despite terrible shooting, they've done it while learning and growing with each other. While nobody expects to go to the NCAA or probably even the NIT this year, we at least have a legit reason why.

This year so far...

Terrible Losses: Drake (borderline)
Bad Losses: Bradley, Colorado
Good Losses: Ohio State, Iowa, Texas, Kansas, Texas A&M, UNI, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, Missouri
Easy Wins: UC-Riverside, Louisiana Monroe, Eastern Illinois, Norfolk State, Lake Superior State, Savannah State, SE Missouri State, ND State, Nebraska, Baylor
Good Wins: Minnesota, Missouri

Games remaining: Oklahoma, Kansas State, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Texas Tech

Looking through both season's results it's easy to see that while we don't have the quality wins this year that we would all hope for in the future, we also don't have the terrible and ugly losses experienced a year ago. All of Iowa State's losses this year, possibly excluding Drake, have been to teams with either more experience or just plainly better athletes. While a couple of the losses have been ugly, they've been to extremely good teams, excluding Missouri.

Iowa State came incredibly close to upsetting Kansas, played Ohio State extremely well for 35 minutes and Texas for 25 or so minutes. Who else besides Iowa State would have been able to defend possibly the most versatile scorer of the past decade with a walk-on and hold him to a conference low 17 points? (Remember that Durant averages 33 in conference play and hadn't been held to less than 26 so far.) Some people say there is no such thing as a moral victory in college basketball but that my friend is an incredible victory for this young team and eager coaching staff. It showed that even though we're overpowered in all aspects, we still give it our all and find ways to be competitive with the best of them.

It hasn't been a great year for victories but anybody questioning the direction of this program needs to read a few books from the "Introduction To College Sports" series. This team might not be the most athletic or offensively potent but they play with as much heart and determination as any team we've seen. They know they don't have the best chance heading into a game but they know that as long as any chance remains at all, they'll find ways to exploit it. Regardless of the final outcome in a couple of weeks, I couldn't be more proud to be a Cyclone as I am today. It won't always be easy but we all know that hard work leads to great rewards.

Go Cyclones!