Thanks for breaking this down. I was wondering how much of the FT and foul discrepancy was because of the end of the game and it sounds like a decent chunk of it was.
Twister Sister Summary - Whining doesn't cut it...but defense does
- Thread starter acoustimac
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I'm glad I'm not the only one that thought this. It's almost like the last 3 minutes they stopped running offense and just told Clark to go do it herself. I guess it worked for them last year, but it felt like a lot of hero-ball down the stretch for them.
Updated NET has ISU at #11, Iowa at #23
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It’s pretty clear Blunder and Iowa have high aspirations with Clark leading them. But the attitude that everyone’s out to get you can only take you so far. At some point you have to handle adversity better than they do.
Not to mention that if Clark is ever injured/out, would they even know how to run a play? It is kind of an all in for them...and whoa buddy, Clark is going to be exhausted by the end of the season.
We've fallen into that trap with Ashley at times. Sometimes it works (@ Baylor last season for example). The difference might be whether you have someone trying to play hero ball vs just naturally taking over the game, and it can be hard to find that difference. Sometimes they might be exactly the same thing, and the only difference is whether it worked or not.
I can’t believe what a whining and crying POS Bluder is.
After the game she had every excuse in the book. Fouls, COVID made them tired, COVID made them miss games, etc, etc.
What a sore loser. And as many have said, it has rubbed off on her team too, which is sad.
Can you imagine how Bluder would act if she had lost 5 straight to us like Fennelly has to them? Unbearable. She loses one out of 6 to us…. and is whining and crying like a 5 year old.
After the game she had every excuse in the book. Fouls, COVID made them tired, COVID made them miss games, etc, etc.
What a sore loser. And as many have said, it has rubbed off on her team too, which is sad.
Can you imagine how Bluder would act if she had lost 5 straight to us like Fennelly has to them? Unbearable. She loses one out of 6 to us…. and is whining and crying like a 5 year old.
Please tell me that isn't the entire article. That is garbage journalism.AMES — Iowa women’s basketball coach Lisa Bluder is rarely afraid to tell things how she sees them. She opened her news conference after the Hawkeyes’ first loss to Iowa State in six years with some frustration.
“When you don’t shoot free throws, it’s hard to win a game,” Bluder said after Wednesday’s 77-70 setback before a terrific crowd at Hilton Coliseum. “We only shoot six. They shoot 22. I felt like we should’ve been shooting a lot more.
“When you give up 16 (more) free throws to a really good basketball team, it’s hard to win.”
As Bluder sized up the stat sheet, she saw that her two star players — Monika Czinano and Caitlin Clark — were 5-for-5 from the line. The rest of the Iowa team was 0-for-1.
The last time Iowa shot fewer than six free throws in a game? A Nov. 24, 2018 loss to Florida State in which Iowa shot 3-for-4.
“I think we drew a lot of fouls that weren’t called. I thought (Czinano) got beat up like crazy,” Bluder said. “And they have 15 fouls to give with three posts. They were willing to use them. But you’ve got to call them to use them.”
Coaches always want to more foul calls, of course. And they know that foul disparities can sometimes be the plight of road teams in a hostile environment. Iowa State was whistled for 12 fouls to Iowa’s 20.
“It was pretty physical. I thought I got pretty beat up. I thought Monika got a lot of contact as well,” said Clark, who was 10-for-26 from the field. “It’s not anything you don’t see in the Big Ten. It’s something we’re used to.”
The Cyclones (9-1) snapped their five-game series losing streak by being aggressive. They hustled for a lot of early loose balls and finished with a 44-39 rebounding edge, too. Seeing the Hawkeyes (5-2) look a step slow brought up another question.
Is Iowa still feeling the effects of its COVID-19 pause?
First things first, Bluder wasn’t using the Hawkeyes’ positive COVID-19 tests in November — which essentially shut down team activities for nearly two weeks — as an excuse.
“I’m not going to sit here and say that’s why we lost this game. Does it have an impact when kids have COVID? I think it does,” Bluder said. “I think it’s hard to battle back from that. But Iowa State played great tonight. They played really, really well. So be it.”
But the Hawkeyes obviously weren’t their high-scoring, efficient selves on Wednesday. They shot just 40.6% from the floor and just couldn’t string much together. They made just 6 of 19 shots in the fourth quarter.
Before the pause, Iowa was ranked No. 9 in the country, off to a 4-0 start, averaging 88.3 points per game and outscoring opponents by 30.3 per game.
In the three games since the pause, Iowa is 1-2 with an ugly loss at Duke; one OK half and one great second half against Michigan State; and Wednesday’s loss in Ames.
Bluder said canceling three games — one against Drake and two neutral-site matchups in Cancun — was a bigger loss than just the time off.
“We only had six games coming in here. And you learn a lot from those games,” Bluder said. “Two of those games would’ve been played away from Carver-Hawkeye Arena, which would’ve been great for us.”
Iowa was can look to last year’s NCAA men’s champion to find a team that found COVID-19 adversity and eventually overcame it.
After Baylor was steamrolling the competition into February of 2021, it had to pause basketball activities and had a full three weeks between games. In the first game back, Baylor struggled to beat last-place Iowa State at home then got beaten soundly at Kansas. The Bears took time to get their legs back, but when they did, they were dynamic.
This is the Rag article.
There are three articles: one relatively short game story, one written for the Hawkeye beat, and one written for the Cyclone beat. This is article #2.
#1: https://www.usatoday.com/story/spor...wa-hawkeyes-cyhawk-score-schedule/6407571001/
#2: https://www.usatoday.com/story/spor...te-lisa-bluder-ames-caitlin-clark/6411072001/
#3: https://www.usatoday.com/story/spor...-iowa-womens-basketball-takeaways/6407605001/
Why are you wearing that old blue ball cap? I hate the blue.Hey, I'm in picture 3!
And, twice on Sunday. I hope everyone is watching cuz another one like her won't come along for a long long time.
Article #2 by Chad Leistikow was definitely written towards the Hawk red meat eaters, but actually addressed things is a pretty fair manner. Bluder did herself (and her team) no favors by complaining about fouls, while not making one point towards how well ISU played. C'mon coach, at least give a nod towards CBF and the team...classless for sure. Clark had some nice words at the end about the crowd, students, and game atmosphere.
I'm going to guess alot of Bluder's frustration was Joens getting to the line 10 times with Clark only getting there twice. But to me it's not hard to see the difference in how they draw contact.
Both would be difficult to officiate with how they can tend to initiate the contact. But what I saw out of Clark was launching herself into vertical defenders, whereas Ashley has become adept and drawing that contact when someone is out of position and not vertical. Ashley is receiving that contact to her arms whereas Clark is relying on a blocking foul.
Both would be difficult to officiate with how they can tend to initiate the contact. But what I saw out of Clark was launching herself into vertical defenders, whereas Ashley has become adept and drawing that contact when someone is out of position and not vertical. Ashley is receiving that contact to her arms whereas Clark is relying on a blocking foul.
The Hawkeyes were initiating a lot of contact from what I saw. You can’t call a minor bump when you have posts about beheading people and not calling it. The Hawkeyes would have been in foul trouble bigly if they did. Plus Joens got 4 or so of those off intentional fouls at the end IIRC.
Respect for THE GAME. Don't make excuses. Don't whine all the time. Just go play. Be respectful on the court of THE GAME, the other team and the fans in attendance instead of making it a whiney pitty party. THE GAME was here for 100 years before you started playing/coaching. It will be here when you are dust. Just go play/coach the game. Above all, RESPECT THE GAME. IMO, one team excelled in that last night. The other...well.
Took a look at Iowa's wins and free throws/fouls
New Hampshire
NH FT - 6/14, committed 26 fouls
Iowa FT - 27/28, committed 15 fouls
Samford
Samford - FT 6/9, committed 15 fouls
Iowa - FT 9/13, committed 12 fouls
UNI
UNI FT 11/14, committed 17 fouls
Iowa FT 12/15, committed 17 fouls
Southern
Southern FT 11/16, committed 29 fouls
Iowa FT 33/38, committed 17 fouls
Michigan State
MSU FT 11/19, committed 17 fouls
Iowa FT 14/16, committed 17 fouls
Going into last night, Iowa was averaging 16.16 fouls per game (4 per quarter) so it's not like they are not fouling consistently per game. Going into last night, we were averaging 12.33 fouls per game.
Their FTs are so gaudy because of the New Hampshire and Southern games, take those two games out of the mix and our game, and here are the numbers. Iowa 44/54, opponents 41/63.
New Hampshire
NH FT - 6/14, committed 26 fouls
Iowa FT - 27/28, committed 15 fouls
Samford
Samford - FT 6/9, committed 15 fouls
Iowa - FT 9/13, committed 12 fouls
UNI
UNI FT 11/14, committed 17 fouls
Iowa FT 12/15, committed 17 fouls
Southern
Southern FT 11/16, committed 29 fouls
Iowa FT 33/38, committed 17 fouls
Michigan State
MSU FT 11/19, committed 17 fouls
Iowa FT 14/16, committed 17 fouls
Going into last night, Iowa was averaging 16.16 fouls per game (4 per quarter) so it's not like they are not fouling consistently per game. Going into last night, we were averaging 12.33 fouls per game.
Their FTs are so gaudy because of the New Hampshire and Southern games, take those two games out of the mix and our game, and here are the numbers. Iowa 44/54, opponents 41/63.
Probably would not have been the case except for the push to get as many students there as possible. Based on some other comments, it sounds like that reaction came mostly from the student section.
