***OFFICIAL ISU vs UNI MBB THREAD ***

[marothisu]

Drake getting hammered by Boise St. by 30. The hits keep coming!

Well, Boise State is at home, but a 41 point game like it is now is just a beatdown no matter where it is.

11 guys have played for Drake so I don't think they're missing anyone. I see Rice has 19, Simons with 14, Clarke with 2, etc

 

[Clonefan32]

I'd love nothing more to look back at this and think "how irrational were we all", but these issues seem to be much deeper than just sorting out some x's and o's.

 

[Covenant Clone]

That's fair. Your realism is a little pessimistic right now, but I hope we meet too. People clearly take the loss differently and most of that is due to what their expectations were at the beginning of the season. I expected a 15-20 win team. This team looks like it's going to be that. Not great, not bad. Maybe the NIT.

At least you are making a decent argument as to what is wrong unlike a lot of other people here. I can at least respect that.

Also, "I'll keep me realism" ...really?

The pirate in me came out a little I guess. :spinny:

 

[Wesley]

I was worried when Lutz left and we didn't go hire another experienced, veteran coach. My fears have been validated.

Why was a recruiter hired and not an X and O guy. So we could promote a recruiter? Do we need 4 recruiters and no X and O guys?

 

[BigBake]

I was worried when Lutz left and we didn't go hire another experienced, veteran coach. My fears have been validated.

Does appear we gambled and lost.

 

[CarolinaCy]

I agree. Patience would be a good word for tonight. We're not world beaters, but it's hard to say this team hasn't improved from what they were. They will continue to do so. This doesn't just happen overnight, people. You can't just expect a lot of freshmen, sophomores, and transfers that haven't played D-1 ball in over a year to jell and beat everybody. It doesn't work like that unless you have talent like a UNC, Kansas, and Duke. We're not them. Most great teams don't play as many underclassmen as we do. UNI is experienced, we're not, yet. People need to calm down.

You must not have watched a lot of college ball in the last 15 years or so. Everybody plays freshmen, sophomores, transfers, JUCOs, if they are good enough. The great teams are pretty much exclusively underclassmen - KU, UK, UNC, Duke. These guys have been together for almost a year and a half at this point, that's not enough time to jell? Then how long will it take? Can we use the same excuse next year when a few of these guys are gone and they are replaced by more freshmen and transfers? How about the year after that?

You know what the difference between this season and the 1995-1996 season is? Two words: Tim Floyd. That team was a mix of underclassmen and transfers, but they had a pretty darn good coach on the bench. Maybe Fred will get this team to come around like that team did, but it doesn't look good at this point.

 

[Wesley]

When we were up 14-4 I thought we had it in the bag. Then we couldn't hit any threes.

That was only because Babb hit his first three shots and then went to sleep.

 

[Wesley]

So CW and others closer to the program basically say expectations need to be tempered, apparently they were right and yet many are carrying on here like this is some huge shock. Its a long season, there is talent on the team. Let the coaches coach and the players play - its embarrassing seeing some of the posters in this thread calling out coaching abiliy, effort, etc...

Like 15-15?

 

[Clonefan32]

Like 15-15?

The "temper our expectations" argument is ridiculous. Fred had two choices when he came here. 1) Try to build a team that can win now, or 2) Build for the future. By gambling on all of these transfers he picked the former. You don't bring in these transfers if your plan is to bring the program along slowly, you bring in all the transfers because you think you can win now with them This isn't a "we need to be patient with them" kind of team because by the time we are patient they've all used up what limited eligibility they have left.

 

[Wesley]

Not Kool-aid, rationality. You should try some of that sometime. It's good for you.

Honestly, effort was much better tonight than it has been in the past, and the defense played well enough. Clearly it's not perfect, but it was good enough to win. The biggest problem with tonight was shot selection and making said shots. This team played well enough on the defensive side. Make no mistake, we gave up a lot of easy buckets, but I'd say about 60% of those were due to UNI's passing and scheming. Give the credit to UNI and don't bash ISU for those.

We can get better and we will, just give it more than 1 month of play against competition, that's all I'm saying. This loss sucks, but it's not the end of the world.

What the thing scaring the fans was the last five minutes. Royce dribbling into the defender. Allen shooting up haymakers. Babb not figuring it out. Scotty not making it happen. Bubu looked like he understood the game better than the rest of the people on the court put together. We looked like we play NBA ball, similar to the Clippers.

 

[Wesley]

Time for the staff to coach like college coaches instead of NBA coaches. This is not a one-on-one game with little defense required. All college coaches worth their salt concentrate on defense in the preseason, to the extent that the offense is an afterthought. Both Floyd and LE said that they typically didn't focus on the offense side of the ball until the 2nd week of December. This group looks like they have never been asked to play sustained defense in their life. IMO, the loss of Bobby Lutz is huge. Play good defense and there is no need to panic on offense.

Wonder if Lutz left because he was worried if this team was coachable.

 

[bosco]

Drake getting hammered by Boise St. by 30. The hits keep coming!

That's not a surprised. We already knew Drake wasn't very good and this UNI team isn't like the one that beat KU either. This team is soft mentally and physically. Last years team would beat them.

 

[Wesley]

hmmmm...giant hype machine. nobody plays defense. We can't set a pick, or defend one. Why does Royce insist on going one on one on ever play. He's 6"5 and he will get killed by the post players in the big 12. He's a 4. Put Railey or Gibson in at the post. God we suck. Thanks Fred.

Did you know discombubulated? Not bad for a first post.

 

[Wesley]

1) Absolutely no heart on this team. If this team played as hard as last year's team we would be undefeated.

2) Great job recruiting Fred.... did you forget to coach them when they got here? Absolutely no structure to this team. It's like he shoves them out there and says play. We need to change things up on offense. If we don't have a point guard lets do a pick and roll with Royce to get the offense going.

3) This team was told they are good all summer and it shows. It's like they feel they are entitled to win. They come up the floor and jack threes with people right in their face like they're already in the NBA (Allen).

4) Our fans don't deserve this.

Playing like the Five Luccas.:v_SPIN:

 

[Balrog]

Just got home.
A few impressions of mine.
We missed at least 3 uncontested layups tonight and probably 5-6 in total though the remainder were contested. Royce will be "flopped" on all year, and tonight we couldn't afford to lose ANY possessions. I had the feeling tonight that UNI "didn't mind" fouling Royce as they felt they could trade a 3 pointer for one shot made at the stripe. Saw some tentative passing this evening, and UNI was definitely "over guarding" (very close to our players) and the tentative pass was being tipped and more often than not, UNI got the possession. We could not switch effectively this evening. We were often caught with two players on one UNI player, and their guard free to shoot a three. When we went inside, I felt we were controlling the game. We just didn't do it as often as I thought we might or could. We forced a few 3's tonight towards the end of the 2nd half.
I did see Fred as mad as I've ever seen him when UNI got 2 offensive rebounds in a row, as on that exchange we weren't blocking out.
I had the feeling last year that Coach Lutz helped keep this team on a very even keel. Whether we were up or down, he was the first person at a timeout to greet the players, pump them up if they required it or dispense with the atta boys if they had earned it. He looked to be at least publically, an extremely positive influence on the team, before, during, and after any game.
Our rebounding looked to be about even with UNI tonight.
I think we lost because we still have difficulty staying on players. We are being picked far too easily and we are not recovering well. What's with switching every single time? (Driving lanes were open far too frequently because of it.)
This team seems to get their "dobbers down" when a little adversity comes their way. I thought Lutz, last year, did a great job keeping them confident and emotionally positive.

GO CYCLONES:yes:

 

[Balrog]

By the way, I have read several times this evening that people are critical of Royce going one-on-one this evening. If Fred calls the play for them to spread the court and isolate defenders so that Royce can go one-on-one with the matchup that he has, what do you expect Royce to do? Say no to Fred? Can we run something else?
Is he perfect? No. He was probably 50-50 with the isolation play this evening.
Will he get better? Yes.

GO CYCLONES :yes:

 

[Wesley]

Credit to UNI, they played a heck of a game and made some big 3's. Our defense wasn't stellar, but who would have thought they would've killed us from behind the arc tonight?

They played about as good of a game as they could have and we just couldn't get it going tonight. They were the better team tonight and we're still a team without an identity. Hopefully we'll learn from our mistakes and get it going in December.

Again, UNI did not play that well. They missed plenty of shots and had turnovers. Yet they looked like they knew what to do. Drake could beat UNI, Creighton would win by a dozen. We just did ourselves no favors in the last five minutes.

No point guard = no plan.

 

[LindenCy]

I'm not ready to pack in the season, but this isn't a good loss. I think it's ok to be ticked about it, but hopefully we get a nice win this weekend and move forward.