Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Anyone Notice the Stats of the VMI Men's Basketball Team?


(photo courtesy of vmikeydets.com)


I stumbled upon some of their stats...crazy ass stats... out of 325 D-I teams (as of Dec 17, 2006)

#1 in the nation in scoring: 102 per game
#1 in the nation 3 pt made: 15 per game
#1 in the nation in steals: 16 per game (four guys in the Top 100 in the nation)
#2 in the nation in assists: 21 per game

but...

#231 in the nation 3 pt %: 32%
#325 in the nation def. scoring: 95 per game
#325 in the nation def. FG %: 53%
#310 in the nation reb. margin: - 8 per game
#307 in the nation fouls: 23 per game

That's some insane stuff there... I'll have to see if any of their games are on ESPN Fullcourt.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Thoughts After the Drake - Iowa Game

- Iowa's help defense is as bad as I can remember. It was a staple last year, this year it's a crutch. Which is sad because Looby should be excelling in help D.

- The Hawkeye bigs are a larger liability that I had first anticipated.

- Iowa only had three people attempt FTs. Three. Three guys made it to the line. They attempted less than they made. That's normally the opposite for an Alford team; not this year.

- Drake is a hell of a lot better than I thought they were. This is the best Drake team that I can recall in the past few decades. Very athletic and basketball smart, although Nick Grant is a bit cocky for his abilities... a bit of Shannon Brown in him, but for the wrong reasons.

- I didn't realize the rebounding discrepancy until the stat showed up. That was horrible.

- Keita's elbow was cheap.

- Haluska had a good first 14 minutes of the game, then Davis went to the box and one. Game over. Haluska started to force and was very impatient, made a lot of dumb plays the rest of the game. He is not a slasher/ dribble penetrator. He's a shooter, plain and simple. Haluska's D was atrocious, as well.

- Is there a person on the Iowa team that might think about stopping dribble penetration? Just a thought. We might want to hit that up sometime and work on it.

- Our bigs are worst than I thought (oh wait, I mentioned that already).

- Not as bad of a game as I thought it was going to be after I had read comments on some of the message boards. Drake was fired up, crowd was awesome. Drake went balls out, Iowa did occasionally (but not nearly enough). No loose ball hustles, lazy passes, and flat-footedness on the d end by the Hawks.

- Freeman lead the team in assists... with 3... 3 friggin assists. Where's Horner when you need him?

- Gorney took 1 shot all night. Looby took 1 shot all night. Tate didn't take a shot. Angle took 2 shots all night. 4 shots from 4 of our bigs. Doesn't take a statistician to realize that's not going to win many games.

- Iowa is very good at handling the press, but they are horrible at finishing after breaking the press. That is frustrating.

- Iowa STILL cannot get back on D in transition. I don't understand this one. Not hard to do, ESPECIALLY if you aren't crashing the boards.

- Drake shot very well. They had the touch even with a defender in their faces.

- I'll say it again, I was dead wrong on JR Angle. He is a bright spot on the team for sure. I love his D, and I think he needs to get more involved on the O end.

- We really could use a healthy Mike Henderson.

- Tyler Smith should be busting out soon. He looks like he wants to take over, but just doesn't do it. We will not win many games if we have to rely on Haluska game in and game out. Iowa can win without Adam's game, they just need to play that way. Iowa has done it earlier in the year when Haluska played poorly; they need that anytime Haluska has a bad game. They have the guys to do, they just need to do it. I'll put that one on the coach. Alford needs to let Haluska know that when he is off, to let the rest of the team pick it up, otherwise he just forces it and it's a no win situation.

- Gorney: Time to put up. Get tough. Punch somebody. Spit in someone's face. Do something mean. Take a lesson from Cyrus and get aggressive. Anything. Show me anything. Please.

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Iowa Basketball: Predicting the Rest of the Season


NON-CONFERENCE

5 games left on the non-conf slate to finish out 2006. 4 of 5 at home.

Iowa St
at Drake
Georgia St
Tex South
Cornell

Hawks should be able to ride a 5 game win streak into the BT schedule.

9-5 (0-0)

CONFERENCE

16 games, 8 home, 8 away. tOSU, Michigan, NW, Purdue - only play once. No @ NW this year.

Mich St - W
at Illinois - L
Minnesota - W
at Indiana - L
at Ohio St - L
Penn State - W
Wisconsin - L
at Michigan - W
Indiana - W
at Minnesota - W
at Wisconsin - L
N'western - W
at Mich St - L
Purdue - W
at Penn State - W
Illinois - L

I see the games home vs. MSU, at Indiana, home vs. Illinois, and at Michigan as going either way though.

18-12 (9-7 Conf.) plus Big Ten Tourney (1-1 maybe 2-1)

SEASON

19-13 on the year.

Problem is I don't see enough quality wins in a down conference to get Iowa to the dance right now. I still think Iowa is a bubble team, but I don't know if they'll have enough. My preseason prediction of Iowa getting into the dance isn't looking good (esp. after throwing away a tremendous chance at a quality win at home vs. UNI).