Hilton Magic

In a game played in front of 9,000 fans tuned into their radios the Cyclones were victorious. I wasn't one of them as I was watching the football team come up victorious in the Independence Bowl. Because I only saw a few minutes here or there I won't be offering up much insight (although that's a lot like me other posts).

One interesting thing I noticed about last night is that I think the team is starting to get locked into its rotation for the conference season. John Neal, Anthony Davis, and Reggie George all logged 4 minutes, all in the first half. SDSU made a run with some of these guys on the floor and Morgan was quoted as saying that Tasheed Carr was playing so well and the team didn't play as well with the others in there. It wouldn't surprise me to see Davis and George only play significant minutes when foul trouble becomes an issue. Neal, on the other hand, should remain in his current role to come in as a defensive stopper when the team needs it and as an outside shooter.

Once again, sorry for the lack of updates but I've had a lot of things going on this weekend. A little bit of a disappointing loss against Iowa but it's tough to get too down about a tough loss on the road against a ranked team. I can manage to be objective some of the time and Iowa looks to be a pretty solid team. I really like Horner's game and Haluska can be good at times. (I still need to see him perform for an entire season before I'm totally sold on him.) The Nerd from Road Trip is a pretty good shot blocker for weighing 150 pounds or so.

Now, onto the play of ISU. It was still frustrating at times watching them not value the ball when they needed to and putting up some ill-advised shots. Homan was a man among Iowa's boys on the offensive end and should be on his way to a great conference season. It seems like he has an outside shot at first-team but it's going to be tough to displace some of the KU and OSU guys. Hopefully he performs well enough to at least make the 2nd team because he's really worked his butt off during his four years at ISU. Many questioned why we were "wasting a scholarship" on a kid from Remsen who would never play more than 5 minutes a game in mop-up duty. Good to see him prove the doubters wrong.

Stinson continued to put up a few bad shots and played lackluster defense at times. He finished with 14 points but still managed to earn Big 12 PotW honors due, in large part, to his game against UVA. Some very questionable calls went against him and earned him a seat on the bench for the final 8 minutes. It's tough for me to complain too loudly about that because ISU did go on a run to cut the game to 1 with him out. The biggest reason for this was Blalock looking for his shot. He really took over the game and scored some big buckets for ISU. He can get to the rim just about anytime he wants to but he struggles to finish a lot of the time. Unfortunately he had a big turnover at the end trying to do too much. It frustrated me that ISU put Horner on the line twice when they had chances to foul Pierce, who statistically has a much better chance at missing them.

I still think that ISU showed some good things along with the bad in this game. They'll snap the Big 12 road losing streak early in the season if they can bring that kind of effort. One thing I'd like to see is Clark or Neal starting over Carr. Clark brings a lot more athleticism and Neal brings a lot more defense. My personal lineup would be Blalock, Stinson, Clark, Faulkner, Homan. That lineup should bring a lot of energy to the court and still be able to bring in some "change of pace" guys like Neal. I like Neal coming in for some defensive stops when we need them.

Rivalries always tend to bring out the idiots or the worst of otherwise normal people. Add in the anonymous nature of message boards and you get some classic moments. These can usually be summed up in a few standard arguments that are repeated ad nauseum year after year. Here's the rundown on a few of these and how they are playing out this year.

Rip on the other teams arena
Cy: Did you hear what they said about Hilton during the Virginia game? Carver-Hawkeye is a tomb compared to it.
Herky: Yeah, well we have legendary Kinnick stadium and Jack Trice is empty.
Cy: This is basketball why are you talking football?
Herky: Well, we kicked your ass in football.

Rip on the other team's players
Herky: ISU is a bunch of streetball thugs.
Cy: At least our team doesn't have a rapist.
Herky: Is that Sam Mack heading to Burger King?
Cy: I can't tell. Sam Aiello just jammed a pool cue in my eye.

Cy: Haluska is a traitor.
Herky: You're just jealous.
Cy: He sucked anyway.
Herky: Yeah right, when he was at ISU he was a more athletic Hoiberg.
Cy: Just wait until his game disappears as soon as the conference games start. And his haircut sucks.

Rip on the other team's uniforms
Herky: ISU looks like ketchup and mustard out there.
Cy: Black and gold look like crap too.

Herky: ISU stole our gold uniforms.
Cy: You're an idiot. We've had gold uniforms for years.

Rip on the other team's fans
Cy: Iowa's fans are all 80 years old and wearing the same polyester jacket they bought before the 1980 Rose Bowl.
Herky: Your fans are hicks/ISU girls are ugly/You don't have any fans.

Rip on idiots that think their players are better
Herky: Pierce and Horner are better than Stinson and Blalock.
Cy: You're an idiot. Remember when Iowa always had a player better than an ISU superstar? How many of them are playing in the NBA?

Herky: ISU might have one player that would start for Iowa.
Cy: Seriously, you're an idiot.

Rip on stereotypes
Herky: You go to a cow college. Moo U.
Cy: What a typical arrogant Hawkeye jackass.
Herky: There's nothing to do in Lames.
Cy: Yeah, we really miss out on smoking all that dope and playing hacky sack on the Ped Mall. Time to cut your dreadlocks, hippie.
Herky: Shut up, hick. I think there are some fat girls on campus that need some loving.
Cy: Hey, I'm pretty sure your dad wants you take his Lexus back to Chicago this weekend.

There are many more including arguing about conferences, calling coaches names, etc. but I think you get the idea. It's always nice to just finally play the game so the loser can bitch about the refs or anything else that clearly cost them the game. Until then, enjoy your ranking while it lasts Squawk fan. And your coach looks like Eddie Munster.

"I love the people of Ames, but I don’t know if I’d want to come back here every other year. This is one of the toughest places to play. It’s comparable to a Maryland or Duke in the ACC." - Virginia Coach Pete Gillen.

Somebody should let Dukie V know since he refuses to come to Hilton.

Anyway, a few other thoughts from last night. Faulkner looks like he could become a version of Vroman soon. Right now he looks a lot like Vroman and Tyray Pearson in their first year out of JC when he puts up some really great numbers but his minutes will be limited unless he gets his fouls under control. He has a motor that just won't stop and his tenacity down low kept ISU in the game for a little while. He was all over the floor tipping balls and grabbing buckets when we needed them. I'd say he's probably our only post player that can consistantly create his own shot. I trust Homan shooting the 15 footers and banging down low and Davis has shown some flashes from time to time but they haven't shown that creativity that Pearson or Vroman had. A disappointment has been Damion Staple. He looked completely lost whenever he was in the game (whch wasn't much) and brought nothing to the court. That was sort of his M.O. for a lot of last year but I was hoping that he had found his comfort level after he played a few solid games toward the end of the year. Reggie George played hard and made a few decent plays but I'm not sure he will play more than 20 minutes a game unless Faulkner has more fould problems.

I liked the new starting lineup even though Carr didn't play much and didn't make much of an impact. Faulkner should start the rest of the year, IMO, as long as he continues to bust his ass like he does. I feel bad for John Neal because of his shooting woes but his defense won the game for us yesterday. Once we went to the box-and-one Devin Smith could barely get a shot off. It's nice to have somewhat of a defensive stopper to bring in when we need him and I think his shot will come back. He's not nearly the shooter that Sullivan was but we need someone to sit up top and knock down the kick outs from Stinson and Blalock.

Of course many Hawkeye fans have been ripping into ISU. Specifically the "thugs", both the streeball and farmboy types. If you're going to play in the Big 12 you need to have a little bit of an attitude. Homan knocked the shit out of that guy but that's what's going to happen to you if you want to dunk on somebody in this league. It probably was a flagrant foul but Homan isn't a thug in the Jacob Jaacks mold where he just wants to hurt somebody for the hell of it. Then the thinly veiled racism leveled at guys like Stinson and Blalock gets really old. And some of the comments from ISU fans and TV announcers are the same. The TV guys are always looking for a story and love to refer to Stinson's game using words like "playground" and "straight from the streets". The guy's a basketball player and just because he comes from NYC and doesn't have the background of a Duke player doesn't mean he's a thug or has no discipline. Yes, he does talk some trash but that goes both ways and I've seen white guys from Iowa talk just as much shit but are never referred to in those terms. At least he's never plead guilty to a sex crime like those on some other teams in the state, right?

It's the same crap when the media hassles Morgan for the confrontation during the UNI game while giving their coach a free pass. Whether intentional or not I think there is a little bit of a double standard with race in college basketball.

A potential game-tyer (tier?) rolled in and out about 3 times in the last few seconds just moments after a a solid free throw shooter bricks one to tie it in the face of a deafening roar. Sounds a lot like last year's Texas game but Hilton but the same thing happened tonight against #19 Virginia. The game was really a lot of fun to watch as both teams played balls out for 40 minutes. I think they were maybe a little too jacked up as both teams missed quite a few shots early and ISU missed free throws all game. Holy crap, that was ugly. It really could have been a lot easier win without those misses but a win is a win.

It was nice to see them finally play with heart and emotion, 2 things missing from the UNI game. They talked some shit, were cocky and tough but I'll take a team that people love to hate over one that won't get up for anything.

Stinson's over the shoulder flip to Blalock followed by the no look behind the back pass to Carr followed by a monster tomahawk jam had to be one the best ISU plays I've seen. This team is just amazingly athletic and fun to watch. Watching the student section go so crazy over that reminded me of some of those moments where you're just jumping around making a total ass out of yourself and don't even remember what you were doing. I feel like I should be Billy Madison telling those kids to never leave college or something.

Big win for the Cyclones and the Hawks are up next this Friday. Time to get a road win this year.

Trib article on continuing the home and home series with UNI and Drake. Sounds like it will continue in the near future at least. ISU and Iowa are two of very few high major schools who have home and home deals with two in-state mid-major teams. Teams like Colorado may play Colorado State home and home but KU and K-State won't play Wichita State without a 2-1 or even 3-1 deal, Mizzou won't play SW Missouri State at all, Oklahoma State and OU don't have these deals with Tulsa, etc. I'm a fan of good mid-major teams and wish that more teams would play them, especially at home, but I'm an ISU fan first and these deals do hurt financially. Some people say that giving up a Northern Colorado game would make more sense but we're never going to need to go there so that's great for the minimum number of home games needed to make it financially. In the current state of college basketball a game at another Big 10 or SEC school on ESPN helps your program a lot more than playing in Cedar Falls or at the Knapp Center. It's a tough call because fans in Iowa do have a unique opportunity to see all four D1 schools matchup against each other every year while at the same time Iowa and ISU are making concessions to do this that other schools aren't willing to do and UNI and Drake shouldn't assume that this is their right just because it's been that way for so long.

Also, the confrontation between Morgan and McDermott apparently began when McD yelled "Get that son-of-a-bitch out of the game" to Morgan after Homan's foul. Morgan said "What? Fuck you." McD responded by saying something to the effect of "I'll punch you in the face" and Morgan dropped a few more f-bombs. I find it a little odd that Morgan is getting most of the heat from the media but I guess it is usually the second guy that gets caught. Usually he's such a calm guy but he will stand up for his players when he feels they're being wronged. He dropped a few curses (justifiably) at the refs at the KU game last year after we were jobbed on a couple of plays there which was nice to see.

Speaking of cursing at refs, the same ref that ejected Larry Eustachy during the Michigan State game T'd him up again in his home opener at USM. There was always some talk that Curtis Shaw and Larry had some problems from his days at Idaho so I find it kind of funny that they would get the same ref for his home opener. I'll bet LE was really excited to see him. I still cant believe there were refs that bad in at elite 8 game though. How is it possible to be a charge and a block at the same time? What a joke. Curtis Shaw, Frank Basone, and Lonnie Dixon...you suck.

Larry Eustachy is returning to Iowa for their tournament there. They play on Friday and will most likely play Iowa on Saturday. Good luck to Coach Eustachy in his quest to avenge the loss to Iowa in his last game as ISU's coach during the NIT tournament.

I think I hear ISU's wakeup call in the background. Obviously, losing to UNI by 17 last night isn't what I, or the team, expected. Their seeming lack of interest against teams like Northern Colorado and Bucknell finally caught up with them.

So, it seems that the saying that a team is never as good as their best game and never as bad as their worse applies to ISU this year. I may have been a little excited after the Drake game and things can't be as bad as getting hammered by a Valley team (even if UNI is fairly solid). They were just unconscious last night from everywhere and they really helped themselves by playing smart basketball. I hesitate to apply that term because that seems to be the conventional reasoning whenever a mostly white team beats a mostly black team. However, UNI did a great job of finding open spots against ISU's sometimes lackluster zone.

Let's look at some negatives. My biggest problem was how horribly selfish the team was last night. I think they ended the game with a total of 4 assists. Seriously, how is that even possible in a game where they score 82 points? Add into that fact that two of those assists were from our starting post players and you have a team that's either launching threes or trying to take everyone off the dribble and definitely not moving around. They finished 4-9 from three so it must be the latter. I can't stand it when teams don't move at all on offense and that was a huge problem last night. Due to my girlfriend Veronica's birthday I was forced to watch most of the game over her shoulder with no sound so I did miss a few things but how could Homan make 8 of his 17 shots without anyone else getting some assists? I think we'd be better off getting him the ball down low instead of working him so much at the top of the key.

Other than that the team didn't rebound, didn't move on defense, didn't shoot very well, and didn't look too interested in the game in general. I also felt like we started to whine to the refs when calls didn't go our way (and there were a few of those). I think this team needs to take the advice of my old junior high basketball coach, Jeff Friesen. "Play hard and don't be a jerk." This would solve a lot of their problems.

The good news is that the team can fix these things but they're going to need to do it soon as they face two ranked teams next week when Virginia comes into Hilton on Monday and they travel to Iowa City of Friday. The phone is ringing, will they answer it?

OK, first I only got to see bits and pieces of the game but wow, that sucked. UNI was absolutely unconscious from three but we didn't exactly show tons of heart in the first half.

I'm going to have a lot to say on this game and what it means for the team in general but I think it would be prudent to let myself calm down and reflect a little first.