Thursday, December 02, 2004
Hear that?
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?
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?
# posted by Ben @ 5:49 PM 
