Monday, December 13, 2004
Loss to Iowa, win against Howard
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.
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.
# posted by Ben @ 5:57 PM 
