Game Preview: Gophers vs. Hawkeyes

Not a ton to say about the Nebraska game.  It was nice to see the Gophers cruise to an easy win and nicer to see Rodney Williams look like the good Rodney Williams again, but it was obvious from the opening tip that Nebraska isn't nearly in the same class as the Gophers and, as such, it's tough to take too much away from that game other than the wheels haven't completely come off this season.  Still, breaking a four game losing skid is always a positive, so there's that I suppose.  Really a home game against Nebraska couldn't have come at a better time.  Hopefully they can continue playing well against Iowa on Sunday, because the Hawkeyes are a significantly better team than Nebraska.

They come in to the game at 14-7 and 3-5 in conference play and they do have some pretty good wind and, if it wasn't for an absolutely brutal non-conference strength of schedule (#320) they'd probably actually be looking at the bubble for the NCAA Tournament.  One of those conference wins was over Wisconsin and they swept the other two Iowa schools (Northern and State).  Their problem is they haven't beaten anyone else - at all.  They've lost to every other decent team they've played (with near miss wins at Carver-Hawkeye against both Indiana and Michigan State) and padded that record by beating up on bad teams with a win over Gardner-Webb as their next best win.  The NCAA dream probably died when they lost in OT to Purdue on Sunday, but this is certainly a team the Gophers should beat since they're a much better squad.

One thing that plays in the Gophers' favor is that Iowa likes to run and keep games at a fast pace.  The Hawkeyes play at the 46th fastest pace in the country and although the Gophers aren't necessarily a big-time running team because I think Tubby Smith would yell at everyone if they fast breaked too much, they do tend to have success in transition because of their athletic advantage over most teams.  Not to mention their struggles against Northwestern and Wisconsin, who rank 321st and 355th in tempo, so staying away from those long, slow, boring half-court games is a good idea.  Iowa will shoot early and shoot often, and with them ranking 9th in the conference in shooting (by effective FG%) and the Gophers back to playing solid defense (one can hope) that should lead to plenty of rebounds, which bodes well for Minnesota.

Looking at the awesome site hoop-math.com (thank you JF at From the Barn for showing me this), the Gophers take 16% of their shots following a rebound within the first 10 seconds of the shot clock, meaning a fast break off the miss or on the secondary break.  Their effective field goal percentage is also the highest of all situations that occur at least 5% of the time.  The Gophers are going to need to take advantage of as many transition opportunities as they can because once in the half court Iowa's defense is stingy, particularly on 2-point jump shots where they rank 14th in the country in Opponent's FG%.

Looking at Iowa's players they go nine deep and most of them have some redeemable skill, but Roy Marble and Aaron White are the guys to watch out for.  Actually, I'm not worried about White to be honest.  He's gonna be overwhelmed by Mbakwe and I expect he'll struggle mightily for most of the game since he does most of his scoring deep in the paint.  Marble is the guy to watch, because he is truly talented and can score from anywhere on the floor.  He's an excellent shooter from both 2 and 3, handles the ball well, and because he's 6-6 with guard skills he can usually rise up and get that jumper off over smaller guards.  The Gophers have the luxury of putting Austin Hollins on him, and they damn well better, who should be able to help pester him and make it tougher to get that shot off, but if Joe Coleman ends up on him at any time well let me tell you that is not going to end well for Minnesota no sir.

The rest of the squad is pretty much a mixed bag.  A couple of freshmen (Mike Gesell and Anthony Clemmons) start in the back court with Clemmons the distributor and Gesell the shooter with another freshmen in Adam Woodbury starting at center next to White.  At this point Woodbury is pretty much a good rebounder and good shot blocker but has little to no offense game.  Off the bench they go with Josh Oglesby (the supposed shooter who can't shoot), Melsahn Basabe (who showed so much promise as a freshman but has stagnated the last two seasons), and Eric May and Zach McCabe who have been around forever but I still couldn't tell you who was who.  One of them is taller than the other one.  They also have a guy who rarely plays named Christopher Rickert who may or may not be related to Rick Rickert.  I'm not going to check so let's just say he's his cousin.

Anyway, although Iowa is certainly a step up in class from Nebraska, they still aren't the kind of team the Gophers should have trouble with whether you think they're just not that good, or think they just hit a bump in the road.  I'm leaning towards the latter.

Minnesota 82, Iowa 62.

Game Preview: Gophers vs. Hawkeyes

This is the part where I'd usually say something like, "oh great it's Iowa, they suck who cares no preview" and then make a classy dismissive wanking motion with my hand, but they just beat Wisconsin in Madison.  Yes, granted Wisconsin is criminally overrated this year, but winning in Madison is tough to do for any team that doesn't have Lawrence Westbrook, so perhaps Iowa is worth investigating further - the team, not the state.  The only thing could in the state is the casino's have craps - get with it, Minnesota).

The reason it was so easy to dismiss Iowa up until that upset was because they had done nothing positive all year and piled up all kinds of negative losses.  The home loss to Campbell by 16, blowouts by Creighton and Clemson, and losses to Iowa State and Northern Iowa had the Hawkeyes looking like a laughing stock but they've started to pull it together in recent weeks having won four of their last five (including that win at Sconnie) with the only loss being a three-point squeaker at Purdue.  So what's going on?

For one thing, the team has become more Fran McCaffery's team than Todd Licklighter's.  Where Lick played at a torturously slow pace, McCaffery actually has Iowa as one of the faster teams in the country.  The season before McCaff took over Iowa ranked 321st in tempo.  Last year he had them at 102, and this year they're all the way up to 40 making them the fastest team in the Big 10 by a considerable margin (besides them only Indiana ranks in the top 100 at #97).

Of course, the key to playing fast is to take care of the ball and/or force your opponent to make mistakes.  Although Iowa remains mediocre at forcing turnovers, just like last year, they have made a marked improvement in taking care of the ball.  The Hawkeyes turned it over on 22% of their possessions last year (255th in the country), and have made a massive positive swing this year, turning it over just 16% of the time (12th in the country).  No Hawkeye averages more than 1.8 TOs per game, and the guards have been excellent - Bryce Cartwright, a TO machine last year with 3.3 per game, has nearly cut it in half with just 1.8 this year (of course his playing time has been reduced as well, but percentage wise he's improved), Matt Gatens is always a rock with the ball but has been exceptional this season with under a TO per game despite handling the ball quite a bit, giving him the 25th best TO rate in the country, while two other ball-handlers (Roy Marble's kid and Josh Oglesby) are also in the top 25.

The Hawks still can't shoot very well and don't play very good defense, but they are awfully good at being smart with the basketball.  Since one of the ways the Gophers have been able to have success this year is by forcing turnovers, this particular statistical match-up will be one of the biggest keys of how the game goes tomorrow.  Of course, that explains why Iowa is better than last year, it doesn't explain what's changed over the last few games to take them from laughing stock to semi-dangerous (not dissimilar to Ronald Miller in the white version of Can't Buy Me Love).

I'm slapping the role of Miller onto Roy Devyn Marble, who has gone from after thought to focal point of the offense, taken a team that was basically completely dependent on Matt Gatens, Melsahn Basabe, and the chuck-o-rama that is Bryce Cartwright and made them a more balanced team that's harder to stop, and has suddenly become the Hawks' best player.  This post from a Hawkeye blog called The High Porch Picnic breaks down Marble's improvement for you in great detail, but essentially he's been on fire shooting, has moved away from the three-pointer and made the mid-range jumper his own, and his team has responded by getting him the ball more often and he's being more aggressive when he has it.  

So now you add an emerging star in Marble (look at these lines:  18pts, 8 rebs, 5 assist vs. Boise; 21/4/5 vs. Iowa State; 17/1/6 vs. Purdue) to the consistently steady Gatens (has averaged betwen 10.8 and 13.3 ppg his entire career) who can do a little bit of everything (12 boards against Sconnie, 20+ points three times this year), and the explosive Basabe (at least 14 pts and 8 boards in each of his last four games; 3 double-doubles this year) and suddenly you have a really nice base of a team.  If they get anything at all from Cartwright (17pts, 5 assists, 1 TO vs. Wisconsin) or the new kid, freshman Aaron White (18 vs. Wisconsin and Boise) and Iowa is a legit threat, as Wisconsin found out.

On the other hand, one big win doesn't suddenly make a bad team good, Iowa got the best game of the year from two players (Cartwright and White), out-rebounded Wisconsin by five, and the Badgers were a stupid flukey 3-28 from three-point line and Iowa still only won by seven.  Not to mention that this team's losses to Iowa State and Northern Iowa both happened post the Roy Marble breakout.  I'm inclined to believe the win at Wisconsin was more a fluky convergence of Wisconsin's worst game of the year and Iowa's best game of the year, and anything similar to this result is likely unrepeatable.

That said, I hate when bad teams have confidence and then get to play a team with a shaky offense and bad three-point defense.  What happens if Iowa gets out to a 9-2 lead?  What if the game is tied with 3 minutes to go?  I don't want to see the results.  Please Gophers, jump out early and keep an 8-10 lead the entire game.  You should be good enough to do that.  Nobody wants the torture, we all want a 20 point blow-out so we can leave early and get home before 11:30.  Please.

Minnesota 81, Iowa 67.

Oh and also go to hell, Iowa.