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Grantland Big 12 writeup

Dingus

Dingus

Well-Known Member
May 23, 2013
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Solid writeup of the conference, if not tons of new information. Has ISU 3rd, also a section on BDJ.

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/2...a-juwan-staten-tcu-trent-johnson-tubby-smith/

Also, includes this great line on Hoiberg:

He’s like Mother Teresa running a basketball soup kitchen in Ames. I don’t care that some of you were barely recruited, that some of you were exiled from your former teams, or that some of you are Canadian. You’re safe now. Come, my children. Come to me and I will make you complete. I will give you a place to call home and a green light to shoot from anywhere on the court. I will clothe you, give you shelter, and play you at least 20 minutes a game. The world may look at you and see a dirty lump of coal, but you know what you can do with coal? You can grill some filet mignon wrapped in bacon. Have you ever had bacon-wrapped filet? That **** is delicious. That can be you. Greatness can be yours. Let me show you the way.
 
Great write up, thanks for sharing. But, at this point, ISU is also getting to the point where basketball is more important than football.
 
Fun read, and fairly spot on.

I'm just not sold on the Horns yet, though. I think it will be KU-ISU or vice versa.
 
Dingus said:
Solid writeup of the conference, if not tons of new information. Has ISU 3rd, also a section on BDJ.

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/2...a-juwan-staten-tcu-trent-johnson-tubby-smith/

Also, includes this great line on Hoiberg:

He’s like Mother Teresa running a basketball soup kitchen in Ames. I don’t care that some of you were barely recruited, that some of you were exiled from your former teams, or that some of you are Canadian. You’re safe now. Come, my children. Come to me and I will make you complete. I will give you a place to call home and a green light to shoot from anywhere on the court. I will clothe you, give you shelter, and play you at least 20 minutes a game. The world may look at you and see a dirty lump of coal, but you know what you can do with coal? You can grill some filet mignon wrapped in bacon. Have you ever had bacon-wrapped filet? That **** is delicious. That can be you. Greatness can be yours. Let me show you the way.
Click to expand...

ThT is an amazing quote
 
Here's a great quote about us from the article:

And it’s a foregone conclusion that their season will end in the NCAA tournament with a loss to the eventual national champion and/or due to ****** officiating.
Click to expand...
 
ok... so some of their big 12 analysis is spot on, but i really think their thoughts on TCU are a bit too low. TCU looks a lot better this year.
 
My fav.

Just ask Iowa fans. After Texas came out flat to start Thursday’s game and Iowa led by six at halftime, the Horns completely suffocated Iowa and put together the kind of second half that nightmares are made of.
Click to expand...
 
mikedp said:
"getting to the point"?, Sorry, but I'm/we're beyond that point......MBB is king at ISU
Click to expand...

No, it's not. The money's in football with very very few exceptions at the BCS level.

That doesn't mean ISU fans don't care more about it, it just means you can't really be king when the money isn't on your side.
 
Isu fans care about basketball more. We can compete nationally at a high level. We want to be good at football but we are flat out a basketball school
 
I think our defense is severely underrated this year.

I think in the past Fred has picked his spots for defense because we haven't had tremendous depth and we couldn't afford to lose people to foul trouble.

I believe we win a few games this year we wouldn't have in the past because we lock them down.
 
Agree. What will separate this ISU team from past teams is this team will end up being a decent defensive team with the potential to lock down some teams. I'm interested to see Nader play and what he brings defensively too, I've heard he can play good D as well.
 
Might as well have out what the national media thinks of our team. This is the most important passage of the entire article, which is well-done overall, for our purposes:

But I like Iowa State better than all of them, mostly because the Cyclones’ starting lineup — Monte Morris, Naz Long, Bryce Dejean-Jones, Dustin Hogue, and Georges Niang — is as good as any in the Big 12. You already know that Iowa State will shoot a million 3s and barely play defense, and that will lead to a couple of games where the Cyclones get upset by mediocre teams, get blown out, or both.

(1) seems to think Naz will stay a full-time starter, which isn't the worst thing in the world, given that line-up without Naz or Thomas but with Nader or McKay lacks a knockdown 3sus to space the floor, but we all know this might change--Fred never started Tyrus, after all, though Naz is a much more complete player at this point in terms of being a "1.75" (towards a 1) and a better defender

(2) glad to see people see that our starters are absolute aces, but I think we all agree with have eight players with a credible case to start, which is plenty of depth to have a team that is strong all the way through the rotation and, worse comes to worst, we have some fallback in case of injuries (long or short), fatigue, foul trouble, or just somebody having a really bad night or week

(3) we aren't seen as much of a defensive team and we're seen as one that plays fast, loose, and jacks a ton of threes. Going to be hard to break that conception (at least the last one, I don't necessarily see the problem with the second, given its basically the Spurs' model and they're hailed as the next evolution of the game) until we prove otherwise, though the article is right--that *has* led to a number of key losses in the past few seasons that kept us from being ranked three/two years ago and from being a true national power last year (always hovering in the teens until everything came together at the end). I agree the depth, size, length, and athleticism of this team has more potential for that, and we have a bunch of guys that feel more like two-way players now (Morris, Hogue, McKay, etc.), but it's still not exactly our strong suit

(4) The conference might be even tougher this year. Eep.
 
LindenCy said:
Here's a great quote about us from the article:
Click to expand...

And it’s a foregone conclusion that their season will end in the NCAA tournament with a loss to the eventual national champion and/or due to ****** officiating.
Click to expand...

This is what I took away from the article as well. It's nice to know the national media knows what we know about the tourney.
 
"Iowa State will shoot a million 3s and barely play defense."

Part 1, yeah. Part 2 is at least 50% inaccurate. ISU has given up a lot of points largely because of (1) pace and (2) not much depth, especially on the interior (which has required "saving" fouls for big men ... and without a lot of size inside, reduced chance to take risks for steals).

It certainly hasn't been a lock-down, smothering defensive system, but these assessments always make it seem like ISU pays no attention to defense or the players don't make an effort.
 
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