*** Official Kansas State vs #23 IOWA STATE Game(Day) Thread ***
- Thread starter CycloneRulzzz
- Start date
Can't wait to get back to Hilton. Weather has kept me away since new years eve. With that said, I hate 8 PM games that are not big Monday games At least this is our only home one this year. Let's get a late night WIN
Turn them over.
Rebound! That is the biggest key imho. One-and-done.
Their numbers may not look great, but they won AT WV, darn near won AT Tech, and beat Baylor in Manhattan.
Rebound! That is the biggest key imho. One-and-done.
Their numbers may not look great, but they won AT WV, darn near won AT Tech, and beat Baylor in Manhattan.
They have played FIVE (!!!) overtime games and won them all, including 3 in a row at one point. Winning close games is a skill and one that shouldn't be discounted.
They are basically the opposite of us - they've played almost everyone close, regardless of quality, and the metrics hate them for it. They dropped out of the top 100 after losing by 16 to Nebraska in December, but have climbed back up after that.
Turnovers are always the biggest key for ISU. It feeds everything else on both sides of the ball.
The only stat that aligns perfectly with W/L is forced turnover rate - if we force a turnover on >20% of possessions, we are 14-0. If we force a turnover on <=20%, we are 0-4.
Rebounding is definitely a key too. KSU is a pretty good offensive rebounding team (and we had our worst defensive rebounding game of the season @ TCU by a large margin), but they are also a pretty bad defensive rebounding team. Putting Jones/Pav in for Lipsey may affect our rebounding more than anything else.
In conference play, KSU is 6th in 3pt % at 36%...that's not too bad. I really hope ISU will not get sucked into giving KSU a bunch of open 3-pt looks because ISU is trying to force turnovers with over-aggressive trapping. I don't think that will end well.
In conference play, KSU is shooting the 3pt shot at 36%, ISU is shooting 25%.
FWIW, obviously it's not a direct cause and effect... but generally speaking, forcing 27 turnovers skews the defensive rebounding numbers a bit because it way less opportunities to secure a defensive rebound.
In fact, Jamie Dixon dismissed their rebounding advantage in his postgame, citing that very reason.
And, like you said, replacing Lipsey with Curtis Jones and Pav are was also a huge factor.
Keep them off the 3 point line and I like our chances at home WITH students!
No excuses if we don't see a full student section tonight
No excuses if we don't see a full student section tonight
Why limit it to conference play? I never understand this, especially this early in the conference. There have only been 5 conference games, which basically means there is no statistical significance to those numbers.
Tougher defenses. ISU was able to get much more timely, open looks in most of their non-conference games. Things ratchet up quite a bit and it's looked much more difficult.
I thought ISU looked like they were finding spots last game though.
Because:
1) The conference games are the most recent games giving a better indication of where the teams are now
2) A schedule full of cupcakes with sprinkles tends to inflate stats.
Sure that could be the case, but how does that explain KSU shooting better? It doesn't. Could they just have improved over the last 5 games? Maybe, but doubtful. More likely they have just been hot and are due for a regression to the mean. Same could be said for ISU and their poor shooting. I'm not going to ignore a whole bunch of data and say all that matters is conference data. Makes no sense to me.
I keep seeing that over and over, but our whole defensive strategy is to turn our opponents into jump shooters while we apply pressure, turn them over, and keep them out of the paint. Yes, it gives up some open threes when the opponents execute and then shoot well, but on balance, the strategy wins games.