IU BBall - Iowa

Mike Davis is such a great coach. He taped every single NBA Playoff game last year and watched everyone of those games over the summer. He noticed how the Houston Rockets got the ball inside to Yao Ming and copied a play and called it "Rocket." They used it early in the game today to get the ball inside to DJ White and it worked once. Brilliant!

Mike also has the biggest playbook in the country, but with all this youth he has cut it back to about 10 sets. That is the sign of a great coach. Or so Tim McCormick tells me.

And this fine gem... Davis was telling the announcing team, that if Josh Smith was on Campus, he would be starting 4 Freshman and it would be a totally different team. And Killingsworth is the best player Mike has ever coached. He is just unstoppable in practice.

Thanks ESPN... What is with Tim McCormick and Dave Barnett trying to shove Mike Davis down our throats? I had to rewind my live TV thanks to my DVR to get this quote from the "B" talent. "And to those of you IU fans that don't like Mike Davis, you better get used to him because he has this team absolutely loaded for the future and he will be there for a very long time."

What, we as IU fans have to settle for worse than mediocre because an announcer that knows less about BBall than I do likes Davis? I don't think so!

On to the game... an absolute butt kicking.

Early in the season we only had a long range game. IU lived and primarily died with the 3 pointer. Of late, they have developed an inside game with DJ White. The problem with today's game is that Iowa is a very tall team with lots of shot blockers. IU was taking the ball right into Iowa's shot blockers and getting their shots blocked. Iowa is the type of team where you need a mid range game to beat them. You need to be able to knock down the 10-15 footer just outside the range of their shot blockers. Instead, IU went back beyond the 3 point line and started jacking 23 footers. Shooting under 30% from there won't win many games.

Bracey was absolutely abused by Pierre Pierce. Pierce repeatedly blew past Bracey for easy buckets and frustrated Bracey on the other end to where Bracey was chucking bad shot after bad shot. All in all, Pierce went for X and Bracey went for X. Bracey did do a decent job of finding open guys when Pierce had the blanket over him having what has to be a career high of X assists. Note to Bracey... Pierce will be playing in the NBA.

We are down 12 with 3 minutes left... Iowa just lost to NW in a major collapse missing 9 free throws down the stretch. Pierce is a 50% shooter from the line and IU doesn't foul. Where is the pressure IU brought against Minny? They let Iowa run 30 seconds off the shot clock 4 straight possessions. What is with that? Davis giving up?

Iowa 72 - IU 57

A few key stats from the box score:

IU 11 assists - 16 turnovers, Iowa 10 assists - 15 turnovers - LOSS!
Bracey 0-4 from 3 pt range, IU 3-14 from 3 pt range - SAD!
DJ White - 23 pts on 11-13 FT shooting and 7 rebounds - NICE!
Iowa - 6 blocked shots

And how about Alford taking a motivation lesson from the master. After Iowa lost a 13 point lead in the last 3 minutes of the Northwestern game to lose in Overtime, Alford benched his 4 Juniors to start the game. When they came in 3 minutes into the game, they played motivated basketball.