I don't have a lot to say at this point. Iowa is probably a below average team in this year's Big Ten and they destroyed NU today. Noticeable problems that continue for NU are lack of interior defense and poor free throw shooting. I'd also add that NU lacks consistent scoring from anyone on the team and continues to allow players who haven't played well all year to have great days vs them. Today it was Josh Oglesby, but it'll be someone else next time.
Basically Iowa was pretty much better in every area of the game than NU but Northwestern's inability to score any other way than the three pointer (which they couldn't make) was probably the biggest issue. I actually thought NU got decent looks, they just didn't make any shots.
Considering the mediorcore opponent this is the lowest point for NU hoops since the days of Kevin O'Neil. When Jim Phillips fires Bill Carmody this will be the game that probably caused him to make a final decision if he hadn't already. There was no reason Northwestern shouldn't have been able to compete with Iowa but they couldn't.
Just to end on a positive, this was by far Mike Turner's best game of the year. He looks like a guy who will be able to make a difference in a couple years.
2 comments:
That was really ugly. For me the most disappointing thing about this game was just the lack of effort on the defense and on the defensive glass. I know this has been a weak spot for every Carmody team, and at times I rationalized the poor numbers by saying that teams are usually smaller and less athletic than the competition than the competition. That said, how many easy dunks can you give up in a single game? We have all seen a lot of bad NU teams, but I have a hard time remembering giving up so many easy buckets to a mediocre team. Also, there were multiple times when a shot would go up and 3 NU players were standing in the paint watching the ball while an Iowa big walked in to grab the rebound and get an easy putback. Shot goes up, find a body to box out. The players should know that too, it should be instinctive in players who have reached this stage, but apparently it is not, and Carmody obviously does no drills during practice to work on rebounding and defense. I have been a Carmody supporter for probably too long. Losing to Iowa is nothing to be ashamed of, but getting blown out at home in an important game by a team that is probably at best the 8th best team in the conference is embarrassing.
Of course the offense was not good yesterday either, but I think that is what you can expect when the 3 pt shooting is so off, we need that to open things up a bit for the offense to get going, especially without Crawford and Cobb, guys who can make something happen off the dribble. Bottom line for me, sometimes you have an off night shooting the ball, but defense and rebounding are reliable (in our case, reliably bad), and at some point during a decade and a half you would hope that Carmody would try to address it, as neither have improved even though he has been able to recruit taller and more athletic players.
I agree with you Turner had a decent game, despite getting posterized early on. Also, I thought Sobo battled for most of the game, he just didnt have a lot of help.
Post a Comment