This is mainly just to direct you to an interview Mike Hlas did with ex-Hawkeye basketballer Jarryd Cole, who is currently playing for Kevlavik in the Icelandic league. Cole seems to be adjusting well to playing in a new and very foreign environment, and has apparently displayed a remarkable openness to Icelandic culture:
One night we had a party to celebrate Icelandic culture and heritage and back in the day they used to eat rotten shark and sheep head and sheep testicles, so there was a buffet line of all that stuff there and it was horrible, but I tried it all. I think the natives took me in after they saw me try it all. They were impressed. They told me I could be a citizen now.
Really, go and read the whole interview. It's nice to know that Cole has landed on his feet and is playing basketball somewhere. You can check out the roster and some of his stats here or at the Kevlavik league page here. Apparently Jarryd leads the team with "9.9 fráköst í leik" and is second on the team at "19.3 stig í leik", which I'm assuming means he's doing something right (I'm pretty sure it's rebounds per game and points per game).
There's also a team page that is probably the Icelandic equivalent of BHGP but is unfortunately entirely in Icelandic. It does feature this awesome video, though (it's very recent -- February 18th -- so this apparently just happened). Look for:
There's a whole Youtube channel devoted to Kevlavik, too, if you're interested. Iceland was not, judging from the interview, Cole's first choice, but it looks like the fans are devoted and he is playing well. Plus, who knew a country of 300,000 people could support a 12-team basketball league? We hope the rest of the season goes well for him and want him to know that Iowa fans have learned, by his absence this year, just how much he did for the team while he was here.
Addendum:
For more Nordic-Iowa basketball action, AJ pointed me to this video of Doug Thomas dunking all over the Swedish league.
This should not, by all rights, have happened. Iowa was missing their starting point guard and a key sub, was starting two freshmen, and had gotten absolutely torched by Indiana just two weeks ago. On top of that, the team's starting small forward drew two fouls within the first minute and a half and had to sit for most of the first half. My thought as I sat down to the game was "this could get ugly." It did. Just not for the team I had thought.
The headline for any story about the game will include Matt Gatens, and rightfully so. The senior was in a very Kingsbury-esque place for much of the second half, making five threes and scoring 25 of his 30 points, including one from 25 feet out that very much recalled a certain bowl-cut long bomber of yore. Carver had the same kind of manic, feverish feel that it did in those days, too, with fans standing in anticipation whenever his shot went up. Gatens kept Indiana at bay whenever they attempted to draw closer in the second half, but it's important to remember that Iowa built almost their entire winning margin in the first half. And they did that on the strength of defense and rebounding.
Junior Senior - Move Your Feet from Manolis_G on Vimeo.
Just when you think you have this team figured out, they go and do something like that. Wow. My confidence level heading into this game was low. Very, very low. Coming off back-to-back road losses, the latter a crushing near-miss against Penn State, and facing a team that had absolutely had its way with Iowa earlier this season? Let's just say that didn't seem like a recipe for victory to me. And no Bryce Cartwright (high ankle sprain)? No Eric May (back strain)? No problem, as it turned out.
All we needed was Matt Gatens to play like it was the second half of the Penn State game again (he scored a career-high 30 points on 10/18 shooting, including 7/10 from 3-point land), Melsahn Basabe to play like it was 2010-2011 again (he had 13 points, 7 rebounds, and 5 blocks and his energy in the first half was key to Iowa building a lead in the first half), and the entire team to defend like, well, I don't know when. But a team that shredded Iowa for 103 points a month ago was held to 66 points on 38% shooting. Iowa also forced 14 turnovers and even outrebounded Indiana (37-33). It was the best defensive performance from Iowa in a long, long time.
At some point maybe wins over ranked opponents will be so commonplace that we won't feel the need to bust out "Move Your Feet" to celebrate them. But we're not there yet and after two excruciating losses, a win like this felt extraordinary. And so, we celebrate. Go Hawks.
5pm Sunday is a weird time for a basketball game, isn't it? Or is it just me?
Anyway, Iowa heads home today after a pair of rough road losses at jNW and Penn State. Waiting for them is... Indiana. I don't think we need to discuss what happened when these two teams played a few weeks ago. Hopefully some home cooking is what the doctor ordered for Iowa basketball.
The game is at 5pm CT on BTN.
The usual open thread rules apply: no links to illegal online streams, no porn, no politics, no religion, no slurs, no douchebaggery, etc.
If I was a good blogger, I would have started this feature a few months back. But I'm a half-assed blogger, so you'll just have to live with getting it now (and for the duration of the season). What is it? Pretty simple: I ask questions of an opposing team's blogger, they answer. A truly revolutionary idea, no? Next up: Friend of the Pants John M from SBN's excellent Indiana blog, The Crimson Quarry.
1) When last we met, Indiana's offense basically did whatever the hell they wanted against Iowa's "defense." Is there any reason to expect a different outcome this Sunday? Iowa's defense is consistently vulnerable to skilled post players and sharp-shooting perimeter players and the Hoosiers seem to have an abundance of both. We're properly terrified of the possibility of Cody Zeller putting on another dunking clinic against Iowa, but who are a few other Indiana players who could erupt against Iowa and make us all sad pandas?
Well, the main reason it might be different is because your coaches presumably have watched some film. The nice thing about that first IU-Iowa game is that it was a one game respite from "why don't we get the ball to Cody more?" IU doesn't have the best point guard play, and it seems that most teams IU has played have decided to keep a man glued to Zeller. Most teams don't have someone who can actually guard Zeller when he has the ball, but such guys still can do a decent job of denying him the ball. Iowa seemed to be trapping the driving guards with Zeller's man, leaving him wide open. I sincerely hope Fran McCaffery thinks it was just a matter of execution and uses the same defensive philosophy on Sunday. But I'm not banking on it.
As you mentioned, IU has a handful of excellent shooters--Jordan Hulls, Christian Watford, Matt Roth--and a versatile sixth man, Will Sheehey, who had a good game against Iowa last year before IU crumbled in the final five minutes. Also, Victor Oladipo has taken on some of the ball-handling responsibilities in recent games (Verdell Jones III has been injured, although he played well against Northwestern) and has been very effective at getting the ball to the hoop. Derek Elston, a big man with a good outside shooting touch, can be dangerous as well.
2) On the other hand, road games have been a bit of a problem for you so far this season: Michigan State and Ohio State put up pretty lopsided wins against Indiana and somehow you also felt the bitter sting of defeat to Nebrasketball. What happens to the Hoosiers away from Assembly Hall and the crazed atmosphere created by the hoop-heads there?
I think the road woes are a bit exaggerated and are tied in to the poor record of the previous three years. IU is 4-5 in true road games this season and has a neutral court win over Notre Dame. IU won at NC State, a team that appears to be NCAA-bound, and had a comfortable win at Purdue. The Nebraska game is the only bad road loss, and it still bothers me not even because of the fact of the loss, but because IU controlled the game for 35 minutes and imploded in the final five (very similar to last years' IU-Iowa game in Bloomington, actually). The team looks quite a bit better than they did a month ago, but I think the road games against Iowa and Minnesota will be interesting measuring sticks for this team.
[Ed. Note: No Fran-Graphs today, thanks to some technical difficulties that struck the esteemed Mr. Cow. -- Ross]
(ORIGINAL PHOTO CREDIT: Abby Drey, Centre Daily Times/AP)
First half of horrors. It would be tempting to call the first half of last night's game the worst first half of basketball Iowa's played all season. Tempting, but probably not true, if only because there have been a lot of nightmarish first halves this season: Creighton, Campbell, Clemson, Iowa State, Michigan State... Still, this was a really, really bad half and while a spate of missed free throws late in the game were also very costly, the biggest reason Iowa lost this game was probably the godawful first half they played. They allowed the worst-shooting team in the Big Ten to make 44% from the field and jump out to a 38-24 halftime lead, but if their defense was bad (Penn State got far too many second shot opportunities, in particular), their offense was horrendous. Iowa shot just 7/26 (27%) in the first half and went seven minutes (game time, not real time) between field goals at one point, making this the funhouse mirror version of the earlier Iowa-Penn State game, when Iowa got off to a blazing start and essentially blitzed Penn State out of the gym in the first half. But in that game Iowa was the one that came out with a ton of energy that they were able to convert into good shooting, good rebounding, and harrying defense; on Thursday night it was Penn State doing all that (more or less). The basketball gods giveth and the basketball gods taketh.
Backcourt blues. We saw yet another new starting lineup last night as an injury to Bryce Cartwright (reported as a high ankle sprain, so good luck seeing him at anywhere near peak effectiveness before the end of the season) forced a shake-up. Roy Devyn Marble moved back to the point guard spot he ably manned earlier this season in Cartwright's absence and was joined by Matt Gatens, Aaron White, Zach McCabe, and (in a slight surprise) Josh Oglesby. Marble had another solid all-around game: 13 points (albeit on 4/10 shooting), 8 rebounds, and 6 assists. Unfortunately, Oglesby did not have a game to remember: he went 1/7 (3 points) in 27 minutes and looked tentative and uncertain for too much of the game (he also went 1/3 from the free throw line, which hurt). Iowa has few enough outside shooters as it is -- they can ill afford to have one of them stinking up the joint. Cartwright claims he'll be ready to play on Sunday against Indiana, but it's hard to believe he won't be pretty limited by the high ankle sprain. With Eric May still hampered by back problems, there may be no option but to give Oglesby another start -- the backcourt is looking pretty thin. Marble played the full 40 minutes last night and Gatens played 38.
(ORIGINAL PHOTO CREDIT: Melanie Maxwell, annarbor.com)
What's better than winning five Big Ten games in a row? Winning six Big Ten games in a row, a feat the Iowa women accomplished in dramatic fashion on Thursday night against Michigan. They started the game a ghastly 2/20 (!) from the field, didn't crack double-digits until almost the five-minute mark of the first half, and trailed by as many as 16 points in the second half. In fact, they didn't lead the game at all until Kamille Wahlin made the game-winning three-pointer with 0:46 left in the game. To call this win improbable makes a mockery of that word.
Wahlin led the team in scoring (18 points) and played the entire 40 minutes. But freshman point guard Samantha Logic also deserves some plaudits: she added 12 points, a team-high 4 assists, and oh yeah, a team-high 18 rebounds. From the point guard spot. It was her second-straight points-rebounds double double and her fifth-straight game as the team's leading rebounder. She's certainly upped her game tremendously in the absence of Jaime Printy.
The win moves Iowa to 17-10 overall and 9-5 in league play, good enough for 4th place in the Big Ten. They could be tied for third by the end of the weekend if Purdue loses to Michigan State on Sunday. Two games remain in the regular season, but this has already been yet another impressive February surge for Bluder's bunch. If you were inclined to quibble you could bemoan the fact that they so often need a hot February to make the NCAA Tournament; it might be nice if that wasn't the case, but there are far worse things than playing your best ball at the end of the season and riding a wave of momentum into the Big Ten and NCAA Tournaments. Iowa will try to run their winning streak to seven games next Thursday when they host head to just Northwestern (14-12, 4-9 B1G).
We're in the home stretch now, boys and girls. Just six more regular season games to go this season for Iowa and while Iowa may or may not have legitimate postseason aspirations, there's one goal that's well within their reach: a winning record. It's been five years since Iowa last ended the year with a record above .500 (17-14 in 2006-07), but they're 13-12 now with, at minimum, seven games remaining (six regular season games plus one game in the Big Ten Tournament). Post a winning record in those seven games and Iowa ends 2011-12 on the right side of .500. Every game left is winnable (the two most difficult remaining foes, Indiana and Wisconsin, both visit CHA), but considering that this is still the same team that lost to Clemson, Campbell, and Nebraska (all in CHA, no less), no win is assured. A win tonight would be an excellent start on the road towards finishing with a winning mark; go ahead and read my Q&A with Black Shoe Diaries from earlier today to find out a little bit more about this year's PSU team.
The game is on ESPNU at 7pm CT; it's also available on ESPN3.com if you don't get ESPNU.
The usual rules of open threading apply: no links to illegal online streams, no porn, no religions, no politics, no slurs, and no douchebaggery. Go Iowa.
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