The Official Iowa St. Prediction Thread

[PoorManProfit]

I'm willing to give Hewitt another year, or two, to get "star" Sherrad Wright off the roster and Byron Allen to a lesser extent. Of course, Dopes remains. I wouldn't extend him of course. The unfortunate thing, as has been discussed ad nauseum on here after Larranaga left, is losing Hancocks. That set the program back 5 to 7 years. And, schools like G Mas, with no history or pedigree necessarily, just might never get the chance to get what they thought they had back. It sucks, but it is what it is.

 

[JimP]

In watching the Oregon State vs. Akron game, I still have the same feeling regarding our second game that I had coming into the tournament. Each of these teams will be tough for Mason to beat. I'm probably not saying anything that many would disagree with though.

 

[gmutom]

We play tomorrow at 2:30 ET ...off on Tuesday.

My bad. I was thinking tomorrow was Christmas Eve. Glad Jim didn't take me up on the bet. haha

I've been critical of some of our substitutions in the past, but I had no problem with tonight's. For whatever reason, Sherrod was off and simply wasn't going to help. Might as well sit him and try somebody else.

I would have liked to see Gray get some more time, but it's tough to argue with Okoloji's effectiveness on offense -- especially since he was in for defense. Nice to see Holloway and Moore get so many minutes.

 

[KAOriginal]

Watching Sunday night football and they were talking about Chip Kelly and his coaching. The summary was he doesn't have a specific system and plugs players into it. He said he figures out what play makers he has and then gets a system to work for them.....

I will cut Hewitt some slack, as it appears "play maker" is not quite on the roster at this point.

 

[MASONscott]

I'm sick of Hewitt's varying leashes with various players, BTW. Vaughn Gray can't get four minutes, our best player can't have a bad half without being benched, but yet guys like Okoloji and Copes can go out and ring up suspensions and screw up all over the place and have more leeway in most situations.

There doesn't appear to be a rhyme or reason to our substitution patterns. My biggest complaint two years ago, last year, and tonight.

The first half was enjoyable. We played well for an off night by a key player. Ball movement and defense looked much improved.

I am envious of Iowa State's transition offense. Rebound, outlet pass, attack, attack, attack.

Sent from my SPH-L720 using Tapatalk

 

[MasonFanatic]

We need another scorer, that much is painfully obvious. Sherrod Wright or someone else, I don't care who it is. But Wright can't let two questionable charge calls and a few missed shots take him out of the game like that.

In the second half, it seemed like our offense alternated between rushing the play and taking too much time without anyone asserting themselves. But other than that, and the predictable freshmen mistakes, I liked what I saw.

I would have run a couple more plays for Holloway in the last 2 minutes, though. Go down, hoist a quick trey, see what happens. Don't dribble for 10 seconds then miss a contested layup. That was the one and only way we could have gotten back in the game.

Still a very encouraging game today. But we've been here before. Can we take the next step forward? We have no good excuse not to win the next 4 games. If we'd played all season like we played today, we would have beaten Princeton and USF no problem, and the Iona game would have at least been close.

 

[gmujim92]

Very pleased with the aggressiveness/intensity, although seeing us play so hard against a really good team was somewhat frustrating ... as in, geez, why can't we do that consistently?

IF, IF, IF, IF we can bring that same level of effort against A-10 teams that we showed against a ranked team, we'll have a chance to finish better in the league than we might think.

But lack of consistent focus and intensity has been a problem since Pearson and Morrison graduated, so I'll have to see that before I believe it.

 

[Patriotfan49]

I'm sick of Hewitt's varying leashes with various players, BTW. Vaughn Gray can't get four minutes, our best player can't have a bad half without being benched, but yet guys like Okoloji and Copes can go out and ring up suspensions and screw up all over the place and have more leeway in most situations.

Im with this. I really want to see VG get more minutes because he can score and if given the time to get some play, he could help add to our offense.

Okoloji is Hewitts Luke Hancock. The golden boy minus the talent, ability, leadership, effective play....

Pretty solid effort by the guys, and it could bode well for us in the future. Or not, because if anything weve seen its that from one game to the next you wont know what you get. But none the less, an effort like that combined with a decent performance by Sherrod would have us play pretty well in the A10.

 

[Bricker]

Any viewing options listed for today's game yet?

 

[gmu05]

Any viewing options listed for today's game yet?

they are the same as yesterday's game

 

[mkaufman1]

I echo what pretty much everyone else said in that it was a good effort etc so I'm not going to beat the dead horse on that.

Did anyone notice the "pressure the inbounder , run back to play defense" approach even as the game got late? I understand Iowa State plays fast and probably would slice our press like none other, but I didn't see us attempt it more than once or twice, and feel like it would have come in handy especially when the game was close.

 

[Bricker]

they are the same as yesterday's game

I was off the grid yesterday-- can someone clue me in?

 

[GMUgemini]

I echo what pretty much everyone else said in that it was a good effort etc so I'm not going to beat the dead horse on that.

Did anyone notice the "pressure the inbounder , run back to play defense" approach even as the game got late? I understand Iowa State plays fast and probably would slice our press like none other, but I didn't see us attempt it more than once or twice, and feel like it would have come in handy especially when the game was close.

I think this was the right strategy. Our press would have led to too many runouts. And if we were a better rebounding team, we might have been able to pull off the upset.

 

[psyclone]

I was off the grid yesterday-- can someone clue me in?

They're on ESPNU. Somewhere back in this thread, I think, there may be other options mentioned.

 

[gmutom]

I would have run a couple more plays for Holloway in the last 2 minutes, though.

Patrick played one of his better games yesterday, but I noticed that he did a lot of standing around on offense in the last few minutes. Several other players were moving and cutting, and he just hung out waiting for the ball. He was a marked man by that point in the game, so I'm surprised he wasn't moving more to get open.

As for Gray, I'm not sure what the deal is. I'd like to think he would score more if he played 20 minutes a game, but I just don't get the sense he's in the game when he's in the game (he was one of several players who missed wide-open layups). That doesn't even factor in what he contributes on the defensive side.

The bottom line is the only way we can open up more minutes for Holloway and Gray is by moving Allen back to the point. In fact, this would be my depth chart:

PG: Allen/Moore (use Edwards as needed)
SG: Holloway/Gray
Wing: Wright/Allen
SF: Marko/Williams
PF: Jenkins/Copes

I would use Okoloji when needed at the wing, SF and even PF. That means he might play 12 minutes one game and none the next. I had no issue with his time yesterday. We needed to go a little bigger with our zone on defense, and he actually ended up tying as our 3rd leading scorer with Copes and Williams despite playing less minutes.

 

[MasonFanatic]

Gray has the length that Hewitt likes defensively, and he ought to be a better scorer than Okoloji. But if he's not playing well when he does get opportunities, it's hard to fault Hewitt for looking elsewhere.

 

[Patriotfan49]

AO should take the Chris Fleming role, when we need a guy to come in deliver a hard foul or foul out in a matter of seconds....hes the guy. Other than that, Im good with him next to Rudy.

 

[Quentin Daniels]

I'm willing to give Hewitt another year, or two, to get "star" Sherrad Wright off the roster and Byron Allen to a lesser extent. Of course, Dopes remains. I wouldn't extend him of course. The unfortunate thing, as has been discussed ad nauseum on here after Larranaga left, is losing Hancocks. That set the program back 5 to 7 years. And, schools like G Mas, with no history or pedigree necessarily, just might never get the chance to get what they thought they had back. It sucks, but it is what it is.

The entire program? 5-7 years?

Ummm....OK.

 

[GMUheckler]

It is on ESPNU and WatchEspn not ESPN3.

 

[PoorManProfit]

The entire program? 5-7 years?

Yes and Yes. At least.