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Iowa Game Recap

Posted in game recap, tagged , , on February 26, 2009 | 13 Comments »

MSU scoots by Iowa 62-54 in a 59-possession game.  StatSheet box score.

The reflexive thing to say after you’ve beat a vastly inferior team by just 8 points at home is to say the team “lost focus” or “didn’t keep their foot on the pedal.”  I’m going to resist that temptation and say MSU did exactly what it needed to do:

  • Dominated the glass.
  • Won the turnover battle.
  • Forced Iowa to take tough shots late in the shot clock.

The only glitch was that Iowa made a bunch of those tough shots–led by Jake Kelly, who scored 20 points on 13 FG attempts by converting a series of very difficult jumpshots–to keep themselves within single digits.  To me, this outcome is still preferable to winning by a larger margin because your opponent missed a lot of open looks you allowed them to get free for.  Iowa recorded an assist on only 7 of 18 made FG attempts–a sign that their points were the result of good individual plays, rather than defensive breakdowns by MSU.

Your bar graph:

Your bullets:

  • Delvon Roe continues to be more and more of a factor offensively.  16 points on 6-7 FG shooting tonight.  Over the last 7 games, Roe is averaging 8.0 points and 6.1 rebounds in 23.4 minutes per game.  Those are nice numbers for the second low-post player on a Tom Izzo team.
  • 12 points on 4-7 three-point shooting for Korie Lucious.  He needs to shoot more, as he seems just as good (if not better) when he’s not completely set.
  • Quiet game for Kalin Lucas: 4 points, 6 assists, and 3 turnovers.  He only took 6 shots, though, as MSU was generally able to create good looks at the basket early in the shot clock.
  • Raymar Morgan still looks a ways off from being back near his peak playing level: 2-7 FG shooting and 5 personal fouls.  (Somehow I missed him fouling out.)  His jumpshot is out of whack.
  • Travis Walton should not handle the ball late in close games.
  • Nice game for Draymond Green: 4 points and 5 rebounds in 15 minutes.
  • Another game in which Chris Allen turns the ball over too much (3) and shows glimpses of his jumpshot returning (8 points on 2-6 three-point shooting).
  • Goran Suton (9 points on 7-8 FT shooting) has exellent touch on free throws that hit the rim.

The main concern coming out of this game is whether Durrell Summers did anything serious to his ankle.  On the plus side, he came back and played about 4 minutes late in the first half and didn’t look perplexed on the bench.  On the negative side, he didn’t play at all in the second half.  Hopefully, that was just the training/coaching staff being extra cautious.

Onward and forward.

Next up: A road game of the cringe-inducing variety in Champaign on Sunday (4:00, CBS).

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Iowa Open Thread

Posted in open thread, tagged on February 25, 2009 | 72 Comments »

Michigan State vs. Minnesota

Once again, fate has smiled upon me and I will be at the Breslin Center tonight (albeit sitting high above the court).

So you’ll have to chat amongst yourselves.  Here’s a topic: How the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire.

Also: How many points/minutes are you hoping to see out of Raymar tonight?

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Iowa Game Preview

Posted in game preview, tagged on February 24, 2009 | 3 Comments »

8:30 Wednesday.  The Breslin Center.  BTN.

Since our 15-point win over Iowa on the road, the Hawkeyes have lost 4 of 6 games and now stand at 4-10 in conference play.  They are coming off a thrilling overtime victory over Michigan, though.

As was true prior to our last match-up, Iowa’s only statistical strength continues to be shooting the ball:

Category MSU Off Rk Iowa Def Rk
PPP 1.08 1 1.08 9
TO% 22.0 7 17.5 11
eFG% 48.8 7 51.4 8
FTR 38.0 1 31.6 6
OffReb% 43.9 1 31.9 8
Category Iowa Off Rk MSU Def Rk
PPP 0.99 6-10t 0.94 3
TO% 23.0 9 20.1 5
eFG% 50.8 3 47.7 3
FTR 33.8 5 34.1 7
OffReb% 27.2 9 25.9 1-2t

Freshman Matt Gatens leads the way, scoring 12.0 points/game in conference play on 38.8% 3-point shooting.  Fellow guards Jeff Peterson and Jake Kelly are both also averaging double digits and shooting 36%+ from beyond the arc.  Kelly is coming off a three-game stretch of scoring at least 17 points per game.

I’m not going to do a full preview here.  The key is clearly to avoid letting Iowa get Talor Battle/Kevin Coble hot from 3-point range.  If that doesn’t happen, we’re simply the much superior team across the board.  The rebounding advantage should be sizable, and Iowa is the rare team that we are heavy favorites to win the turnover battle against.

And the fact that the Hawkeyes are currently severely undermanned won’t help their cause.  Cyrus Tate is still not close to 100%, and Peterson has been out of action, too.  Four different Iowa players had to play all 45 minutes against Michigan (making Michigan’s inability to close the deal late that much more disturbing) as Todd Lickliter was forced to basically use a 5-player rotation (a couple more injuries and Lickliter may find himself yelling, “My team is on the floor!”).

Kenpom predicts a 67-54 MSU win in a 58-possession game.  As MSU looks to round into top form for the Illinois and Purdue games, anything less than a 10-point lead at halftime will be a disappointment.

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Iowa Game Recap (1/29/09)

Posted in game recap, tagged , , on January 29, 2009 | 10 Comments »

MSU beats down Iowa 71-56 in a 62-possession game (a regular track meet by Hawkeye standards).  StatSheet box score.

This one played out according to plan–MSU’s plan, that is.  We dominated on the boards (although that edge faded some in the second half), forced Iowa to take a lot of tough 3-point shots (8/26=30.8%), and manged to push the tempo against a tempo-less team (14 fast break points).  There were some early turnover issues, but most of them came from playing aggressively, rather than mental errors.  And Iowa actually ended up turning the ball over one more time than we did.  Your bar graph:

Other than a very brief stretch at about the 7-minute mark of the second half when they allowed Iowa to squeeze the lead down to 9, MSU played arguably its most complete game of the Big Ten season tonight.  They systematically built a 20-point lead over the game’s first 25 minutes, never allowing Iowa to feel like they had a real shot at winning.

Player bullets:

  • What more can you say about Kalin Lucas?  24 points on 13 FG attempts.  His spectacular finishes in the lane are starting to seem a bit mundane at this point.
  • Durrell Summers is emerging as a mini-MoPete (and could take on MoPete’s old six man role once Morgan is back to full health).  21 points on 9 FG attempts.  Three turnovers, but you can live with that when he’s as involved in the offense as he has been the last two games.
  • A Sutonesque performance by Goran Suton: 6 points, 11 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals.
  • We expected Delvon Roe to get some chances around the rim today.  Unfortunately, he couldn’t put those chances to good use.  He scored only 1 point and turned the ball over 3 times.  10 rebounds in 20 minutes, though.
  • Chris Allen still looked out of sorts (2 turnovers and 4 fouls in 13 minutes), but he did knock down 2 of 3 three-point attempts, so there may be hope.
  • Only 2 points in 8 minutes for Raymar Morgan.  If this virus continues to linger, I wonder if they shouldn’t just shut him down until it’s gone.
  • A combined 6 assists and zero turnovers for Travis Walton and Korie Lucious.  That’s all we really need from those two on offense.
  • Draymond Green played 9 minutes; Marquise Gray played 7.  Green was better tonight against the small Iowa lineup, scoring 4 points off 2 offensive boards.

Defensively, the team played cohesively, switching well on ball screens and recovering quickly on the back side.  Izzo put Suton, rather than Roe, on the fourth Hawkeye perimeter player, allowing Roe to play more at home against the lone Iowa big man in the paint.

At 5-0, we’re now guaranteed a winning conference road record.  And we’ve exceeded our total number of conference road wins over the previous two seasons.  Can’t beat that with a stick.

Next up: A Sunday game against Penn State (noon, BTN) to open a three-game home stretch.

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Iowa Game Preview

Posted in game preview, tagged on January 28, 2009 | 7 Comments »

7:00 Thursday.  Carver-Hawkeye Arena, Iowa City.  ESPN.

Iowa enters this game with a conference record of 2-5.  The two victories were both at home: a 5-point win over Indiana and an overtime win over Wisconsin.  They have played a couple good teams close on the road, though: Ohio State (3 points) and Penn State (4 points).

Here’s the scouting report on what the Hawkeyes do really well:

  • Shoot the ball.

That’s it.  But they do that one thing really, really well.  Their team shooting numbers for the season all rank in the top 50 nationally: 52.0/39.2/75.5 (2pt/3pt/FT).

The Hawkeyes’ conference-only 3-point shooting percentage of 37.1% ranks third in the Big Ten, and their free throw percentage of 77.5% ranks first.  (Note: I’m going with conference-only stats from here on out, unless otherwise noted.)  Iowa is a heavily guard-oriented team; they also rank third and first in the league in the percentage of their total points scored from beyond the arc and the charity stripe, respectively.

With regards to 3-point shooting, there’s good news and bad news in looking at MSU’s defensive profile:

Six Hawkeyes players are averaging 2 or more 3-point attempts per game, led by freshman guard Matt Gatens.  Gatens is shooting 50.0% from 3-point range on a team-high 28 attempts.

Surprisingly, Gatens’ scoring average of 12.0 points/game is not the best on the team in Big Ten play.  That honor goes to 6’9″ junior center David Palmer, who is averaging 12.3 points/game on 53.1% FG shooting, despite the fact he’s only received substantial minutes in Iowa’s last three games.

Other major contributors are sophomore point guard Jeff Peterson (10.7 points/game, 5.1 assists/game, 27.8% 3pt%) and sophomore guard Jake Kelly (10.1 points/game, 38.5% 3pt%).  Senior forward Cyrus Tate may return for this game after sitting out four games with an ankle sprain; Tate was averaging 7.4 points and 6.3 rebounds per game on the season prior to the injury.

(Note: Tate’s 6.3 rebound/game figure is more impressive than it looks at first, given (1) how slow a pace Iowa plays at, (2) the limited number of missed FGs they have on offense due to turnovers and good shooting, and (3) the limited number of field goals attempts Iowa’s opponents miss.  Tate sports very solid rebounding percentages of 16.1 and 22.8.)

If you can stop the Iowa shooters from getting good 3-point looks or beat you off the dribble to get to the free throw line, you’re in good shape.  They turn the ball over even more than we do (OffTO% of 23.9%, better than only Indiana), and they don’t pull down offensive rebounds (OffReb% of 25.5%, also second worst in the league).  Despite the Hawkeyes’ top-notch shooting strokes, they rank only 9th in the conference in offensive efficiency.

Defensively, they’re even less impressive, ranking 10th in the league in efficiency.  They’ve allowed all but one conference opponent to post an offensive efficiency figure of 105 or better.  They don’t block shots, they don’t steal the ball, and they’re susceptible to giving up offensive boards.

Of the top nine players in Iowa’s rotation, only two of them are taller than 6’7″.  If Tate can’t play, that number goes down to one.  The Hawkeyes basically play a four-guard lineup.  MSU should be able take advantage of their size advantage throughout the game.  If Raymar Morgan is healthy enough, this could be a 20-point outing for him.  It’s also a great opportunity for Delvon Roe to play 20+ minutes and score some points in the paint.  And, the over/under on MSU offensive rebounding percentage in this game is approximately 55%.

Kenpom predicts a 65-61 MSU victory in a 59-point game.  Regardless of how well MSU plays, I can almost guarantee this game will not make for exhilerating viewing.  Iowa ranks dead last in the league at 59.7 possessions per 40 minutes.  If the MSU guards can prevent the Iowa shooters from getting good looks, though, the viewing experience should be much more pleasant than last year’s game was.

Getting out of Iowa City with a win would put MSU at 7-1 in Big Ten play with a three-game home stretch to follow.  With Purdue pulling out a squeaker in Madison last night, there’s no margin for error in the conference title race at this point.

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We'll take it, but . . .

Posted in game recap, tagged , on October 4, 2008 | 3 Comments »

A win is a win.  And we’ll take this one.  But, from an analytical standpoint, there were as many things, if not more, to be worried about than there were positives to take from this game:

Good: Javon Ringer didn’t take the beating he has in previous games: 25 carries, 1 reception, no kick-off returns.

Bad: Ringer averaged only 3.6 yards per rushing attempt (91 yards on 25 carries).

Good: Brian Hoyer in the first half: 8-14 for 113 yards and a TD.

Bad*: Brian Hoyer in the second half: 5-10 for 69 yards an an INT.

*Or at least not quite as good

Good: Brett Swenson’s perfection on three field goal attempts.

Bad: The failure to convert 3 of 4 red zone trips into TDs.

Good: The defense did just enough to hold off the Iowa offense in the second half, despite being on the field for 16 minutes in a 22-and-a-half-minute span.

Bad: Otis Wiley and Chris Rucker both suffered injuries of unknown seriousness (Mark Dell, too?).

Good: Creating three turnovers–two of them when Iowa had reached the redzone.

Bad: Getting outgained by 34 yards.

Very, very good: Adam Decker’s solo tackle for a loss on fourth and inches.

Bad: If Decker doesn’t make that play, it’s hard to see how we win this game.

Stepping back from this game, it certainly feels good to be 5-1 and one of only three Big Ten teams with two conference wins.  But I think expectations have to be reasonable going forward.  MSU could very well be underdogs (at least narrowly) in 5 of their 6 remaining games.  As asserted here, a 7-5 regular season should not be considered a “late season collapse.”

At this point, it’s hard to identify what the strength of this team is.  Iowa showed the running game can be stymied by a physical defense.  And the passing game is still erratic.  First down stats:

  • In the first half, MSU ran the ball on 9 of 12 first down opportunities.  They gained a total of just 18 yards on those 9 runs and gained four yards or more on only 3 of the 9 attempts.
  • They shifted toward the pass somewhat in the second half, throwing on 5 of 11 first down opportunities.  Hoyer was 3-5 for 45 yards on those attempts.  After two first-down pass completions on the opening drive of the second half, though, MSU couldn’t sustain a drive for the rest of the half.  They picked up just one first down in their next four drives.
  • For the game, MSU gained only 40 yards on 15 first-down runs (2.7 yards/attempt).  Hoyer was 4-8 for 97 yards on first down passing attempts.  85 of those yards came on two passes.  The average return on a first down pass continues to be good, but the average is based on a few big plays, leaving a substantial probability of a second and 10 if MSU throws on first down.

The defense, meanwhile, has played just well enough to hold off opponents in the fourth quarter, but hasn’t been tested by a good, well-rounded offense since the Cal game.  Indiana, a team we gave up 29 points and 473 total yard to last week, only put up 7 points and 293 yards against Minnesota today.  And a secondary that was already suspect is now pretty banged up.

Anyway, I apologize for being such a downer following a beautiful, sunny day on which Michigan State won its homecoming game.  Maybe you guys can identify some positives indicators of future success I’m missing here.

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MSU-Iowa Links and Discussion Thread

Posted in football discussion, links, tagged , , on October 3, 2008 | 10 Comments »

Iowa comes in at 3-2, having narrowly lost their last two games to Pitt and Northwestern.  Sagarin says MSU by 9.  The FEI forecast says MSU 26 Iowa 21.  The latter prediction seems more on-target to me than the former.

Game time is noon on ESPN2.  I’ll be viewing this game in person with my Dad and two sons in a three-generation male-bonding experience.  Feel free to post your thoughts before, during, and/or after the game below.

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