Post by GhostMod 5000 on Feb 25, 2014 17:16:04 GMT -6
This rant is dedicated to a certain section of Iowa fandom that claims criticism of the way this season has progressed is unacceptable. You know their refrains; "We haven't been to the tournament since 2006", "I'm just happy to be ranked after the dark times", and my favorite, "What, do you want Lick to come back". The common element to all of this is that since Iowa has been terrible in the recent past, we should celebrate any success, and ignore any warts; The thought being that we know it can be so much worse, so why complain when we lose and are still ranked and still a tournament team.
To me, this is an terrible way to think. While success certainly should be celebrated, and we have come a long way since the darkest point in recent Iowa basketball history, it is not a all-encompassing shield to protect the program, and more specifically the coach, from criticism. Success should engender a desire for more success, not a toleration of mediocrity because it's better than before. And yes, I said the word "Mediocre". My argument rests on the fact that Iowa basketball is currently mediocre, that mediocrity rests on the the actions of the coaching staff, and this mediocrity will only continue with the bizarre complacency that the fan base has developed.
The first point is that we have come a long way since the unholy terror of the Lick years, and that is a very good thing. And while that in itself is an achievement, that was never the goal. The goal isn't to be a not-terrible program, the goal is to be a great program. While we have achieved the former, I see no movement towards the latter. Coach McCaffery is in the 4th year of his regime, and things have certainly improved over that time. Iowa is no longer a laughingstock basement dweller. Besides that, what is our identity? Think about it. Pretty good but not terrible? That's the stamp that Iowa has had under McCaffery. He put in hard work to build up the program, and we are at year 4 of the rebuild, and we are seeing results. However, those results are very, very inconsistent, and show no signs of changing.
In his forth year, Iowa is currently has 6 players who are juniors or seniors playing 15 or more minutes a game(7 if you count Jared Uthoff, an academic junior). These players are 100% McCaffery players, playing McCaffery's system for years. You would expect there to be a great deal of consistency and leadership among those players, but there isn't. Why is this? I wish I knew. There are many instances during a game when the players on the court look lost. Why is this happening on a very, very experienced team with coaching continuity? How does a veteran team fall apart at nearly every opportunity? I could accept the fact that we are being beaten on the court physically, which is what happened at Michigan. But why is this deep experienced team consistently fail mentally, like at Iowa State, home against Michigan St., Ohio St., and Wisconsin?
I see it as a failure of leadership. This is both on the coaching staff and the players. The players are at fault because it is clear no one has stepped up to be THE GUY when it matter most. We have to come to accept that Roy Marble will not be the Jarryd Cole of this squad. He might go off for 30 one night, but he'll probably go 3-14 the next night. Marble checks out mentally of the game all the time, so he is obviously not suited for a leadership role. So if your best player, senior captain can't stand up, any other leadership on the team will seem false on the surface.
However, the real failure of leadership is by the coaching staff. How can we expect our players to be calm and focused when their coach is most famous for his irrational tirades? The players will not remain composed when their coaches do not set and follow the example for them. Coach McCaffery is good at winning the press conferences. He says the right things, and he sticks by his players, and he is accessible to fans...But that's not enough for me. This isn't Iowa State. I don't want to judge a coach by his good performance off the court. I want to see him do the right things on the court. Lately, I don't see this. Others may say "At least we don't lose games we are supposed to win anymore". That's fine and good, but I am not going to give credit to anyone for winning games they're supposed to win.
All of the games we have lost to this year were very good teams. They're all ranked, and for the most part, we played each team tough. Almost winning isn't good enough. Again, this isn't Iowa State. You cannot consider yourself a good team if you beat all of the bad teams before you, but lose to the good ones. And while we have beat a few good teams along the way, we've lost a majority of them. As of right now, we're 2-7 against teams that are ranked. Even more disturbing, we're 1-3 against ranked teams we've played at home. Like I said at the beginning, my premise is that this team is mediocre. The proof is in the pudding. What's more maddening is that fact we've been so close, yet have failed for reasons that seem to escape logic. Again, this appears to be a failure of coaching leadership.
I can hear it now, "Well then, maybe you'd like to go back to Lick. I'm happy with Fran". Is there a more ridiculous path of logic than that? It's like saying that if you believe your car needs a tune up, you obviously want to go back to the horse and buggy. Believe it or not, there is a plane of existence besides those two options, and I am sure Fran can achieve this, if he's willing to adapt and change, rather than just do it his own way no matter what. So we're back from the Lick malaise. So what? What's next? I hate to again compare ourselves to Iowa State, but if you look at their program, they've been rebuilding the same time we did. Granted, Iowa started further behind than them, so it has taken us longer to catch up, but if you look at the comparison, it does not look good for us. Iowa fans praised Fran for doing it "The right way", by building a program slowly and developing four year players and depth into a tight and cohesive team that the fans love and can do damage in tournament time. The right way doesn't appear right...
Iowa State, with their mish-mash of cast-offs, transfers, and recruits seem to have surpassed Iowa's team at the very time we should be reaping the benefits of our patient approach. While we are, in a way, they have blown by us. How is this possible? We have six upperclassmen playing significant minutes, while only one rotation player on Iowa State has been with the program longer than 2 years. However, they have a much better record against ranked teams, and they have won close games against tough opponents like Texas, Oklahoma, and yes, even Iowa. This was the year that our depth and experience is supposed to pay off, but the dividends seem pretty paltry compared to what ISU has achieved using their method. I am not saying that the Iowa State way is better. What I am saying is that the way we executed out plan seems to have stalled.
Still, Iowa is ranked. We still sit high upon the conference standings, although we won't win the conference (although that wasn't really a realistic goal). Even so, that achievement seems rather hollow. This might be the worst the Big 10 has been in a decade. As of this writing, we stand only 1/2 game ahead of Nebraska in the standings. I say this not to discredit Iowa's achievements, but to highlight how weak this league truly is. That only makes our failure to put away the good teams we face even worse, since many of our numerous wins are against terrible competition, which makes the prospects of a possible 25 win season seem empty.
So, in conclusion, I am not just happy we are making the tournament. I feel this team could have, and should have achieved so much more than they have this season. While it is possible they could prove me wrong in the future with a big tournament run, given our recent history, I sincerely doubt it. The problems I mentioned in this rant are systemic, and not something that will be corrected on the fly in March. And I didn't even get into the issues that I believe can be fixed, but probably won't be (The illogical substitution patterns, using players out of position, designing plays to get shooters shots, smarter use of time outs). What will probably happen is that we beat a bunny in the first round, then face a tough team and lose a close one, like we almost always do. This season was supposed to be the reward for years of patience, but that reward seems unsatisfying. And even worse, I feel more patience is due in the horizon.
/rant
//tl;dr
//didn't proofread
To me, this is an terrible way to think. While success certainly should be celebrated, and we have come a long way since the darkest point in recent Iowa basketball history, it is not a all-encompassing shield to protect the program, and more specifically the coach, from criticism. Success should engender a desire for more success, not a toleration of mediocrity because it's better than before. And yes, I said the word "Mediocre". My argument rests on the fact that Iowa basketball is currently mediocre, that mediocrity rests on the the actions of the coaching staff, and this mediocrity will only continue with the bizarre complacency that the fan base has developed.
The first point is that we have come a long way since the unholy terror of the Lick years, and that is a very good thing. And while that in itself is an achievement, that was never the goal. The goal isn't to be a not-terrible program, the goal is to be a great program. While we have achieved the former, I see no movement towards the latter. Coach McCaffery is in the 4th year of his regime, and things have certainly improved over that time. Iowa is no longer a laughingstock basement dweller. Besides that, what is our identity? Think about it. Pretty good but not terrible? That's the stamp that Iowa has had under McCaffery. He put in hard work to build up the program, and we are at year 4 of the rebuild, and we are seeing results. However, those results are very, very inconsistent, and show no signs of changing.
In his forth year, Iowa is currently has 6 players who are juniors or seniors playing 15 or more minutes a game(7 if you count Jared Uthoff, an academic junior). These players are 100% McCaffery players, playing McCaffery's system for years. You would expect there to be a great deal of consistency and leadership among those players, but there isn't. Why is this? I wish I knew. There are many instances during a game when the players on the court look lost. Why is this happening on a very, very experienced team with coaching continuity? How does a veteran team fall apart at nearly every opportunity? I could accept the fact that we are being beaten on the court physically, which is what happened at Michigan. But why is this deep experienced team consistently fail mentally, like at Iowa State, home against Michigan St., Ohio St., and Wisconsin?
I see it as a failure of leadership. This is both on the coaching staff and the players. The players are at fault because it is clear no one has stepped up to be THE GUY when it matter most. We have to come to accept that Roy Marble will not be the Jarryd Cole of this squad. He might go off for 30 one night, but he'll probably go 3-14 the next night. Marble checks out mentally of the game all the time, so he is obviously not suited for a leadership role. So if your best player, senior captain can't stand up, any other leadership on the team will seem false on the surface.
However, the real failure of leadership is by the coaching staff. How can we expect our players to be calm and focused when their coach is most famous for his irrational tirades? The players will not remain composed when their coaches do not set and follow the example for them. Coach McCaffery is good at winning the press conferences. He says the right things, and he sticks by his players, and he is accessible to fans...But that's not enough for me. This isn't Iowa State. I don't want to judge a coach by his good performance off the court. I want to see him do the right things on the court. Lately, I don't see this. Others may say "At least we don't lose games we are supposed to win anymore". That's fine and good, but I am not going to give credit to anyone for winning games they're supposed to win.
All of the games we have lost to this year were very good teams. They're all ranked, and for the most part, we played each team tough. Almost winning isn't good enough. Again, this isn't Iowa State. You cannot consider yourself a good team if you beat all of the bad teams before you, but lose to the good ones. And while we have beat a few good teams along the way, we've lost a majority of them. As of right now, we're 2-7 against teams that are ranked. Even more disturbing, we're 1-3 against ranked teams we've played at home. Like I said at the beginning, my premise is that this team is mediocre. The proof is in the pudding. What's more maddening is that fact we've been so close, yet have failed for reasons that seem to escape logic. Again, this appears to be a failure of coaching leadership.
I can hear it now, "Well then, maybe you'd like to go back to Lick. I'm happy with Fran". Is there a more ridiculous path of logic than that? It's like saying that if you believe your car needs a tune up, you obviously want to go back to the horse and buggy. Believe it or not, there is a plane of existence besides those two options, and I am sure Fran can achieve this, if he's willing to adapt and change, rather than just do it his own way no matter what. So we're back from the Lick malaise. So what? What's next? I hate to again compare ourselves to Iowa State, but if you look at their program, they've been rebuilding the same time we did. Granted, Iowa started further behind than them, so it has taken us longer to catch up, but if you look at the comparison, it does not look good for us. Iowa fans praised Fran for doing it "The right way", by building a program slowly and developing four year players and depth into a tight and cohesive team that the fans love and can do damage in tournament time. The right way doesn't appear right...
Iowa State, with their mish-mash of cast-offs, transfers, and recruits seem to have surpassed Iowa's team at the very time we should be reaping the benefits of our patient approach. While we are, in a way, they have blown by us. How is this possible? We have six upperclassmen playing significant minutes, while only one rotation player on Iowa State has been with the program longer than 2 years. However, they have a much better record against ranked teams, and they have won close games against tough opponents like Texas, Oklahoma, and yes, even Iowa. This was the year that our depth and experience is supposed to pay off, but the dividends seem pretty paltry compared to what ISU has achieved using their method. I am not saying that the Iowa State way is better. What I am saying is that the way we executed out plan seems to have stalled.
Still, Iowa is ranked. We still sit high upon the conference standings, although we won't win the conference (although that wasn't really a realistic goal). Even so, that achievement seems rather hollow. This might be the worst the Big 10 has been in a decade. As of this writing, we stand only 1/2 game ahead of Nebraska in the standings. I say this not to discredit Iowa's achievements, but to highlight how weak this league truly is. That only makes our failure to put away the good teams we face even worse, since many of our numerous wins are against terrible competition, which makes the prospects of a possible 25 win season seem empty.
So, in conclusion, I am not just happy we are making the tournament. I feel this team could have, and should have achieved so much more than they have this season. While it is possible they could prove me wrong in the future with a big tournament run, given our recent history, I sincerely doubt it. The problems I mentioned in this rant are systemic, and not something that will be corrected on the fly in March. And I didn't even get into the issues that I believe can be fixed, but probably won't be (The illogical substitution patterns, using players out of position, designing plays to get shooters shots, smarter use of time outs). What will probably happen is that we beat a bunny in the first round, then face a tough team and lose a close one, like we almost always do. This season was supposed to be the reward for years of patience, but that reward seems unsatisfying. And even worse, I feel more patience is due in the horizon.
/rant
//tl;dr
//didn't proofread