I haven’t said much the last couple of games because this team is who I thought they were.
Love Pike, he has been the right guy for us and still very excited for next year, but he deserves a fair amount of criticism for this year.
Some comments on the game and this season:
-Fran McCaffery can beat Pike’s defense in his sleep. Iowa waits for us to overplay the ball, and then swings the ball to the open shooter. This has happened again and again over the past several years, and we never adjust and change our defense. Anyone who wants the blueprint on how to beat us show just watch game film of us against Iowa over the past several years.
-Pike did not have this team ready to play at the start off the season, every though we had several weeks of extra practice due to the overseas trip, and he doesn’t have the team ready to play at the start of games, as we consistently fall behind early behind awful shooting to start games. Hopefully Pike has learned his lesson about bringing in a bunch of players coming off of severe injuries and expecting much from them.
-Pike hasn’t adapted his offense to the players he has. Maybe next year with Dylan and Ace, everything will
be fine playing a lot of iso ball, because they can consistently beat people one on one, or even two on one. But this team does not have those capabilities. This year‘s team needs help getting some good looks. Right now teams are daring us to shoot from the outside and packing it in so we get nothing inside. Our shooters, Hyatt, Gavin, and Noah should be coming off screens to get better shots so teams have to play us all over the court to open up lanes to the basket and also create more opportunities in the paint.