Iowa State Scouting Report | The Boneyard

Iowa State Scouting Report

Hey Adrien!

Hey Adrien!

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Iowa State: 5-0
Kenpom Rating: 42​

Previous games:
  • Early season cupcake wins over IUPUI, North Carolina A&T and Milwaukee
  • 11/24 win over Villanova 81-79 in OT
    • Gabe Kalscheur: 23 points, 5 threes made, 4 rebounds, 3 assists
    • Osun Oshnniyi: 17 points, 8-10 from the field, 5 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 blocks
  • 11/25 win over North Carolina 70-65
    • Caleb Grill: 31 points, 7 threes made, no TOs
    • Jaren Holmes: 22 points, 4 rebounds, 6 assists, 2 steals

OFFENSE: 79th in efficiency
  • 15th in offensive rebounding
  • Don’t shoot a ton of threes (220th in 3PA ratio, and shoot 30.4%)
  • Efficient inside the arc (53.7 2p%, 79th in the nation)
  • Don’t get the the line often (294th in FTA/FGA)
  • Good ball movement (59.3% FGMs are assisted, 45th in the nation)

DEFENSE: 21st in efficiency
  • 2nd highest turnover ratio (30.5%!!)
  • Every other defensive metric ranks in the top-ten, except for…
  • Teams get to the line against them (44.6% FTA/FGA is 334th lowest in the nation)

What I love about their head coach TJ Otzelberger is that he’s not a system guy, he coaches to his talent. At South Dakota State, his teams played fast, shot a ton of threes but were pretty bad defensively. At UNLV, he had Bryce Hamilton, an incredible bucket getter, and played more of an iso-based, inside the arc halfcourt offense.

Prior to Otzelberger’s hiring, Iowa State was a dumpster fire under Steve Prohm, going 2-22 in his last year and 12-20 the year before. Year 1 with Otzelberger was 22-13, an insane turnaround.

In year 2 at Ames, the identity of Iowa State is clear: hard-working, tough with great guard play, a solid rotation of bigs and a stretch forward to help with opening up space inside.

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This will be a rock fight. First team to 65 points wins.

Another game where I like the matchup. Jaren Holmes and Osun Osunniyi are an excellent inside/outside duo with a lot of experience together from their four years together in Olean, but UConn did a nice job limiting their effectiveness when playing the Bonnies last season: Holmes scored 19, but gave up 5 turnovers. Osunniyi had 10 points, but no blocks.

Based on an excellent deep dive Q&A with Otzelberger from The Athletic their head coach builds his team defensively by how they generate pressure on an effort based defense. Having Karaban at the 4 allows Hurley to regularly put out four guys who can handle the ball well, something that North Carolina does not have playing two bigs (Bacot and Nance combined for seven turnovers).

This is a game where I like Jackson’s ability to do all the little things well: I imagine a game where he finishes with like 4 points, 8 boards, 4 assists, 2 steals and 2 blocks, plus lockdown defense shutting down Holmes.
 
Pretty crazy to think that the out opponents in the winners side of the bracket are Oregon, Bama, and ISU.

While Bamas bracket is MSU, UConn, UNC. Just on paper seems a lot stronger and longer term better for SOS.

And no I’m not suggesting a loss would have been better, duh. Just pointing out that losers side path on paper looks a lot better than winners bracket - which is weird.
 
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BlueJayFan said:
They aren’t that good. We beat the heck out of these guys in the secret scrimmage.

Take UConn and give the points.
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Was that this season? I thought we scrimmaged Harvard and Virginia.
 
BlueJayFan said:
They aren’t that good. We beat the heck out of these guys in the secret scrimmage.

Take UConn and give the points.
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this is what i am thinking! i think there's a realllly good chance that both nova and unc are overrated at this point in the year, which means that iowa state is basically unproven against a really strong opponent. knock on wood, but i like our chances.
 
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Hey Adrien! said:
I loving the shape of the end of UConn's non-con slate:

Five high-majors (Oregon, Alabama, Iowa State, Oklahoma State and Florida) and then a tune up game against LIU before conference play.
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Of these 5 high majors, Alabama and Iowa State are guarateed very good NCAA teams.

Oregon might be, just has to overcome their bad start.

I'm not sure how good Oklahoma State and Florida will be this year. Are they top 25 capable? They are both 4-2 right now.....
 
I watched only one game of theirs (UNC) and honestly have no clue what to say about them offensively. UNC did a good job of shutting down the paint but left Grill wide open way too many times. It was like Oregon leaving UConn's shooters open. Both Grill and UConn capitalized which skewed results. I mean ISU would have been crushed if Grill hadn't shot better than he had all year (ever?) but UNC's fault for really not defending him at all. The rest of the players on ISU looked OK. Their starting big is fairly big and mobile but got into way too big of a yapping fest with UNC and seems to only go one way. Got blocked a few times when he insisted on a shot when he should have passed, or countered to the other side. Their PG is steady, not flashy but seems to be a good floor general for them.

Defensively they are good. A bit frenetic. Lots of doubling and trapping. UNC did a pretty good job of splitting the traps for the first half of the game and getting pretty easy looks. UConn doesn't have that small quick guard to do that, but UConn does have more height than UNC at the ball-handling position. It will be interesting to see how Hurley combats that tactic from ISU.
 
I think the keys to the game are pretty simple.

Alabama is better than Iowa State. Will we come out with the same intensity and focus as we did against them? If yes, we will win.

Will we let off the gas because we assume we should win this? If yes, we’ll get blitzed early (not saying we don’t have another 14-0 run in us to get back in it)

We have the guards and wings to defend theirs. We have Adama Sanogo and they don’t. Play our game and play it hard and we should walk away tonight as champions
 
caw said:
I watched only one game of theirs (UNC) and honestly have no clue what to say about them offensively. UNC did a good job of shutting down the paint but left Grill wide open way too many times. It was like Oregon leaving UConn's shooters open. Both Grill and UConn capitalized which skewed results. I mean ISU would have been crushed if Grill hadn't shot better than he had all year (ever?) but UNC's fault for really not defending him at all. The rest of the players on ISU looked OK. Their starting big is fairly big and mobile but got into way too big of a yapping fest with UNC and seems to only go one way. Got blocked a few times when he insisted on a shot when he should have passed, or countered to the other side. Their PG is steady, not flashy but seems to be a good floor general for them.

Defensively they are good. A bit frenetic. Lots of doubling and trapping. UNC did a pretty good job of splitting the traps for the first half of the game and getting pretty easy looks. UConn doesn't have that small quick guard to do that, but UConn does have more height than UNC at the ball-handling position. It will be interesting to see how Hurley combats that tactic from ISU.
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We will be in his Grill I hope.
 
Jackson & Hawkins are the only 2 UConn players that played last year vs Holmes & Osunniyi. Sanogo didn't play (and neither did Martin). Osunniyi stats were only against Akok, Whaley as bigs and Polley/Jackson helping. I think he will find facing Sanogo/Clingan as more difficult.
 
Hey Adrien! said:
I loving the shape of the end of UConn's non-con slate:

Five high-majors (Oregon, Alabama, Iowa State, Oklahoma State and Florida) and then a tune up game against LIU before conference play.
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Honestly...I think it's pretty meh. Alabama will likely be the only Top 25 OOC they play, and with a down BE they may only get 3 Top 25 games all year: Alabama, Creighton, @Creighton. Florida, Oregon, and OSU are usually good teams—let alone Nova—so I'm not blaming the schedulers, but it'll end up being pretty weak overall given the bunnies we played.
 
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Ricker said:
Jackson & Hawkins are the only 2 UConn players that played last year vs Holmes & Osunniyi. Sanogo didn't play (and neither did Martin). Osunniyi stats were only against Akok, Whaley as bigs and Polley/Jackson helping. I think he will find facing Sanogo/Clingan as more difficult.
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Ossuniyi was actually a non-factor against UNC. Jones was the one going toe-to-toe against Bacot. But I think our duo is too much to handle for their duo. Overall UNC doesn't have the depth we do and wore out against them hence the 17-5 end of game capitulation.

Both Ossuniyi and Jones owned Villanova because Nova lacks interior presence.

We match up the best.
 
Hey Adrien! said:
I loving the shape of the end of UConn's non-con slate:

Five high-majors (Oregon, Alabama, Iowa State, Oklahoma State and Florida) and then a tune up game against LIU before conference play.
Expand ...
There’s one guaranteed NCAA team in there. Oklahoma St and Iowa St might get beat up by the Big 12, and Florida/Oregon have some bad losses already.

We need to get better at scheduling marquee opponents.
 
CTBasketball said:
There’s one guaranteed NCAA team in there. Oklahoma St and Iowa St might get beat up by the Big 12, and Florida/Oregon have some bad losses already.

We need to get better at scheduling marquee opponents.
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Oklahoma State is making the tournament and Iowa State should too. Oregon could easily go on a run here.
 
HuskyHawk said:
Oklahoma State is making the tournament and Iowa State should too. Oregon could easily go on a run here.
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It's pretty early in the season to be declaring these things. The B12 is tough and both of those teams are below Texas, Kansas, and Baylor at least.

Oregon can go on a run, sure. But UNC would have just been a better game than Iowa State for our resume, and given how poorly BE teams have played, and the bad losses picked up by Florida and Oklahoma State, the schedule ain't looking as good as we'd like. Dumping one or two of those cupcakes—especially now that we're recruiting like we are—would be a huge improvement going forward to bolster our resume when the rest of the conference—or random, normally very strong opponents—are down.
 
CTBasketball said:
There’s one guaranteed NCAA team in there. Oklahoma St and Iowa St might get beat up by the Big 12, and Florida/Oregon have some bad losses already.

We need to get better at scheduling marquee opponents.
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Most of these big name games I am sure were all expected to be very good when creating the schedule. They did a good job teams just aren’t as good as normal for now.
 
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mauconnfan said:
Most of these big name games I am sure were all expected to be very good when creating the schedule. They did a good job teams just aren’t as good as normal for now.
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I’d still prefer a home/home with a top team from a P5 than the extra cupcake.
 
tzznandrew said:
It's pretty early in the season to be declaring these things. The B12 is tough and both of those teams are below Texas, Kansas, and Baylor at least.

Oregon can go on a run, sure. But UNC would have just been a better game than Iowa State for our resume, and given how poorly BE teams have played, and the bad losses picked up by Florida and Oklahoma State, the schedule ain't looking as good as we'd like. Dumping one or two of those cupcakes—especially now that we're recruiting like we are—would be a huge improvement going forward to bolster our resume when the rest of the conference—or random, normally very strong opponents—are down.
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It is pretty early in the season to be declaring these things. Which also means it's pretty early in the season to be declaring these won't be good games on the schedule either like you're saying
 
HuskyHoosier said:
Pretty crazy to think that the out opponents in the winners side of the bracket are Oregon, Bama, and ISU.

While Bamas bracket is MSU, UConn, UNC. Just on paper seems a lot stronger and longer term better for SOS.

And no I’m not suggesting a loss would have been better, duh. Just pointing out that losers side path on paper looks a lot better than winners bracket - which is weird.
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The "look" of that is really based on the presumptions driving early season rankings. Much more will shake out as the season progresses.

The clearest example here is UNC. Consensus #1 at the start of the season, but a paper tiger in reality.
 
Alabama is favored versus UNC. I feel good about this one.
 
CTBasketball said:
There’s one guaranteed NCAA team in there. Oklahoma St and Iowa St might get beat up by the Big 12, and Florida/Oregon have some bad losses already.

We need to get better at scheduling marquee opponents.
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It’s honestly not our fault UNC and MSU pissed the bed in the PKI. Lol

Winning this should be a big statement in the manner we did it. These games haven’t been close.
 
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