Look, it's just absolutely insane to be complaining about being 17-2 and 8-0. Jenni B was a really nice player at Iowa and also did a really nice job at Drake. Looks like she's done a great job at Oklahoma and yes, she kicked Jan's *** last year in the tournament. She might possibly be a better coach, but who knows what happened in the job hiring process. If she was our coach would she be better than 17-2 and 8-0 this year? Jan was a helluva player and knows basketball, she was with Bluder forever at both Drake and Iowa. Of course you should not blow a 17 pt lead or whatever it was in the last 3-4 minutes. It's basically almost impossible. And of course we have things to work on. But what team besides Uconn even in the top 10 doesn't?
*****Iowa vs Maryland Game Thread*****
- Thread starter QChawks
- Start date
Those 3 minutes were brutal and understandably warrant criticism, but a fair analysis also needs to include the fact that Iowa outplayed a top 15 team on their home court for 42 of 45 minutes. Certainly some very good coaching and preparation contributed to that. Overall that was a very impressive win and the coaches and players deserve major praise.
Do you believe she would be above criticism from our resident coaches with a 15-4 record and 2 losses at home?
Yes, and its fantastic. And overall I think you'd have to be an idiot not to be pleased with where this team is, and JJ has done a pretty darn good job. As of this moment she be a heavy favorite to be coach of the year in the B1G I'd think. Its just that like Houston, Deal has been making great strides on both ends of the floor. Every game where she's played more minutes she's looked better and better. I get that its Jans decision. We're just discussing the game after the fact. Still having three "senior leaders" on the floor and watching that collapse, (sorry, but theres no other way to explain it), is darn troubling. Those girls have played in over a 100 games and you'd think they'd be too experienced to just fall apart like that. Cudo's to Kylie for making those late free throws......She's not playing in crunch time because Jan trusts her starters more. It is what it is. It was pretty much a team collapse at the end of the 4th quarter. With that said, they beat the #15 team on the road for their 4th Big10 road win in as many tries. She must be doing something right.
Ask me that question after the UCLA game.
OU lost by 14 points vs the Bruins in November.
I don't understand the "defend JJ at all costs" crowd? That meltdown last evening might have been the lead story on ESPN had Iowa lost.
I believe it is the support the coach and team you have crowd, not the defend Jan Jensen crowd.
I believe that Iowa actually won last night and that i wouldn't care what ESPN wrote had Iowa lost.
It was definitely a collapse, but again, the players she had on the floor had the lowest conference turnover rates and were also arguably the best defenders. Deal has improved and she's been getting more minutes as a result, but none of the freshmen got minutes after Houston left and Houston was only in there in the 4th quarter because Ava had 4 fouls.
Defend at all costs??? Does JJ really need to be defended? They're 17-2 and 8-0 in her second season at the helm. She has a young team that she built in a position to contend for the Big Ten title and a top 2 or 3 seed in the NCAA with significant contributions from sophomores and freshmen. The real meltdown is coming from delusional fans who are apoplectic because the team "almost lost" to a top 15 opponent on the road. Get a freaking grip people.
Iowa had a 5 game losing streak last year and the bitching, complaining and player blaming and especially Jan and her staff this year during the current winning streak seems worse to me. I doubt very much any of you would have guts enough to say some of these things to the players or coaches if you met them on the street.
Is that really surprising? And to be honest, some of these post are simply opinions, and some are just purely facts beyond dispute but they are certainly topic of discussion, you know like were on the womens basketball forum. Ex: Hannah has basically reverted back pretty much to her early years from the free throw line. She had made some decent progress through part of last year, and yet now she's back in that 50ish%. Sorry but thats an issue, and its going to be discussed since she no doubt shoots the most free throws of anyone on the team, and its probably going to cost us a game sometime if we aren't lucky.
Jenni's Oklahoma team was up 6 with three minutes to go last night then gave up an 8-0 run where they turned the ball over on three out of four possessions and ended up needing a late put back just to force OT.
That meltdown would have lead SportsCenter. Thankfully Jenni and Jan are good coaches who were able to right the ship and get the win.
The win was great, the last 3 min of regulation was really really bad bb by the hawks. They were very lucky that the terps with all the momentum didn't win in ot. Which probably 99% of the people on here thought they would. There is no excuse for blowing a 17 pt lead with 2:55 left, none. That was some of the most piss poor bb play I've ever witnessed, that's hard to overlook
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She was slow getting it in a number of times. I was wondering if she somehow thought the clock was running? I was yelling for her to not let them set their defense!!!
C'mon Kurt. That's just crazy talk. They literally just upset (remember they were underdogs with a 35% chance to win according to ESPN) a top 15 opponent on the road and you're telling everyone that winning isn't all that matters for a team that is now 8-0 in conference play for the first time in 30 years. Even Bluder in her 24 years with the best college player in history never had an 8-0 conference record. But hey, that was a really bad 3 minutes of basketball so we're going to focus on that instead of this run which just a few months ago seemed unfathomable.
What you are missing is the fact that after all this failure by Iowa, the team and staff regrouped and pretty much dominated the OT period. Why did this happen?
On the road no less. In other news, Miami, OH remained one of only 3 undefeated teams on the men's side after blowing a 14 point lead at Kent State but prevailing in OT. Sound familiar?
Miami (Ohio) Survives on the Road in Overtime to Move to Perfect 20–0 on Season
The RedHawks are one of three men’s basketball teams with a perfect record.
www.si.com
Agree. I think Iowa was lucky that the end of regulation came when it did. One more minute of regulation would have resulted in an Iowa loss in my opinion. That stopped Maryland's momentum and gave the Hawks a chance to reset.
Press offense is an interesting two sided situation. Some coaches prefer their team to get the ball in quickly to beat the press setting up and some coaches prefer their team gets organized in the right positions to be more in control. Iowa prefers their team latter. We can debate each side.
Also some teams that press will allow a quick easy inbound pass to allow a quick double team of the person receiving the ball. So at times the easiest option may not be the best option.
I'll just add this to the comments here and on different sports show that we were NEVER 8-0 with CC22. I'd say with the exception of adding UCLA the league's top teams are not as good as they were in 22-24 years. Now some of that is injury issues for teams like Maryland, but Maryland is not as good as that one, (if we had the collapse against that team we'd have lost period), and Indiana is a shell of the team we had such a great rivalry with. I'll hold off on OSU but they lost some real talent as well from those teams. I'd say MSU is better. Michigan is better, we'll find out soon.
I won't pretend to have a lot of knowledge about the strength of those teams vs the teams Iowa has been facing today, and I don't know that anyone can make those judgements definitively. 2024 Iowa lost to 16th ranked OSU in their 9th game. Iowa has already beaten a net 8 ranked team in MSU at home and a 14th ranked Maryland on the road. The 2026 Big10 is predicted to place 12 teams in the tournament and the top 7 teams sans Iowa have a combined record of 117-18. That seems pretty good. I doubt 2 years ago was much better if at all. Sunday is another great test.
I'm not saying that their not good teams. Not at all. Just adding Maryland was missing 4 players (a couple of starters). Garzon is a good complimentary player as she was at Indiana, but she's not "the star" people are making her out to be. Indiana was a dogfight every time we played them, with Holmes and all the Barbies. Wisconsin's one real star went to UConn. I'll be interested to see how we do with Michigan. Their one of the teams that has really improved.
I should have clarified my prior comment that I wasn't trying to imply that this team was better than the CC22 team. My point was that it demonstrates just how difficult and rare it is for any team, regardless of how good they are to get 8 games into the conference schedule without a loss.
Obviously?? I guess I'm just bristling a bit at the number of articles I'm seeing the last week that this team did something that the teams with CC22 never did, and they're shooting for a title, "something Iowa never did with Caitlin Clark" was the exact quote. I mean I'd be thrilled if that happened, but what Iowa did in that two year run was amazing, and it seems like people are just writing stuff now continuing the "well Clark never did that" theme. If this young team warts and all gets to the elite 8 or beyond, Jan should be national coach of the year. As it is I think she she's the leader right now for B1G coach of the year.....
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