Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - How Iowa can beat Purdue | Luka Garza has a fun matchup ahead | Why CJ Fredrick is the unsung star of this team

Episode Date: February 4, 2020

Can Iowa win on the road versus Purdue? With this team, anything can happen, but it starts with the matchup down low between Garza and Purdue's two big men. We also touch on why CJ Fredrick is such a huge factor in this game. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I thank God I was born on the good arms of the Midwest, and not on the battlefields of the U.S. It's a time of panic, and it's intercepted! It's picked off right away! Intercepted by Marty Hooker! Pick six! Eight seconds into the game! Buffen sets up deep in the pocket, goes down the field for Smith!

Oh! He's got it! Smith! Touchdown. 85 yards. High on. Touchdown, 10. Taking a shot in the end zone.

It is caught. No offense. Touchdown. That's either one or you have it. Go ahead and three. Yes. Two-point lead for the Hawkeyes. Welcome to a Tuesday morning episode of the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast,

your daily podcast covering your Iowa Hawkeyes on the Locked On Sports Network. As always, I am your host, Andrew Wade, and we are back for another riveting episode of the Locked On Hawkeyesyes podcast and we are going to be basically focusing entirely on the men's basketball team. Not a ton of events coming up in the next day, so going to be focusing on that. Just a quick reminder that I am going on vacation. I'm going to be joining a bunch of friends down in Mexico, drinking lots of alcoholic beverages on a beach and enjoying myself for a friend's wedding. So for the next couple of days, we're going to have some great content coming at you,

but it's not going to be extremely timely, right? I'm not going to be able to provide you a Purdue analysis after the game. I'm not going to be able to provide you really any analysis after today, but we do have some really great episodes. So on tomorrow's episode, we're doing a full recruiting bonanza. First, I'm going to focus on what is happening in this class of 2020, what to expect on National Letter of Intent Day, and how this class breaks down. Then we're going to jump into four interviews with Deuce Hogan, Tyler Ellsbury, Andrew Wilson, and Elijah Yelverton, four recruits in the class of 2020. Three scholarship guys, one preferred walk-on guys, talking about

their experience with the Iowa Hawkeyes. So it's an episode that you're not going to want to miss. It's a bit lengthier than our typical episodes, but I think you're going to really enjoy it and appreciate it. And then on Thursday, we have Cody Hills, the founder of Iowa Sim, the simulation event that's taking place every single week prior to an Iowa football game. And last year, he actually was able to raise thousands of dollars for the Children's Hospital. So we're going to have him on the show on Thursday and talk about his experience starting Iowa Sim. And then how it kind of evolved into a charitable cause. And what his expectations are for future growth of that cool platform that he currently has.

So that is on Wednesday and Thursday's episodes. Make sure to check out that. Today's episode, like I said, is going to be all basketball. Before we get into that, though, let's take care of a few housekeeping items. If you have listened to this before but you haven't subscribed, please do so. And if you love the show, please let other folks know. Please give us a five-star review on iTunes, Google, Spotify, or the brand-new Himalaya Podcast app and tell your friends and family about the show.

And make sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Our Instagram has been a little bit dormant lately. I totally get it. But we are going to start posting some more content on there. I've had a transitionary period with me and Zach trying to get that brought back over to my ownership

so I can start posting some stuff. Zach was really helpful with that. I just hadn't had a chance to reach out to him on it. So we're going to be posting more stuff on Instagram going forward, so make sure to check that out. And obviously we're very active on Twitter and Facebook. All right, let's go for it. All right, so first off, before we touch on basketball,

I want to quickly make note that the men's wrestling team is at Michigan this weekend. It should be an easy win for them. And the women's basketball team has a game against Nebraska at Carver on Thursday and they go on the road to play Purdue on Sunday so make sure to check out and support the women's basketball team looking to rebound after a tough loss to Michigan this past weekend and on to the men's game that takes place tomorrow evening Iowa versus versus Purdue, a road game for Iowa. And as we've mentioned almost every single episode, road games are darn near impossible in the Big Ten.

It is tough to win on the road. We've seen Nebraska take down quality teams like the Iowa Hawkeyes on the road. Nebraska sucks, right? So it is tough to win on the road, and Iowa has to go to Purdue to win. And Purdue has been the definition of confusing. They have some great wins. They have some terrible losses. And overall in their season, they are 12-10, 8th in the Big Ten.

They're not contending for a Big Ten title like Iowa is, which is why Iowa needs this win, especially on the road. They could make the NCAA tournament. Right now, their resume is a little bit iffy. They need some big wins down the road to get in there. According to the net rankings, they are 39th with only two Quadrant I wins and eight Quadrant I losses. According to Kempom, they are 28th, 77th in offensive efficiency, and 16th in defensive

efficiency. But let's look at their games they've lost they've lost two home games, Texas and Illinois otherwise they've lost to Illinois twice including that home game Nebraska, Rutgers, Maryland and Michigan, they've also though beaten Wisconsin, Michigan State and Minnesota

those last three games all at home so that makes it very interesting for the Hawks. They're coming off a good win over Illinois and they can't let the intensity down. And if we've learned anything from this Iowa Hawkeye team, they are not going to go on the road and lay an egg just for the sake of laying an egg.

They're going to come out competitive. They're going to come out fired up. They've got an attitude about them that makes it fun to watch them because you know if something happens if there's some adversity on the road, which there almost always is, they can handle it and they can take it on. But this is going to be a really interesting game for Iowa. There's parts of me that thinks Iowa matches up incredibly well, and there's parts of me

that get a little bit concerned about Purdue. So I want to touch on that. That is going to be coming up though in just a few short seconds after I take a quick break and drop in a few announcements from our sponsors. We are back to cover the Iowa basketball game versus Purdue. And as I was saying, there's some things that make me think this could be a pretty good game for Iowa to win. There's also some things that make me think Purdue could have Iowa's number. When I look at what kind of stood out about Purdue when they've won big games, notably against Michigan

State, and when they've lost bad games, notably against Nebraska, is their three-point shooting and their three-point shooting defense. So against Michigan State, the Spartans shot just 12.5% from three-point. They were 2-16. They also turned the ball over 18 times. Purdue, meanwhile, hit 36% of their threes. Nebraska, when they lost to Nebraska, they shot just 17% from three and allowed Nebraska to shoot 36%. And when you look at Kempom, defense is what really stands out

for the Purdue Boilermakers. Currently, offensively speaking, as I said earlier, they're 77th in offense and 16th in defense. So this is a good defensive team, a team that could give Iowa some troubles. They have a lot of length. They're one of the taller teams in the Big Ten. And I think the big matchup I'm really interested in is what's going to happen down low. And I think the big matchup I'm really interested in is what's going to happen down low. We've seen Luka Garza just get a plethora of different looks and different adjustments to try to scale him back. Against Illinois, they were really sagging off from the perimeter, attacking Luka Garza

whenever he got the ball. And they had a very good center in Kofi Kochburn, who I thought did a pretty solid job, a nice job against Luka Garza when he was in the game. But Garza was able to get him into foul trouble pretty early, which kind of changed the course of the game. Perdue, though, does a good job of defending the three-pointer, and this is the thing. Luka Garza is undoubtedly a contender for the National Player of the Year award. I think he should be considered the frontrunner for what he's doing with the Iowa Hawkeyes. And we can touch on that a little bit later. But the big thing here is ultimately Iowa can't just rely on Luka. They need some shooters to make some shots from behind the arc. And as we've seen, Purdue, when they can

do that, when they can defend the three-point well, they have a chance of winning the game. If they don't, they have a chance of losing the game, as with any team, but specifically with Purdue. That is a big prevalent thing that I noticed in their wins and losses. According to Kempom, they are the 12th best team in the nation in defending the three-pointer, which is why it will be even more important for Luka Garza to get going so he can kick out passes to the guys on the arc, the C.J. Fredericks, the Joe Wieskamps, hell, even the Connor McCaffreys, to shoot a couple nice shots and start getting that defense to get a little bit confused on their heels as they're not sure what to do from that angle.

Again, as I talked about, the matchup with Luka Garza is going to be really interesting though because there's really the yin and the yang of Purdue. Currently, their starting center is 6'9", 270 pound Travian Williams. He is averaging 11.3 points per game, which is tops on the Purdue Boilermakers, 7.7 rebounds per game and 1.4 assists. His offensive rating is eighth nationally and his defensive rating is 28th nationally. So a good guy, um, offensively and defensively down low, A slightly undersized guy, and just judging from the size of him, my guess is not an overly athletic being at that center position. So when Luka Garza is going up against Travian Williams,

I think his quickness is actually going to be an advantage for him, and then also his ability to step out and shoot the three-pointers is going to be huge. We saw Luka Garza hit a career-high for three-pointers in the past game against Illinois. If he can continue that hot streak, and he's been hot the last six, seven games from behind the arc, that'll be huge for the Hawks because what's going to happen is Travian Williams is going to need to step out on the perimeter to try to take on Luka Garza. If he does that, that opens up and frees the middle for the, you know, the basically, you know, the basket for Iowa's perimeter players, like a Joe Toussaint to drive to the basket.

And we saw against Illinois, you know, Toussaint got yanked pretty early and didn't play a lot of minutes because he wasn't able to help Iowa spread out the court as much with Luka Garza. So that'll be interesting to see how that impacts the game flow. If Luka Garza can step back and kind of create that space for Iowa, does Joe Toussaint go down? Does it basically create an in-and-out game where we have a Conor McCaffrey or Toussaint

dishing out to a 6'11 Luka Garza that's on the perimeter or a Ryan Creener that's on the perimeter? So that'll be one matchup to watch. The other matchup is when Travion Williams is out, Matt Harms comes in, a 7'3 center who is the backup for Purdue. He is 15th nationally in block percentage. When he's down in the lane, that is going to be really difficult for Iowa to go over him. Think of a Michigan's John Teske, for example. A tall guy who really clogs up that lane and actually has 4-5 inches on Luka Garza. So how does Luka Garza handle that

matchup going against a guy who's probably the biggest guy he'll face this season? I do think it actually kind of equates well for Garza because he's so nimble, deceptively nimble and deceptively athletic. And Garza has a nice way of finding unique angles to get the ball in the basket. And he has an array of moves that he can use to get himself and create himself some space to shoot the ball. So with Harms, the interesting thing here is that he can actually shoot the three as well, and Luka Garza isn't going to be able to stretch the court as much as he would with Atreavion Williams, but it'll be important for him to get Harms in foul trouble and get him kind of going backwards and not knowing what to do with Garza's moves. And that leads me to my next point.

This will be huge. If Garza can get these guys in foul trouble, that'll really change the course of the game. As we saw with Kofi Kochburn, as soon as Garza was able to get him into some foul trouble, that really started, you started seeing, you know, Garza's game pick up and get better and better and better and start scoring more points and be more of an effective weapon offensively. So that'll be a huge matchup for the Hawks in this game. One that I'm really looking forward to as we've really been every single game. Luka Garza is just a guy that you have to watch. If you don't watch him, you're missing out because he's played so spectacularly this year. And as of right now, he's the number one player on Ken Palm's national player of the year list. And like I said, I think

if I was able to go to the sweet 16 or hell even further, Luka Garza has to be the frontrunner or has to win the award. He has to be the National Player of the Year. What he's doing is just fantastic. He's going up against tough defenses night in and night out, and he's going up against consistent double teams and triple teams to make sure that he is not the guy who is beating other teams. And yet, despite all of that, he's ranked, I believe, fourth in the country in scoring,

first in the Big Ten, averaging double-digit rebounds per game. You gotta love that. You gotta love seeing that. Coming up, though, in just a few short seconds, we're going to actually touch on a little bit more about this Iowa-Purdue game. Just a few more things I want to make sure I cover before we close out the show for today.

So stay tuned after a few messages from our sponsors. We are back with our third and final segment of the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. And just closing out some of the discussion on the Iowa-Purdue game, I focused heavily on the battle down low. One thing to note, like I said, Purdue is a taller team. They have some length across their wing positions, even at the point guard position. So Iowa does typically match up well with those guys simply because they do have the height and the athleticism. And like I said, it'll come down to can Iowa hit some shots from behind the arc. And that starts with CJ

Frederick and Joe Wieskamp. Frederick is playing, he's having one of the more under the radar seasons right now. He's hitting 46% of his three-point shots, which is 16th best in the nation. His effective field goal percentage is 21st in the nation, and his offensive rating is 19th in the nation. That is damn impressive for a redshirt freshman, a guy who didn't play at all last year because he did redshirt. But I think it's important for people to understand that part of that was the fact that he got hurt last year early on in the season,

and they decided to redshirt him. There's a lot of depth on the Iowa Hawkeye team, but I really truly think, and this is something we talked about on yesterday's show as well. The reason why Isaiah Moss left was because Frederick was going to get playing time. He was going to take Moss's spot. And I completely agree with that. Even when you look at the stats from this year, what I think is interesting is the fact that Moss is not even starting at Kansas. even when you look at the stats from this year, what I think is interesting is the fact that Moss is not even starting at Kansas. He's also hitting just 36% of his three-point attempts. He's a 374th best offensive rating. But as we saw at Iowa, you know, the defensive, the defense wasn't always there for Isaiah Moss. When he wasn't hot, he was basically ineffective. Whereas Frederick is able to

turn it on if he needs to, or turn it on if he wants to, I guess. Obviously anyone would want to, but what I mean is basically just because he's shooting poorly for a little bit of the game doesn't mean that's going to be his entire game whereas Moss would be lost for four entire quarter four or no sorry two entire halves and then maybe pick it up the next game but if he wasn't hot it was over whereas when he got hot he was on fire but you can't have those up and downs and Frederick is a little bit more consistent. So you have to love to see that. Also, Joe Wieskamp needs to be able to, you know, he had a better bounce back game against Illinois.

I thought he showed some passion and energy that I love to see from him. As an NBA prospect, he needs to continue to shoot the ball well. And that will be huge for the Hawks to get hot from behind the arc. Connor McCaffrey, a guy who isn't going to turn the ball over, and I think Iowa fans that maybe didn't believe in Connor McCaffrey are really starting to see just how impressive he has been. He's a huge catalyst for that offense, and without him, Iowa would honestly be completely screwed, I think. He's been such a good transitionary point guard from, well at this point a two guard from Jordan Bohannon.

It's actually just been impressive to watch his play. And really the pickup from last year. He kind of struggled last year shooting the ball. And he's not the best shooter, but he does shoot it enough to make him an effective weapon. And also make sure teams don't sag off him like they did last year where they were sitting, you know, five, six feet back, you know, daring him to shoot the ball. So, with that, what do I think is going to happen tomorrow evening? This might be the homer in me, but I think that going on the road is not easy in the Big Ten.

Going against a team like Purdue who can't shoot the ball well, have some spurts here and there, is not an easy matchup. I do think Iowa wins this game, though. So I don't believe in Purdue as a truly tough home team, per se. Obviously, being at home is always nice. They have a little bit longer of a travel to some of those other states, like in Nebraska or whatever, Rutgers. Rutgers is tough for anyone to get to.

But I just think that Iowa is going to come into this game. They're going to be passionately renewed. They are right within the grasp of getting a Big Ten championship, and they know that. They're one game out. They have to win this game if they want to have any consideration for that Big Ten title. Every loss sets them back a step, as we already know,

as I'm basically stating the obvious here. So getting that win will be huge for them. And Purdue really hasn't fared that well against top teams like an Iowa Hawkeye team. And we've seen Iowa do well even when they're struggling from the three-point land, whereas in past years we haven't really seen them do that. So where teams, you know, they rely on the three-pointer and they can't get it going, they might struggle. Iowa fortunately has a 6'11 big man down low who continues to keep them in games regardless. They have other weapons like a Joe Toussaint who can actually drive the ball and provides

Iowa some athleticism at that point guard position that we haven't seen in past teams. So I think Iowa does win this game. It'll give them another opportunity for a Quadrant 1 win to move them to 8 Quadrant 1 wins. Currently, there's only one team with more Quadrant 1 wins in Iowa

and that is Kansas right now. So I would love to see that obviously happen. More to come on that. Obviously, I'll be talking about that in the Nebraska game later on in this week on future episodes of the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast, but not going to be able to do it this week. Like I said, I'll be on vacation. So with that being said, let's close out the show.

One quick thing, I just want to make a quick prediction on this game. Purdue is a team that does like to slow the ball down. They like to extend offensive possessions and defensive possessions. They're one of the slowest playing teams in the nation. I do think that is going to make this game a little bit lower scoring. Similarly to what we saw at Illinois, Iowa wasn't getting up into the 80s. They kept Illinois below 70. I think this is going to be a similar game where Iowa does need to rebound late. They're not going to be up the 80s. They kept Illinois below 70. I think this is going to be a similar game where Iowa does need to

rebound late. They're not going to be up the entire time. I think it's going to be, I'm going to call it 71 to no, I'm going to go 68 to 62. It's going to be a grind fest. I think Iowa pulls out 68 to 62 against Purdue tomorrow

evening. I hope I'm right. I was pretty close on a couple other games earlier on, especially the Iowa-Wisconsin game, so it would be nice to get pretty close again. And maybe if I hit this again, I might as well go to Vegas and start betting on some of these spreads because apparently I got the inside knowledge here. So let's close out the show.

Thank you again for tuning in to today's episode of the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast. If you did like what you heard today, make sure to like, review, and subscribe wherever you downloaded this podcast at follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. And again, thank you so much for listening and showing the support for the lockdown Hawkeyes podcast. Have a fantastic day. We'll see you next time.