Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Iowa's history vs Cincy is not good | Why three pointers are the key to Iowa winning | Analyzing both team's regular season games vs Ohio State

Episode Date: March 20, 2019

The Hawks have played Cincinnati eight times in their history, and they are just 2-6 in those games. Moreover, the last time they won against the Bearcats was 40 years ago. After discussing these two team's history, we jump right into three reasons why Iowa can beat Cincinnati before covering their one common opponent Ohio State. How did each team match up against the Buckeyes, and does this give us any insight into what to expect from Friday's game. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to another episode of the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast, your daily podcast on the Locked On Sports Network that covers your University of Iowa Hawkeyes. I'm your host, Andrew Wade, site expert over at dearoldgold.com, where you can find all things black and yellow. We give you tons of analysis, opinions, news, updates, everything you want to know about the Iowa Hawkeyes on dearoldgold.com. We have a fantastic episode for you today, dealing with a little bit of a cold, so my apologies if my voice sounds a little bit funky, but with March Madness right around the corner, I want to make

sure we're giving you content every single day as promised on yesterday's show. We're going to be talking a lot about basketball this entire week and trying to cover the other sports as well. Wrestling is going to the NCAA Championships this weekend. We have baseball, gymnastics, track, tennis, you name it. It's all in action right now. So we're trying to cover every single thing right now. That being said, the emphasis again is on basketball. If you are following our Twitter account, LockedOnIowa, or our Facebook account, LockedOnHawkeyes, you have probably seen our Twitter post about our March Madness bracket. If you haven't, make sure to check that out now as soon as possible

because we are hosting a March Madness bracket, which gives you the opportunity to win a fantastic Nike dry fit Iowa Hawkeye t-shirt. So pretty sweet t-shirt you can win. All you need to do is subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts at, and then like our Twitter account. Follow our Twitter account. That's easy. You then get all the updates you need to know about the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast. So just do that. Follow our Twitter account.

Subscribe to the podcast. If you don't have Twitter or Facebook, just send me an email at LockedOnHawkeyes at gmail.com. That, you know, obviously contains your email address in there. And I will send you a link to our March Madness bracket. Fill that out. If you win, I will send you a Nike basketball shirt from the Iowa Hawkeyes directly brand new from fanatics.com. There's really no reason not to participate.

If nothing else, it's a fun way to create a bracket and see if you can win. But like I said, do that. Win that. You get that T-shirt. I'll send it directly to you. So make sure to check that out as well. Also, if you haven't tried this out yet, if you have a smart speaker at home, just tell Siri, Google, or Alexa to play podcast Locked on Hawkeyes. The other day I was cooking some dinner. I don't like to do that very often, but sometimes, you know, duty calls as a husband.

I was cooking some dinner and decided to test out my Alexa show and said, hey Alexa, play podcast Locked on NFL Draft. and it pulled up the Locked On NFL Draft's most recent episode. So make sure to check that out. You can do that with any of the awesome shows we have on the Locked On Sports Network. On today's show though, we have three things we're going to be giving you, kind of breaking them down into segments as much as we possibly can. On segment number one, we're going to be covering for you

the history of Iowa versus Cincinnati. On segment number two, we're going to be giving you three reasons why Iowa can beat Cincinnati. And on segment number three, we're going to be talking about the common opponents that Iowa and Cincinnati share and what that means for the Hawks. So again, a lot of emphasis on basketball. We're going to be doing some deep dives into the women's basketball team as well.

So stay tuned for that on future episodes in the next couple of days. But to be completely honest, the women are going to be going a little bit further than the men. So we're going to be spending a little bit more time on the men's basketball team over the next couple of days and then focusing heavily on the women's basketball team after that just because I do fully expect them to go a little bit further than the men. So let's jump right into it with that history of Iowa versus Cincinnati. Don't want to waste any more of your time talking about some of the logistical information I need to cover before we start the show.

And Iowa has played Cincinnati eight times, right? And to be honest honest they haven't really played you know a ton as of recently the last time they actually faced was 2005 which coincidentally enough was actually in the NCAA tournament and furthermore you know of a coincidence Iowa was a 10 seed and Cincinnati was a 7 seed so in that, Iowa fell 76 to 64. Obviously not exactly the outcome the Hawks wanted in that tournament. That was back with Adam Hlasky, I believe Jeff Horner, those type of guys. So Iowa fell to Cincinnati 76 to 64. And to be honest, that's really just kind of reflective of what Iowa has experienced against Cincinnati in their history. In those eight games, Iowa is just 2-6,

and they haven't gotten a win against Cincinnati since 1980. So they play this week, this Friday, just two days from now. I'm super freaking pumped for it. Obviously hope that can change. And then kind of interesting, they actually have a matchup with Cincinnati next year as part of a doubleheader at the United Center in Chicago. So while they haven't played a lot over the last couple decades, in fact, just twice in the last 40 years, they're going to be playing twice in the span of seven months, nine months.

Excuse my math. That was pretty terrible. But in the span of nine months, they're going to be playing in twice in the span of the last 40 years they played twice so pretty fun stuff obviously the Hawks don't get a ton of matchups against some you know relatively premier teams and other conferences there you know they got kind of a lot of flack for their weak non-conference schedule not really their fault though I mean they played Oregon and UConn early in the season that appeared to be good wins until Oregon and UConn just crapped the bed the rest of the season. Obviously, Oregon is now in the NCAA tournament after going on a run in the Pac-12, but neither here nor there. Interesting kind of approach to the non-conference schedule. It'll

be good to see Iowa play some other top talented teams and see kind of how they fare in that, and hopefully that'll help them out later in the season. I mean, getting a 10 seed, not exactly where we thought they were going to be, but you know, in, in the end, it kind of worked out not getting an eight or nine seed. Also kind of going into that, that history of this matchup too, I thought it was kind of interesting. The Hawks winning percentage in this matchup is 250, right? So 25%. They won 25% of their matchups against Cincinnati. And that's actually the second lowest winning percentage against the team that they have faced eight or more times, which is 29 teams. So out of 29 teams, Iowa has the second worst record against Cincinnati. And again, Cincinnati is a basketball

school. Iowa is not historically known as a basketball school. I think some people may disagree with that, but I think it's pretty clear that Iowa is a football school. And basketball, they do pretty well in most of the time, but it's not very often that the Iowa basketball team, at least in the last couple decades, has been a premier program that's going to win the big 10 that, you know, ranked in the top five, that kind of thing. Whereas Cincinnati has been a little bit better in that regard. I mean, there's their, their, their school is definitely a basketball program,

not a basketball school, not a football school. So just some interesting side notes to keep in your, your back pocket as you're talking to other folks about the upcoming Iowa versus Cincinnati game, obviously hope that the Hawks can make that three to eight or three and eight pocket as you're talking to other folks about the upcoming Iowa versus Cincinnati game. Obviously hope that the Hawks can make that three to eight or three and eight getting that third win on Friday to advance to the second round of the NCAA tournament. That'll do it for segment number one. On segment number two, just a reminder, we have some fantastic stuff coming up. Three reasons why

Iowa can beat Cincinnati. You know, did a lot of digging into this. You know, coming into this game, a lot of people were worried about the fact that we're basically playing an away game. Cincinnati's in Ohio. Cincinnati's a solid team. They just won, you know, the AAC. So I want to talk to you about what Iowa can do to win this game

and why there's actually a glimmer of hope. And personally, I do feel like Iowa matches up very well against Cincinnati. So we'll be covering that on segment number two after a few messages from our sponsors. We are back with segment number two, covering why we think or why I think Iowa is going to win this game against Cincinnati, giving you the three reasons, the kind of think or why I think Iowa is going to win this game against Cincinnati. Giving you three reasons, kind of three things that I think Iowa matches up extremely well against Cincinnati. And like I said before, we jumped to a few messages.

Cincinnati is a solid team. Let's not discredit them by any means. But they've only beat one ranked team. And that was Houston in the last game of the season in the conference championship. Otherwise, they went, I believe, 0-5 or 0-4 against ranked teams prior to that. They also lost to Ohio State, which we're going to be covering on segment number three. And let's be honest, not unbeatable. This team, the only reason why Iowa fans are worried about this team is because Iowa

has crapped the bed lately. Iowa hasn't done enough to prove to Hawkeye fans that they can compete in the NCAA tournament. This is not a concern about Cincinnati. This is a concern about Iowa. And I think that's very fair. It's a very fair assessment of this basketball team. You don't know what you're going to get from Fran McCaffrey's squad on any given night. I mean, the team that played Michigan last weekend is not the same team that played Michigan in February. The oomph, the gusto, the willpower was just not there. Iowa just looked off and crappy, and they weren't hitting a single three. The fact that I had to do some research mid-game to see when the last time Iowa hadn't made a three-pointer, which for the record was a couple years ago.

The fact that I had to do that, though, is just very telling about how that performance went. So I don't want to get too off track here. Let's jump right into why Iowa can beat Cincinnati. And interestingly enough, it kind of goes back to the three-pointers. So Cincinnati is known for having a strong defensive squad. I think that's the first thing you need to realize about Cincinnati. A lot of folks are believe they can put a lot of pressure on teams. They get a lot of perimeter pressure and that's really where some of their star players are is on the perimeter and they're allowing the 11th

least points in the nation at 62.4 points per game. So decent defense, but I think a lot of that actually comes from the fact that they slow the pace down because their offense isn't very good. But to focus first on the defense, you know, when you actually dive into the analytics though, so Cincinnati's defense is kind of overwhelming and swarming and pretty solid. They don't allow a lot of points. I know a lot of that could be because the pace of play, but they're actually not doing that well defending the three. And, you know, again, every statistic has some interesting things, some context behind it that you should probably know.

Right. So any statistic I give is going to support my claim. Someone else could take that statistic and actually use it to refute my claim. So a lot of ways to use statistics here, but in the way we're using it, just keep that in mind. I wanted to make sure you understand that, you know, this is not a cut and dry scenario. This is kind of how you analyze certain stats. And the Bearcats are allowing teams to shoot 35% from behind the three-point line, which is actually in the bottom half of the NCAA. And teams are actually getting 38.7% of their total points from three-pointer, which is the 14th worst in the nation.

So teams are relying on threes pretty significantly against Cincinnati instead of pushing it down in the paint and getting those post points, which I think is kind of interesting for the Hawks. When they're moving the ball well, they're getting the ball down low to Tyler Cook and Luka Garza teams are collapsing and they're pushing it back out to the three-pointer when they're just tossing it around, you know, the arc, they're not really getting as much open

looks. So I think that'll be kind of interesting to see if Iowa can get those looks down low and then make those open three-pointers, which seems like based on the, you know, advanced analytics and Cincinnati does have a little bit of a weakness from behind three. So that would be kind of fun to watch. Kind of doing some of the analysis on the Hawks, they're shooting 36.3% from three, which is 89th in the country. Again, that hasn't been helped by the fact that Iowa has struggled the last couple weeks. But they do have four guys shooting over 38.4%,

and Ryan Creener is knocking down threes at a 33.3% rate, which you'll find out on our reason number two, that's a lot better than Cincinnati. So if Iowa can get hot from three, that's huge for them. When they've shot over 36% from behind the arc, they went 11-2. One of those losses, though, was that ridiculous blown lead to Nebraska. So keep that in mind. That'll be huge to watch. Iowa, if they can shoot well, they should be able to close out this game and head on to the next match against Tennessee. The other thing I think is really interesting is that the exact opposite. Cincinnati is not a juggernaut offensively. They are not very good on the offensive side of the ball. They're making 35% of their three-point attempts, but they're not

really shooting them that much. In fact, their three-point attempts account for just 27.8% of their total points, which is in the bottom 20% of the entire nation. So not exactly great. They only have three regular shooting above 31.6 percent as well so again interesting stuff that you want to keep in mind as we're watching this game as we've also seen though in the past Iowa manages to find ways to make bad teams look good offensively so that'll kind of be the thing I'm waiting for is Iowa's defense as atrocious as Cincinnati's offense? Are they able to stop them? Do they bring that defensive intensity that we saw earlier in the season

or even against teams like Michigan when they beat Michigan? In the last couple of games, they just haven't done a good job of protecting the three-point line. And Tyler Cook and Luka Garza just aren't effective enough down low playing defense on solid post players. Fortunately, Cincinnati doesn't have a ton of that to offer down in the paint. They have one guard who's fantastic. We're going to be talking about him tomorrow a little bit more.

But this should be a really good opportunity for Iowa to step up and play some darn good defense and win that game. Cincinnati's offense is just not very good. One other thing I wanted to keep in mind is, so Cincinnati is shooting 35% from three. They're shooting, I want to say, 47.3% inside the arc. Iowa is 4-7 when teams shoot over 35% from three and eight of their 11 losses have come on. Teams have shot 47.3% from the field or greater.

That includes two and three pointers. So Cincinnati's Cincinnati's total average is definitely less than that. So keep in mind if they can hold them to what Cincinnati is doing right now, they just let Cincinnati's offense play out, Iowa should be able to come away victorious. They can usually outscore teams that don't score more, obviously don't score more than 62, 63 points in the game. So if they don't shoot that well, Iowa could probably hold them.

And I think Iowa's defense can actually stand the test. The other thing I want to touch on is tempo. And Iowa's tempo is a little bit more upspeed. They want to run the ball. That's why their defense also struggles a little bit. They want to get the shot out quickly. And in terms of average play or pace of play, they're averaging 16.3 seconds per possession, which is top 15% in the country.

Meanwhile, the Bearcats are averaging 19.2% seconds per possession, which is actually 334th in the country, bottom 5-10%. So if Iowa can make Cincinnati play their pace of play, Cincinnati is not going to be able to keep up offensively. So it'll be really telling how the game turns out in the first five minutes. We've seen Iowa come back in the second half, but I want to see them come out running and gunning in that first five minutes and hitting threes. We're going to need a huge game from Jordan Bohannon as well to see Iowa come away victorious in this game and make sure that he can get hot. Isaiah Moss is another very key figure. When he is draining the ball, when he is draining threes, he just can't miss. For him, it's kind of one of those things. When you make the first shot, that hoop becomes a wide-open ocean.

And when he misses that shot, it's like trying to fit a square in a round circle or a square peg in a round circle. So not exactly ideal if he doesn't get off to a hot start there. But again, I think this is a really good opportunity for the Hawks. Outside of the fact that Cincinnati is basically playing a home game, this is a really great matchup for Iowa when you actually look at the analytics and see kind of what and how Iowa matches up for Cincinnati. So again, we'll be covering a lot more of this on the next couple days,

and we'll be giving you a full preview of the game on Friday's morning episode just to listen to right before the game kicks off or tips off. So make sure to tune into that as well. And we talked a little bit about the March Madness seating on yesterday's show. And we talked about the women's basketball's kind of journey through the tournament. So make sure to check out yesterday's episode as well. But that'll do it for segment number two. We're going to be letting you hear a few messages from our sponsors before we jump into segment number three, where we talk about Iowa and Cincinnati's common opponent.

We are back with segment number three. This is going to be our shortest segment of the day, wrapping up the show here in just a few minutes. Like I said, not feeling the best. So the more I talk, the more my throat hurts, and I don't want to hurt that even more to hurt any of the shows coming up this week or to kill my time in Vegas. And yes, that may sound selfish. It absolutely is.

But if you go to Vegas with a cold, that kind of defeats the purpose of going to Vegas, does it not? So that being said, wanted to analyze the one common opponent that Iowa and Cincinnati have this season. Ohio State played Cincinnati in the beginning of the year. Ohio State also played Iowa twice this season. Obviously, when doing this comparison, you would love to have more of a sample size. You'd like to have more teams that they've faced off against to get a better idea of the trends and kind of the analysis of each of these teams. But Ohio State is the only common opponent. So we're going to try to analyze what they did in those

games. Against the Buckeyes, you know, Cincinnati did lose that game. They had a real terrible offensive performance. They shot 27.4% from the field and 23.1% from three-pointer. 27.4% from the field and 23.1% from three-pointer. Ohio State's defense is okay. They're 27th according to Kempom, but they're not that good. I mean, they did a good job on Iowa both games for the most part, but Iowa still shot the ball pretty well against Ohio State, at least in the paint.

They didn't shoot it well from three-point. The first game they shot 25%. The second game they shot 31.6%. That was their loss. Obviously, both those numbers are a little bit lower than Iowa's season average of 36.1%. But again, they shot better than the Bearcats did. One of the interesting things I thought when looking at the stat line, though, is that Cincinnati really kicked Ohio State's butt in pretty much everything else. They out-rebounded them.

They dished out more assists. They stole the ball more, and they turned over the ball less. So that kind of fits the bill, though, with Cincinnati being a defensive minus squad. Their size, Cincinnati's size, is also pretty comparable to Iowa's, which gives them an advantage on the boards and against Ohio State. For Iowa fans, you notice that size doesn't always relate to or correlate to success, at least for the Hawks, because they do have that size, but they don't make up for it because they don't have that athleticism typically to handle that, especially with Luka Garza. And that's not

to diss on Luka Garza. He's a fantastic player down low, but sometimes his size can actually be a detriment to his game, especially if you face some quicker and smaller teams like Ohio State that kind of neutralizes his effectiveness. Against Ohio State though, Iowa also got out-rebounded, oddly enough. The first game they tied, the second game they were out-rebounded by 10, and to be honest, in that first game, it really felt like Iowa got out-rebounded the entire game. And that's really what I've noticed in a lot of games for Iowa. It seems like they just don't get a lot of those second chance points. They don't get a lot of those boards they need to get. And what I realized when I looked into the stats a little bit more is the fact that Iowa is one of the worst defensive rebounding teams in the nation.

Iowa is one of the worst defensive rebounding teams in the nation. They are 222nd. They have a 29% defensive rebounding percentage. And this is not good against Cincinnati. All right. Cincinnati's offensive rebounding percentage is 37.6%, which is fourth best in the nation. So when you get those second and those third and those fourth chance opportunities on one possession, that can really wear down a defense. But that's the big takeaway I had from those two games.

The other two takeaways, first being, you know, Ohio State defense wasn't really able to contain Iowa's offense, but they were able to render Cincinnati's virtually useless. So to me, that again speaks volumes to what Iowa could potentially do in this matchup. Can they stop, you know, Can they stop Cincinnati's offense? I believe so. But if they're playing lackadaisical basketball, it's not going to happen.

But I'm hoping you're getting into the NCAA tournament. You put that, you know, you focus. You work hard. Shooting will come. Shooting is not necessarily a focused thing in my opinion. Defense, though, isn't all about energy and effort. And Iowa needs to show that. And I think think if they do they can hold Cincinnati's offense pretty much hostage. The other thing I wanted to note as well is that Caleb Wesson and Kyle Young had fantastic days

against Cincinnati. They put up 25 points combined so while a lot of teams rely on three-pointers against Cincinnati you know the the paint is wide open, it seems like, for business. So Luka Garza and Tyler Cook, if they can get down low and get some buckets in right away against Cincinnati's Trey Scott and Nasir Brooks, I think that's a really good opportunity for them, again, to play that inside-out game that works so well against other teams in the last month and two months, where Luka Garza, Tyler Cook, they get those points down low.

Teams start crashing on them. They start dishing it back out to three-pointer. You have an open Ryan Kramer. You have an open Jordan Mohannon. You have an open Joe Wieskamp just draining threes. Naturally, how Iowa's offense becomes significantly more dangerous and effective. But that's the common analysis or the analysis of the common opponent, which is Ohio State.

Again, I would love to have more of a sample size, but we can only do so much with what we're given. So that will do it for segment number three. And just a reminder, we are going to be back tomorrow, Friday, hopefully Saturday as well, to give you kind of an instant reaction to both Iowa men's and women's games. That'll do it, though, for segment number three, and that'll do it for our show. All right.

It is Wednesday morning. I hope you have a fantastic Wednesday in general, a fantastic Wednesday morning commute. If you haven't joined our March Madness Bracket, make sure to do that. Subscribe to the podcast and then follow us on Twitter at Locked on Iowa or Facebook at Locked on Hawkeyes. If you have neither of those social media accounts, then just email me at Locked on Hawkeyes at gmail.com. Let me know that you want to join the March Madness bracket, give you an opportunity to

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On Hawkeyes at gmail.com. And if you haven't already, make sure you are subscribing to our podcast on Stitcher, Spotify, you know, or wherever you get your podcast at. And as your host, Andrew Wade, you can follow me on Twitter at Wade underscore Andrew. I tweet about all things Iowa Hawkeyes. I also tweet about the Denver Broncos and the Bachelor, Bachelorette, and Bachelor in Paradise. Yes, I am one of those guys. I love it. Don't care. You don't have to at me on that one. It's not going to change my opinion. If you love those shows, then you're going to love my Twitter as well. So covering all three of those big topics, Broncos, Hawkeyes and the Bachelor. Again, that'll do it for our show though today.

Have a fantastic day, Hawkeye Nation, and we'll be back tomorrow.