Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Luka wins Big Ten POY and discussing the Devyn Marble situation

Episode Date: March 10, 2021

Lots of news and notes in the Iowa Hawkeye sports world. We discuss the Big Ten awards that were handed out for the men's basketball season and we talk through the Devyn Marble situation.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Built BarBuilt Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKEDON20,” and you’ll get 20% off your next order.BetOnline AGThere is only 1 place that has you covered and 1 place we trust. Betonline.ag! Sign up today for a free account at betonline.ag and use that promocode: LOCKEDON for your 50% welcome bonus.Rock AutoAmazing selection. Reliably low prices. All the parts your car will ever need. Visit RockAuto.com and tell them Locked On sent you.ManscapedGet 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code LOCKEDONNCAA at Manscaped.com.BlueChewTry BlueChew FREE when you use our promo code LOCKEDON at bluechew.com at checkout--just pay $5 shipping. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You are Locked On Hawkeyes, your daily podcast on the Iowa Hawkeyes. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Welcome back, Hawkeye Nation, to a Wednesday 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 I'm excited to be bringing you this awesome episode of the show today. We have a lot to cover. We have some takeaways from Fran's press conference.

We have some news on Devin Marble and want to talk a little bit about that. Men's basketball awards are out. The women have a game tonight and some wrestling news as well. And a little bit of combine news, although the combine is not actually happening. All of that stuff is coming up on the show today. Just a reminder, if you didn't get a chance to check out our show yesterday, we had Amir Smith-Marset on talking a little bit about his draft preparation, what he enjoyed about being an Iowa Hawkeye, and what he thinks his 40-yard dash time should be.

So if you have not listened to that episode, highly recommend you check it out. Now let's get into our show today because we have a lot to cover. We're going to do some odds and ends here, though. First and foremost, didn't get a chance to cover this, but five Iowa Hawkeyes were invited to the Combine. That was Davian Nixon, Amir Smith-Marset, Alaric Jackson, Brandon Smith, and Chauncey Golson. The only difference is there is no actual Combine this year due to the pandemic.

So it makes sense, but the fact that they got invited, I think, shows where they are on the draft radar. The Combine is a relatively exclusive club. They only, not, I guess, exclusive is an interesting word, right? You're still inviting 300-ish players, but it gives you an idea because they are working with scouts to understand who are the players that scouts want to see and what NFL teams want to see at the Combine. So great on them. They are going to be training for that pro day though at Iowa in a couple weeks. That'll be fun to see what their times are. Iowa always

has some exciting athletes at their pro days and put up some awesome times and realistic times. If you listen to Jim Nagy, the executive director of the Senior Bowl, he said one of the guys you can actually trust or one of the guys you can actually trust or one of the programs you can actually trust in terms of times is the University of Iowa. Now, we've seen other guys run some ridiculous 40-yard dash times, and those kind of get called into question because of the lack of validity with them.

So it'll be a lot of fun to see what Amir Smith-Marset runs and what the rest of the Iowa Hawkeyes do from an athletic testing perspective. Also, Max Murin does get an at-large bid to the NCAA Wrestling Tournament since he did. He was the only one out of Iowa's 10 wrestlers who didn't qualify as an automatic qualifier after the Big Ten Wrestling Tournament, going 0-2 in the tournament despite being a number two seed. It was expected that he would be an at-large, but he now is officially an at-large. And that brings the wrestlers to all 10, going to the NCAA tournament. Again, giving Iowa a fantastic chance at winning an NCAA title, which should be a ton of fun.

Along the football news again, Brandon Smith has absolutely dominated in his training. We'll get to that more in a future episode when we have a bit more information. But wanted to at least let you know that Brandon Smith has dominated in the combine that was recently held to kind of help out some of these athletes who aren't getting that combine time. So lots of awesome stuff there across the board from Iowa Hawkeye athletes. Also, the women's basketball team has a game tonight versus Purdue. Should be an exciting one. This women's basketball team has already taken on Purdue, and they beat them 87-81, about mid-January, actually. And Iowa got off to a hot start, down 21-17 after the first quarter,

but scored 27 points, 18 Purdue points in the second quarter, and never relinquished the lead after that. In that game, as you can expect, Caitlin Clark put together a phenomenal performance, 26 points, 9 rebounds, and 4 assists. And as a team, Iowa shot really well against a Purdue Boilermaker team that is not that good. 50.9% from the field, 44.4% from three. Did a fantastic job crashing the boards and getting those rebounds.

Finished with 6 blocks as well. Despite having 16 turnovers, still a fantastic game for iowa i'm really looking forward to tonight's game iowa versus purdue should be a blast to watch so lots of fun there also want to talk a little bit i mean we're kind of jumping all over the place but that's the nature of the beast with today's episode let's jump into some men's basketball awards though luca garza named the big time Player of the Year, also named the Sporting News Player of the Year, Bleacher Reports Player of the Year, and Andy Katz Player of the Year. And Illinois fans might be upset, but I've already shown you the analysis. I've already shown you the difference between these stats, and Io was not as

important to his team as Luka was. Luka is getting double and triple teamed every single game and putting together phenomenal production. This is a well-earned honor for Luka Garza. Also named first team All-Big Ten. Joe Weiskamp getting second team All-Big Ten and Jordan Bohannon getting honorable mention All-Big Ten and Keegan Murray getting All-Freshman team. You love to see it. Iowa doing a fantastic job cleaning up in the awards board and I think this is the year that Luka Garza does the sweep on national player of the year. I did see Asher Lowe, host of Lockdown Badgers. I don't know if it's just that he has a hard spot for Iowa, just seems to not like Iowa. Coming into the season, he thought Iowa wasn't that great of a team.

When we talked about Iowa-Wisconsin, he gave some interesting analysis as to how Wisconsin was going to beat Iowa and then on Twitter he also said you can make the case for Drew Timmy being the national player of the year because he doesn't play nearly as many minutes and still puts up great production so what I did is I extrapolated it out which is very easy to do with sports-reference.com and Drew Timmy if he played the same minutes as Luka you can do it on a per 40 minute basis Luka would still be better than Drew Timmy. So I don't know what Asher Lowe is talking about.

There should be no controversy this year. Luka Garza is going to be the unanimous national player of the year. And again, another unanimous all American pick. So you got to love to see it. This is history we are seeing. And we're going to talk a little bit about that because Luka Garza did get his jersey retired and that caused some controversy. We're going to get into that here on segment two of the show. And then we're going to finish up with some Fran

McCaffrey press conference takeaways coming up on segment number three of the show. You know, I got to tell you about some awesome sponsors of the show today. And it starts with Manscaped because this tournament season, take care of your baskets and balls with the best tools for the job. We're talking about our sponsors, Manscaped, the global leaders in male grooming from head to toe. When the clock winds down in March, be clutch and avoid the upset with the Manscaped performance package to keep all your hair and holes tamed.

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But what about the rest of sports? Well, now the Locked On Podcast Network has you covered there as well with Locked On Today. It's hosted by the great Peter Bukowski, and it's all the sports news you need every morning in under 20 minutes. Follow the Locked On Today podcast wherever you get your podcasts at. Now let's turn our attention back to the Iowa basketball team, and more specifically, Devin Marble.

So Devin Marble had an interesting tweet that caused quite some controversy in Iowa Hawkeye Nation. Let me actually find it and read it for you. And I'll then get into, and if you haven't read this, I'm shocked to be honest. But here's what Devin Marble said. So he was asked about Iowa basketball. So he said on Twitter, I don't even watch college basketball, but Juwan Howard really got Michigan hooping, stepped into that job effortlessly. And someone responded and said, how come you don't watch Iowa? Maybe the best team in the last 25 years in Iowa City.

Devin Marlboro had this to say. He said, I'll never watch another Iowa game in my life with the amount of disrespect that school has shown me and my family. Love the fans, but I'm in no way affiliated or connected to the university. Now, what's interesting about that, and I'm going to get into the whole schematics of what just happened. I am very close to the coach or basically the general manager of the Iowa United. And Devin Marble has been a guy who they've wanted to grab and get on the Iowa United for quite some time, but it seems to make sense why they're not able to get Devin Marble because clearly he doesn't want to be affiliated with the university of Iowa, which would make sense. He probably doesn't want to be affiliated with the Iowa United TBT team.

Now getting into my thoughts on this, I have a couple of thoughts because I think you can, you don't have, there's not a, there's not a black and white to this. There is a, a gray area as well. First off, I want to get something out of the way. I don't think this is a racial issue. Um, if you don't agree with me on that, I understand, but I don't believe that this is a racial issue. Now, what I think this is, is actually, let me kind of back up on this. There are clearly criteria, apparently, according to Gary Barta, on what deserves to have your

jersey hung up. Now, clearly, Luka Garza fit that criteria. He also said that Roy Marble and several others did not fit that criteria. If I were Gary Barta, I would actually be a little bit transparent, if not completely transparent and tell us what is that criteria? Because if I'm Devin Marble, I think it makes sense. I would be upset too. Now I wouldn't have brought it up right now. And I also think by just putting out that tweet, you create a lot of negative energy going into the tournament. And now clearly Devin Marble doesn't care about that. That's, I get that. He doesn't care about the Iowa Hawkeyes or what's going to be happening to

the tournament team, but Luka Garza just had his Jersey retired. Now, is he upset about Luka Garza getting his Jersey retired immediately? Is he upset about Luka Garza getting his Jersey retired over his dad? Or is he just upset about his dad not getting his Jersey retired? Now the Iowa Hawkeyes did do a commemorative ceremony a couple years back for Roy Marble, basically honoring him, giving him a jersey to display that they were going to display in the hallways, but they did not officially retire his number. And as you probably all know by now, Roy Marble is or was the all-time leading scorer in Iowa Hawkeye history and a part of some really fantastic Iowa Hawkeye squads. So what is he upset about? And I think it's important to clarify that. But I think it's

okay for him to be upset if he thinks his dad should have had his jersey retired. Fantastic. Maybe not the way I would have handled that. Whether or not his dad does deserve to have his jersey retired, I think really boils down to what exactly is the criteria for having your jersey retired? What is it, Barta? Is it being a national player of the year? Is it being a two-time All-American? I mean, what is it? Is it setting multiple records? I mean, this is the time where Gary Barta needs to be very transparent about what his thoughts are. Again, I don't agree with the timing or how it was prompted by Devin Marble. I think with his great relationship with Fran McCaffrey or so, it seems to think that they have a fantastic relationship. I would have hoped that he would have brought that concern to Fran. I know Fran doesn't have the power to make all those decisions,

but I think you could have brought that to Fran. but if he is upset, I get it, right? It's his dad. But I still think it's a very interesting situation, a very interesting timed tweet to put out there, especially with Iowa going into the Big Ten tournament. It's something they don't, you know, you don't want to have extra, I'm not calling it extra noise.

I'm not calling it unimportant, but right now, is that really what we need to be talking about? I don't think so. And again, a lot of things go into that decision. People have brought up character concerns about Roy Marble. Is that a part of it? I don't actually know.

If that is, then I can see why he didn't get his jersey retired. Because there have been post-Iowa character concerns. So what is it? And I also think Devin Marble should have maybe clarified as well. I think he probably should just clarify a bit more so people can stop speculating. But again, that's his choice and he can do whatever he wants. This doesn't take away from what Luka did.

Luka has been, I think, the best player in Iowa basketball history. Have I been alive since Iowa basketball started? No. But what Luka Garza does on the court, his work ethic, how he's developed, his commitment to the University of Iowa, his commitment to the city of Iowa City, and the program and everything else, I think has been above and beyond what we've ever seen on the men's side. And I think that is something that does deserve to be honored. Luka Garza is going to go down as the greatest men's basketball player in Iowa Hawkeye history.

And he already is there. So to me, I think it's an interesting time tweet. I think it's interesting for Devin Marble to bring it up. I think there's probably better ways to address this than doing what he did. But that's not my choice to make. I do think as Iowa Hawkeye fans, spewing hatred towards anyone in this situation, I think is a bit ridiculous. That's my personal opinion. I'm not going to go and spew hate to Devin Marble. He has a right to feel how he feels.

And if he doesn't want to support the University of Iowa, that's up to him. He doesn't have to support Iowa. I also saw people comparing this to Akram Wadley and Kavante Martin-Manley. I do not think those are the same at all. Akram Wadley and Kavante Martin-Manley are two entirely different situations than Devin Marble by how they acted after they left the school. I'm not going to go into the specifics there, but I think that you have to separate those two situations. Devin Marble's situation is nothing like Akram Wadley's and Kevontae Martin-Manley.

And I mean that in a positive way for Devin Marble. So take that however you want. If you've listened to the show, you know how I feel about both those situations. So that's my thoughts on it. Coming up though on segment number three, we're going to get into Fran McCaffrey's press conference. I know a little bit shorter of an episode today,

but we just had to cover a lot of news. Now we're going to start getting into some basketball breakdowns. Should be a lot of fun the rest of this week. Now, again, coming up on segment number three, we're going to be getting into Fran McCaffrey's press conference. He also talked a little bit about Devin Marble, so that conversation is not ending right now. We're going to get to that, though, in just a couple seconds.

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How much do you really know about these potential NBA stars of tomorrow? If you want to know more, you need to subscribe to the Locked On NBA Draft podcast, prospect scouting reports, draft rumors, mock drafts, and full coverage of March Madness four days a week from credentialed draft experts. Subscribe today and follow Locked On NBA Draft. And I'm sure they're talking a lot about Luka Garza as well. A very interesting figure in the NBA drafts landscape.

Also probably talking a little bit about Joe Wieskamp as well. So make sure to check out the Locked On NBA Draft podcast. Let's turn our attention back to the show, though. Wrapping up with Fran McCaffrey's press conference. He spoke a lot about Devin Marble and he also spoke a lot about potential lineup situations. So I'm going to read you a few quotes and then we're going to talk about what those mean. First and foremost, Devin Marble, he said, I've had multiple conversations with his family members, reached out to Dev, haven't spoken to him yet, but I reached out to him. I know that Dev knows I love him and I loved his dad. We became very close. I really appreciate

Mr. Barta's comments and sensitivity toward the situation. In no way were we playing Luca in any way to disrespect anyone else. Least of all, named Marble. I just appreciate what Gary is doing. These situations are not typically something I get involved with,

but due to my relationship with both Roy and Dev, I did. I felt it was important to do that. Our conversations have been very positive. They will remain so as we move forward to honor Roy as he should be. Now, how I look at this is, again, Iowa didn't want, I truly don't think they wanted to offend Devin Marble. And I think, as Fran said, they, Luca Garza and Roy Marble

should be considered separate situations. They did not have anything to do with the other. And at least, you know, in their own kind of silo there. Now, Devin clearly does. It seems like he does. I don't think he actually maybe has to think about Luka, but how they handled the Roy Marble situation where they had a ceremony and then they just didn't retire his number.

Maybe that's what he's really just upset about. And again, that goes back to what specifically is he upset about? The timing is very interesting considering Luka Garza just got his number retired. But what I go back to is that Iowa is trying to make this right, and they're trying to repair that relationship. Clearly they care. Fran McCaffrey, if there's nothing else you can say about the guy, you can say that he is a players coach who loves and cares about his players and their relationships with them. Every Iowa basketball

player I've talked to says they absolutely love Fran McCaffrey. They think he's an amazing, upstanding guy. And I agree. Everything I heard from them is true. That seems like the case. And I can't imagine it's any different with Devin Marble, who he was very close with. Devin Marble helped put Iowa back on the map when Fran McCaffrey was a young, recently tenured coach with the Iowa Hawkeyes. So, of course, they want to repair that relationship. I think it's good to reach out immediately. Barta, I think, should be probably transparent with the media a little bit more.

But, again, handling this privately is probably the best situation to go forward. He also had a few other things to say, but that was kind of the big thing in regards to that. He also asked about Joe Wieskamp, and that's kind of been the big news. I've talked about this. I don't think if Joe Wieskamp is anything less than 100%, he should be playing. Iowa doesn't necessarily need the Big Ten tournament.

They want to win, but I don't think they should risk the chance of hurting Joe Wieskamp just to win a Big Ten tournament. And here's what he had to say. The problem with that is you can't guarantee he's going to be 100% if he plays Friday, Saturday, Sunday. We play Friday night, Saturday afternoon. We'll factor that in as well.

If he feels really good, my anticipation will be to play him on Friday. We'll see how it goes. If he's not at or near 100%, then we might hold him. We're going to do what's in the best interest of the student athlete, bottom line. Again, Fran McCaffrey's been that way with Cedric Frederick. It's all about keeping him healthy for the long run. The goal is an NCAA title. I know Luka Garza said they want to win the Big Ten tournament just as much as the NCAA tournament, but I disagree. The NCAA tournament is the tournament you want to win. The Big Ten tournament, yes, it would be the icing on the cake.

But if you win a Big Ten tournament and do not win the NCAA tournament, I think it is undoubtedly less impressive and exciting as if you were to lose the Big Ten tournament and win the NCAA tournament. So from Fran McCaffrey's perspective, I think if Joey's camp can't go, you like your odds against the Wisconsin team. And you like your odds with some of the guys who have been getting some more minutes and who will be getting more minutes going forward, which we'll get to here in a second against Illinois.

I think it could be interesting as well. You need a guy like Joey's camp to help win you some key games, but I think Iowa could at least keep it close. And again, you want to make sure that you are healthy going into the NCAA tournament. So what if Joey's camp can't go? What happens next? So here's what Fran said.

He said, I think Tony is a guy that would jump in there. I also feel good with Aaron and Chris. Obviously, it will enhance Patrick and Joe Toussaint's role. Keegan moves into the starting lineup, so he's going to play a lot more minutes. I think it's an all-hands-on-deck thing. At this point, we've seen a lot of Patrick and Joe. I really love their chemistry together.

We've seen Keegan play in the starting lineup and obviously being all freshmen, he has done a really great job of filling a role in the Iowa Hawkeye squad. And I love what he brings defensively to the team. Now with him going into the starting lineup, you have Patrick McCaffrey, again, Joe Toussaint being key guys off that bench unit. But again, he also said, you're going to see Tony. Tony has been a guy who's really impressed me in limited minutes. The moment has not been too big for him. He's been able to score when he wants to and plays very strong defense. You also can say the same thing about Aaron. I've been really impressed when we've seen him in there as well.

Chris seems like he's ready to go. We haven't seen as much Chris, but you've seen what Keegan can do. They are not that dissimilar from each other. Chris is more of a driver. Keegan is more of a shooter. But nevertheless, should be a lot of fun to see those guys get some key playing time down the stretch. And especially in this Big Ten tournament, if they can get some key minutes, that could help Iowa in the NCAA tournament, especially given what matchups they have.

And if Luka gets into foul trouble, which is also something that Fran McCaffrey addressed as well. He said, if Luka gets into foul trouble, that would increase Chris Murray's role without question. Get another big guy in there with length who can rebound in traffic. It also puts Josh Ogundale into the mix. He has made great strides in probably the last month. I wouldn't be afraid to play both of those guys. Chris is a little further ahead of Josh right now. And we saw what Josh could do in the waning minutes of that game against

Nebraska. The dude is an enforcer down low. But I think you got to like what you see from Keegan and Chris has a similar build, similar athleticism. I think that gives you a lot of versatility on the defensive side of the ball. Whereas Josh is going to be a little bit more of a bruiser down low and can't really go out to the perimeter to guard guys. Especially it seems like the conditioning probably isn't completely there. But I think the big takeaway is the fact that Fran feels comfortable with his bench. He's felt comfortable with his bench the entire year.

So why wouldn't he feel comfortable with his bench going into this situation? And if Joe Wieskamp is not 100%, I don't think you play him going into this game. But as we get more information, we'll definitely be breaking that down. That does do it for our show today though. A little bit shorter of a show,

but lots of great content coming up as well. Make sure to tune into our previews and reviews of all the games with Bakari Evelyn, and make sure to check out yesterday's interview with Amir Smith-Marset. I do appreciate you all tuning in to today's episode of the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. Have a fantastic Wednesday, and let's go Hawks.