Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Recation to Iowa's blowout loss vs MSU | Wrestling team survives scare vs ISU | Top five toughest games remaining on Iowa's schedule

Episode Date: December 4, 2018

We have our raw reaction to Iowa's loss to Michigan State last night, and it's not pretty. The Hawks struggled offensively and couldn't contain the Spartan's 3rd and 4th best players throughout the night. Segment two has us recapping the happenings in Hawkeye athletics over the last week focusing on the women's basketball team losing to #2 Notre Dame and the #4 wrestling team barely beating the Iowa State wrestling team. Staying within the theme of basketball, we wrap up the episode discussing Iowa's top five toughest games remaining on their schedule.Twitter: @lockedoniowaGmail: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to another episode of the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. The Locked On Hawkeyes podcast is a part of the Locked On Sports Network, and we are the latest addition to the growing lineup of college podcasts. I'm your host, Andrew Wade, editor over at DearOldGold.com, where you can find analysis pieces on all things black and yellow, and we have an episode for you today. I wouldn't say it's super exciting. We're going to be talking a little bit about the basketball game last night,

and I'm a little bent out of shape over it. So I don't want to lie to you all right now, but great content coming your way regardless of the tone. Obviously, if you did get a chance to watch the game last night, you understand what I'm talking about. If you did not, though, we will be covering that first thing on today's podcast. So segment one, we're going to be recapping the Iowa versus Michigan State game. On segment two, we're going to be giving an overview of general Iowa sports, talking about the women's basketball team and the wrestling team's big win over Iowa State this past weekend. And then finally on segment three, we're going to take a look at the toughest games that remain for the Iowa Hawkeyes basketball team

as they kind of go into somewhat of a lull after beginning their Big Ten slate 0-2. Before we jump in, though, make sure you subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts at, and please leave us a review. You can also interact with us on Twitter at LockedOnIowa or email us at LockedOnHawkeyes at gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you. Definitely give us a review. Leave us some information. Let us know what you think of the show. We'd love to hear from you.

Like I said, for segment one, we're going to be talking about the Iowa Michigan State game. To be honest, I didn't take much notes in advance of this call just because I felt like it'd be pretty easy to express my disappointment in what happened over the game. Going into the game, I really felt like the two big players that Iowa was going to have to worry about was the two guards, Cassius Winston and Jeremy Langford. I will say this, the Hawks did a great job of game planning for those two.

Langford and Winston came in averaging 34 or 35 points combined per game. Yesterday they shot a combined 7 for 22 and only scored 22 points. So Iowa did a great job of stopping their two guards. One of the other keys to the matchup yesterday was could Iowa get to the free throw line with as much consistency as they have been throughout the season? Michigan State is one of the worst teams in the NCAA in terms of fouling. They are very heavy on fouls. They've been called a lot on fouling the opposing team. Iowa, I would say, did a decent job overall.

They continued to attack Michigan State. They got three of their players with four personal fouls, including their two forwards who really did some damage against the Hawks, but it wasn't enough. And honestly, it wasn't as much as I anticipated based on how well the Hawks have done over the past, or over the last, you know, seven, eight games. They only shot 30 free throws on the day, which is a little bit less than what they're averaging. They're averaging about 35 free throws per game. But unfortunately, they were not able to convert with nearly as much success. So far, they've been shooting around 78% from the three-throw line.

And yesterday, they shot 66.7%. So not going to cut it in a game like this. And then finally, one of the other matchups I was interested to see was how well Luke Garza and Tyler Cook could perform against Nick Ward and the Michigan State Spartans. Nick Ward is their biggest guy at 6'8", 250 pounds, and I really felt like we could utilize Luke Garza's size and Tyler Cook's athleticism to attack them. Unfortunately, that also didn't happen. And to be honest, yesterday was just disappointing to watch. Iowa played really strong for the first, I would say, 10 to 12 minutes. And then it all kind of went downhill from there.

They were keeping the game close, you know, a two-point game for most of the first half, and then Michigan State went on a run, closed out the half up 10 points, 43-33. When they started the second half, I thought there was a chance that Iowa could rebound. You know, they weren't shooting very well in the first half. Their shot selection wasn't great. They weren't making the plays they needed to, and Michigan State just kept converting, and to be honest, I also didn't like the the referee I don't want to blame it on the refs but there were some questionable calls some questionable no calls throughout the game that I wasn't a big fan of but when Iowa entered the second half it all went downhill even more Michigan State started off hot again and Iowa just kept repeating

the same issues that had been plaguing them throughout the game. They had arguably probably their worst shooting performance of the year. From three-point, they shot 22 shots and only made six of them. Jordan Bohannon shot seven of those and only made two. And to be honest, it wasn't just that they were missing, but their shot selection was relatively terrible. Not a big fan of that. It honestly looked like last year's team and it was just an extremely unimpressive performance all around. Overall, they shot 32.8%

from the field. So they made 21 shots on 64 attempts, not going to cut it in a game against Michigan State, you know, at the Breslin Center. The two big guys who really hurt Iowa were not the guys we thought were going to hurt them. So Winston and Langford, I really thought, were going to be the key difference makers. However, Nick Ward, who was their third leading scorer coming into this game, had an incredible day. He went 10 for 10 from the field

and went 6 for 11 from the free throw line to account for 26 points in the day and also had 9 rebounds. Kenny Goins had 19 points in 30 minutes and had 14 rebounds. And he was just an absolute beast. He also added 7 assists. So pretty impressive all around from the 6'6 forward

who has been leading the team in boards throughout the season. I believe he was averaging 10 boards coming into the game, so impressive nonetheless. His positioning, boxing out, that sort of thing was all sorts of good. Like I said, this is a frustrating game to watch. I was extremely annoyed. At one point, Michigan State was up 30 points on Iowa with 10 minutes to go in the second half. I'm glad they were able to cut the lead back a little bit, but not a very good game for Iowa. And honestly, they don't play very well at Breslin and Lansing ever. I believe they won maybe one game in the last 12 attempts,

if I remember correctly. I'll have to take a look at the numbers and get back to you on that. But they don't win very often there, and honestly they get blown out quite often there as well. And that's partly because Michigan State's a solid basketball team, and partly because that center is one of the toughest places to play, so Iowa just can't seem to figure it out there, and that's not necessarily something on Fran McCaffrey. That's kind of been the onus on every Iowa coach for the last three decades. They just can't win in Michigan State.

They do get a crack at Michigan State later in the season though, so a chance for a revenge game in a sense, but based on how Iowa performed last night, I'm really just disappointed. I was really hoping they could get a hot start into the Big 10. They started off 6-0, lost that close one to Wisconsin on Friday night, and then now blowing this game against Michigan State. I have a feeling they may drop from the rankings at the end of this week just because of how bad that loss was, but it also depends on how well they play Thursday night against Iowa State. If they lose that, they're absolutely dropping out of the rankings, but that is a really

crucial game because until January 3rd when Iowa takes on Purdue, they don't really have any meaningful games outside of Iowa State left. So essentially they'd be playing the next month of basketball without having any meaningful real games and not a lot of momentum to kind of build off of. But one of the kind of the key disappointments from this game, I would say though, is Jordan Bohannon hasn't been able to pick it up offensively this year. He went four for 12 yesterday, only had 11 points, zero assist as a point guard, which is abysmal. For reference, Luke Garza had more assists. He had three. In fact, almost every player that played had more assists than Jordan Bohannon. So to me, that's kind of

unacceptable. And then Luke Garza, I know I just talked him up about having the three assists, but he also shot one for 10 from the field goals or four field goals, and that's just not going to cut it. When you have one of your top players that's shooting one for 10, that's not okay. Tyler Cook put in another good game, went six for 13 for 15 points, and then brought in eight boards, so not the worst. But he got into foul trouble late, so had to worry about him. One of the things we are starting to see, one of the trends, though, is on the defensive

side of the ball, Isaiah Moss has really rounded out a niche for himself. He's done really well guarding the team's top offensive players and making sure they're limiting them at least. And you can see that by Jeremy Langford and Cassius Winston's scoring performances. The other big piece of news here is that Joe Weiskamp, the freshman who's been really kind of a wonderful revelation. We kind of knew he was going to be good going into the season, but he's been doing pretty well so far. He went out with a sprained ankle. Haven't gotten information yet on when we can expect to see him back, but we'll keep you posted, obviously, here on Locked on Hawkeyes.

And that kind of covers it for the recap for last night. Iowa lost 90-68. They are 0-2 in conference play and 6-2 overall. Like I said, they play Iowa State on Thursday night, and they go into a pretty easy non-conference slate before picking back up with a Big Ten on January 3rd. Unfortunate that they started the conference play a little bit slow, but I do think there are some positives. If they can fix the things that they struggled with this past, you know,

last night and on Friday night, they should be a good team. And offensively, they're going to get better, but I just want to see them take better shots, have better shot selection, and work the clock down a little bit more than they were last night. On segment two, we're going to be talking about Iowa sports in general, jumping into women's basketball and the wrestling team. But before that we do that, I want to give you some information about an awesome deal we have for you. Because if you're like me, you hate to miss your favorite team play, regardless of who they are playing.

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slash locked on. Never miss a game again with sling TV. All right, we are back. And before we jump into segment two, I wanted to remind you that on segment three, we are going to be previewing the five toughest games left on Iowa's schedule. Arguably, I think last night's game against Michigan State would have been the toughest game on their slate. They got that out of the way with a very disappointing loss as we covered in segment one. But I want to touch on the five toughest games going forward, what we can expect from Iowa in those games. For segment two, though, we're going to be talking about Hawkeye athletics and specifically focusing on the wrestling team and the women's basketball team and providing a

bit of, you know, kind of breaking news. And we'll jump into the breaking news piece first. Yesterday, we received word that Erin Menz, the redshirt senior lineback out for the whole year. He should be getting a medical hardship for this season, the 2018 year, for not being able to play. And it's not that he wouldn't have had a chance to play, but with the injuries, with the ineffective play, Iowa was able to experiment with a lot of different players at different positions at linebacker,

and it definitely became a lot more crowded as opposed to with men securing the starting spot spot I think if you were to come back it would be a little bit more up in the air and when you're in your last year you've been waiting behind you know the trio of linebackers Ben Neiman, Bo Bowers, and Josie Jewell and you finally get a chance to play and you tear your ACL hurt his knee knee. I'm not exactly sure what the specifics on that was, but when you get to that point, it'll kind of be disappointing, and I think he just needs a fresh start. So wish you the best, Aaron.

It was great having you in the black and gold for four years. And to more positive news, on the wrestling side, the Hawkeyes, the men's wrestling team, did win against No. 23 Iowa State. They won 19-18, so a pretty close match. It was a little bit surprising. I think watching it, following the highlights and whatnot over the weekend, Iowa State jumped out to a big lead. They had a 15-9 lead with four matches remaining.

Really, two big takeaways here. There was an injury in the middle of the match that gave Iowa State six points. That was a huge deal. That was Miles Wilson at 174. He was getting up and just fell to the mat with an injury. Obviously, they gave the points to Iowa State there. That was six points. And then four ranked players or four ranked wrestlers for the Iowa wrestling team lost, which is a pretty big deal. Two of them were to unranked wrestlers and the two of them were to ranked wrestlers for Iowa State. The guys pulling in wins were number one ranked Spencer Lee at 125. Number one ranked Sam Stoll at 285. Number 11 ranked Jacob Warner at 197, who beat number five William Miklas.

And then number four, Alex Marinelli at 165. And then number 13, Caleb Young at 157. The guys that lost for the Iowa Hawkeye wrestling team, number 10, Austin DeSanto. He lost number 14, Austin Gomez. Number 11, Cash Wilk lost to unranked Samuel Colbrey at 184. Unranked Miles Wilson at 174. He's the one who fell to injury. He was in place of number 11, ranked Michael Kiermermer. I definitely butchered that name, but I'm not sure why he's not wrestling right now. And then number 11, Pat Lugo, lost to number 12, Jarrett Deegan at 149. And then finally, number 16, Max Murin, lost to unranked Ian Parker at 141 so it's great I'm glad that Iowa survived that scare a little bit closer and I think they wanted it to

be but it's early in the season they'll pick it up and obviously the most important thing is that they won that you know ever so important Cyhawk series so good to see that on the women's basketball front the team dropped from number 14 to number 16. This is after they lost to Notre Dame in a blowout loss last week. I was really looking forward to the game. It was definitely going to show me what the women's basketball team could bring to the table, and it didn't appear like they were ready to compete at that level at that point. In that game, they turned the ball over 18 times. They got out-rebounded by 13, and they shot 20% from three-point, which is never going to cut it in major Division I basketball.

They did turn around, though, and beat Robert Morris University by 29, and they have a relatively easy slate coming up. They do play Iowa State in that in-state rivalry. They then play IUPUI and UNI before taking on No. 21 Drake Bulldogs. Not the worst slate to at least pick it back up. Obviously, I think there's some work to do for the women's basketball team if they want to make a deep run into the NCAA tournament. Not exactly the start I think they wanted to get off to,

and it didn't help losing to Florida State in the Jamboree Jam tournament. Not exactly what they wanted to do. But with that being said, they have a slate that they could probably get four straight wins in, hopefully, and improve on that ranking. Obviously, Notre Dame is extremely talented. So not the worst loss, but the way they lost was not ideal. And that kind of covers it for segment number two. and that kind of covers it for segment number two.

On segment number three, we're going to be jumping into the top five toughest games for the Iowa Hawkeye men's basketball team going forward. All right, we are back for segment number three, and as I said, it was a disappointing loss. Iowa lost to Michigan State last night, 90-68. But it was probably their toughest game they have on their entire schedule until they get to Big Ten Conference play and the NCAA Tournament. So I wanted to touch on, kind of in the theme of that, what are the top five toughest games the Hawks have left for this season?

And this is in no particular order, although there's one in particular I think would probably be the toughest, but I can touch on that in just a few seconds. And looking at their schedule, their next five games are pretty winnable games, and that's really important as they jump into big-time play to continue the momentum that they started early in the season, not let these two losses spiral them out of control and jump into bad habits that plagued them last year. So if they can win these next five, they're going to be looking at an 11-2 record, which

would be pretty outstanding going into the full gauntlet of Big Ten play, which begins on January 3rd as they take on the Purdue Boilermakers. Purdue was ranked earlier in the season. They're no longer ranked after a few losses, but still a very tough team. And so with that, I wanted to jump in. Here are the five toughest games the Hawkeyes have left. Again, in no particular order, Iowa takes on number five Michigan on February 1st. And obviously for easy reasons, Michigan has been a relatively surprising team, but a very strong team in the young season.

It doesn't matter where they play at, it's going to be tough. And unfortunately, Carver-Hawkeye Arena isn't exactly the hardest place to play. So although there's home court advantage to an extent, it's not exactly as exciting or as good as you can say the Cameron Arena for Duke and whatnot. And Michigan's had some big wins. They already beat number 8, Villanova. They beat number 11, UNC.

And they beat number 19, Purdue. And while all three of those teams are somewhat struggling, they're still pretty solid. Villanova still ranked 21st. North Carolina still ranked 14th. Purdue is the last one out of the top 25. So still very good teams this season. Michigan's been very tough, and it's going to be a very strong matchup.

And I hope that Hawkeye fans everywhere can rock the Carver-Hawkeye Arena when Michigan comes to town. The second toughest game is going to be, not the second toughest overall, just the second game I want to bring up is Iowa's taking on number 12 Wisconsin at the Kohl Center in

Madison on March 7th. And the toughest thing here is not only is Wisconsin a good team, they're a very disciplined and fundamentally sound team as we saw Friday night. They're very good at playing their game and not letting the moment become too big for them. But at the Kohl Center, that place is crazy. Now,

I've personally been there. I've watched Fran McCaffrey get thrown out of that game. It was about three years ago. So fun, fun stuff, good memories. But that place is just packed in red. And, you know, I'm not a big Wisconsin fan. For those of you who've listened to this podcast a few times, I personally hate Wisconsin. They're one of my least favorite teams in the Big Ten. Having lived there for four years, you get really annoyed of Wisconsin fans. But they're very passionate about their team and they show up for every single game because they're used to winning. And it makes sense because Wisconsin has an 89% winning percentage at the Kohl's Center. So that's going to be a very difficult game for the men's basketball team

and one that they really need to win considering they lost to Wisconsin just a few nights ago. The third toughest game is going to be versus number 10 Michigan State, who Iowa just lost to. They take them on in about seven weeks. Michigan State is going to be heading to Carver-Hawkeye Arena. And for good reason. I think what I learned from last night's game is that Michigan State has two very outstanding guards. Iowa had a game plan for them.

But Michigan State had a better counterpunch to Iowa's game plan with Kenny Groines and Nick Ward coming in and scoring. I think it was 45 points to really propel the Spartans to a victory there. The fifth toughest game is going to be at Indiana on February 7th. The biggest thing here, Indiana is still a solid team. They're not in the top 25 yet. They're likely to be towards the end of the season. But Assembly Hall is extremely difficult to play at. Indiana has an 84% winning percentage there.

It'll be a fun game for the Hawkeyes. It's always fun to go to tough stadiums, or tough arenas, and come out with a victory. But it's not going to be an easy one playing Indiana at the Assembly Hall. And then finally, this may be kind of a surprise, but in looking at the schedule, for me personally, I think the last game of the season on March 10th against number 24 Nebraska is actually going to be probably one of the top five toughest games for the Hawks.

They play at Pinnacle Bank Arena, and Nebraska isn't necessarily known to be a good basketball school, and as of recent, they're not really known to be a good football school either, but they do play well at Pinnacle Bank Arena. They are relatively strong there. Their point margin for difference between away games and home games is one of the tops in the country. I believe it's about six point advantage they have at home compared to the general Vegas spread of three points that most teams get at home. So Nebraska is pretty solid when they're playing in Nebraska and Lincoln. So that'll be a tough game and an opportunity for Iowa to close out on a strong note or, you know, limp to the finish line as they head into the Big Ten basketball

tournament, which will be huge. So that's it for our top five toughest games. Let me know what you think. I'd be, I would love to hear from you all on Twitter, uh, at Gmail, leave it in an iTunes review or wherever you get your podcast at. Let us know what you think the top five toughest games are and let us know what you think, you know, really went wrong yesterday and what your thoughts are on the Iowa basketball team.

Again, love to hear from you. Love to interact with you. You can get, you can find us on Twitter at locked on Iowa. You can find me on Twitter, your host, Andrew Wade at Wade underscore Andrew.

And you can email us at LockedOnHawkeyes at gmail.com. And that'll do it for our Tuesday episode. We'll be back tomorrow. We have some good stuff in the works. We'll be releasing some of that information on our Twitter account later today, letting you know what to expect

on tomorrow's episode. We're working on a few guests that may be able to appear for tomorrow's episode, but I don't want to spoil anything or give away anything before it's episode. We're working on a few guests that may be able to appear for tomorrow's episode, but I don't want to spoil anything or give away anything before it's confirmed. So thank you again for jumping on and listening with us.

Again, not exactly the happiest of days with Iowa getting blown out by Michigan State, but the show will go on nonetheless. And with that, I'm your host, Andrew Wade. You are listening to the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. Thank you very much for joining. Please subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify,

or wherever you get your podcasts at. Leave us a review and let us know what you think. And have a fantastic day, Hawkeye Nation. And we'll be back tomorrow.