Iowa Game Preview
February 23, 2008 by kj
Friday Night Links
Kelvin Sampson is done at IU–with $750,000 to help ease his pain. Speculation for the IU job turns to Bennett, Miller, Brownell (?), Few, and Matta. Don’t see the Matta thing happening; he’s got everything he needs to build a consistent top-10 program in Columbus.
Mike Kebler can shoot the rock, reportedly.
A non-Big Ten game worth watching tomorrow: #1 Memphis against #2 Tennessee. 9:00. ESPN.
Shannon Brown is a Chicago Bull. Maurice Ager is a New Jersey Net.
Game Preview
2:00 Saturday. The Breslin Center. ESPN.
Game 2 of MSU’s extremely-hard-to-get-excited-about Revenge Week. The last time these two teams met, of course, MSU put up a quadruple tempo-free stink bomb on offense.
Since that game, Iowa has posted a decent 4-6 mark to put their conference record at 5-9. A 53-48 home win against Ohio State is their other quality win. Oddly, they beat Michigan in Ann Arbor but lost to them in Iowa City.
The games Iowa has won have been on the strength of their defense. They’ve won 5 of the 6 games in which they’ve held their opponents below 1.0 point per possession. Their greatest strength on defense is rebounding. They’ve posted a defensive rebounding % of 72.3% in conference play, 2nd best in the league and 1.5% higher than MSU’s %. Kurt Looby, Seth Gorney, and Cyrus Tate have all posted individual defensive rebounding percentages above 18% on the season.
Oddly, Iowa is as bad at offensive rebounding as they are good at defensive rebounding. They rank second-to-last with an offensive rebounding % of 26.7% in conference play (compared to MSU’s league-best 36.1%).
Iowa has struggled with turnovers all season. They’re the only team with a higher offensive turnover % in conference play than MSU. But they may be turning the corner a bit. They’ve turned it over on less than 21.0% of their possessions in 4 of their last 5 games.
After missing most of the nonconference season with a foot injury, junior guard Tony Freeman has been Iowa’s best scoring threat in conference play. He’s averaging 14.5 points per game and making 37.9% of his 3-point attempts in conference play. He’s made 10 of 22 3-point attempts (45.4%) in his last 3 games.
Kenpom predicts a 73-60 Spartan win. The margin should be higher than that. For the Spartans Weblog Key to the Game, I’m going to go with consistency. Can MSU make plays on offense for a full 40 minutes against Iowa’s man-to-man defense the way they did against Penn State’s zone? Building offensive confidence is a necessity going into the four-game stretch that closes the regular season: at Wisconsin, Indiana at home, at Illinois, at Ohio State.
