GAME #29: Gophers (17-11, 6-9) v. Iowa (19-7, 8-5) [BTN, 6:00PM]

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Right when I count Austin Hollins out he shows me what a pro he is and a senior leader. Hats off to Austin, I'll enjoy my crow tonight, and I'm sure many Gopherholers will do the same.
 


Build on it. Still gotta go beat Michigan on the road on Saturday.
 

Huge win for the Gophers! Great to see Buggs come off the bench and give us some hope for his future as a Gopher.
 

Shout out to the coaches for putting the plan in place to hold Marble to 5 in the 2nd half.
 


Good, solid team win. Great effort all around (minus some missteps).

Now, since I'm a good sport, I'll say something nice about Iowa. I hate the Hawkeyes, but I'll give credit to their coach. It takes guts for a man with a ladies' name to wear glasses for women, but darn it if Coach McCaffery doesn't rock those Anne Klein frames. You go, Fannie!
 


While Austin and Buggs rightfully get all the keystrokes, quietly I loved the game that Andre and DeAndre put together. Mo played better on the defensive end, and as many boneheaded what the hell plays Joey made, he actually played quite well tonight as well.

You obviously dont score 90+ with a cast of characters chipping in, but I just thought alot of guys contributed including coach Pitino. The call that got DeAndre to the line after how many double teams off of the high ball screen, he calls the clear out where the defender is expecting a high ball screen and it never comes. Excellent call, exactly what needed to happen, and a great adjustment by the Gophers.
 

Great game and a big team win! A lot of different guys contributed and while there still were some dumb mistakes some guys they found a way to pull through and get the win. Good job of hitting free throws down the stretch and not ever giving Iowa a chance for the tie or win with a last second shot. Great to see Austin really step up and have a great offensive game after some struggles and imo a lot more criticism than he deserves from people. The key for Austin was probably hitting that first 3 in the corner and he seemed a lot more confident and aggressive tonight. Wow what a performance from Buggs, he was very active when he got in there and made the most of his opportunity, I knew he was very athletic but really didn't know he was a good shooter and I thought his energy and performance off the bench really sparked something for the Gophers in the 1st half. While it would be great to get a win at Michigan this win should put the Gophers in a position were if they can just win 2 more games I think they will get in the tournament.
 



A secondary pleasure from Gopher wins is no posts for a couple of days from DPDollyParton and the dude who works in nurology (sic)!!
 

Buggs has a sweet stroke, unfortunately his 6'9" frame is almost negated because he barely jumps when shooting. Works when he's got an inch of separation, but he lacks the lift to be able to "shoot over" someone a la Marble and the aforementioned Durant.

I thought DeAndre started this game terribly, Pitino benched him, and he played the last 3/4 of the game under great control and made minimal mistakes. absolutely LOVE that kid and cannot wait to see what he can do in year two or possibly in the NCAA tournament, hes a gamechanger.
 

Gotta give props to Selection Sunday for calling the win this morning. You were right on the money.
 

Breakin' The Plane said:
Good, solid team win. Great effort all around (minus some missteps).

Now, since I'm a good sport, I'll say something nice about Iowa. I hate the Hawkeyes, but I'll give credit to their coach. It takes guts for a man with a ladies' name to wear glasses for women, but darn it if Coach McCaffery doesn't rock those Anne Klein frames. You go, Fannie!
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Thought they were maybe from the Gloria Vanderbilt collection.
 





It is so relaxing to come home after a nice win. I can sleep easy knowing we're not dead yet.
 

Coaching staff deserves a lot of credit for steadying the wavering Gopher ship. RP knew what he was talking about when he said the team had a great Monday practice. Tough order in Ann Arbor. Austin will need to have another big game offensively and defensively. And good gracious, remember to guard Irvin!!! It will be competitive; can the Gophers avoid another drought and take care of bb on the road?
 

BOUNDOUTPASSDUNK said:
Coaching staff deserves a lot of credit for steadying the wavering Gopher ship. RP knew what he was talking about when he said the team had a great Monday practice. Tough order in Ann Arbor. Austin will need to have another big game offensively and defensively. And good gracious, remember to guard Irvin!!! It will be competitive; can the Gophers avoid another drought and take care of bb on the road?
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I feel like we match up well with Michigan. It will be a tall order on the road, but we need to get some revenge for letting the one at home slip away.
 

BOUNDOUTPASSDUNK said:
Coaching staff deserves a lot of credit for steadying the wavering Gopher ship. RP knew what he was talking about when he said the team had a great Monday practice. Tough order in Ann Arbor. Austin will need to have another big game offensively and defensively. And good gracious, remember to guard Irvin!!! It will be competitive; can the Gophers avoid another drought and take care of bb on the road?
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If we shoot 70% from 3 we are gonna win a lot of games. If we shoot 10% we are going to lose alot of games.
 

I was the game tonight and it solidified my mind that we have no PF at ALL! Joey King WAY to many bone head plays. Oto doesn't seem to play anymore. I just really can't wait til Josh Martin get here to solidify this bunch!
 

slimmy22 said:
I was the game tonight and it solidified my mind that we have no PF at ALL! Joey King WAY to many bone head plays. Oto doesn't seem to play anymore. I just really can't wait til Josh Martin get here to solidify this bunch!
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Because you are so damned good, fill in for Joey and show us what you can do.
 

BOUNDOUTPASSDUNK said:
Coaching staff deserves a lot of credit for steadying the wavering Gopher ship. RP knew what he was talking about when he said the team had a great Monday practice. Tough order in Ann Arbor. Austin will need to have another big game offensively and defensively. And good gracious, remember to guard Irvin!!! It will be competitive; can the Gophers avoid another drought and take care of bb on the road?
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There goes again. Coaches for the wins and players for the losses. What in the world happened since last week? Buggs changed his body in one week? I wonder how well Wally could have played too if he ever got a chance. Before you worshippers attack me, I say what I have said all along. Richard is learning on the job.

Go Gophers
 

Interesting stat, everybody but two people on the team had at least one turnover. The only freshmen, Buggs and McNeil. Good to know we have a solid foundation to turn around our history of completely blowing the end of games!
 

The-Real-Truth said:
There goes again. Coaches for the wins and players for the losses. What in the world happened since last week? Buggs changed his body in one week? I wonder how well Wally could have played too if he ever got a chance. Before you worshippers attack me, I say what I have said all along. Richard is learning on the job.

Go Gophers
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Practically every team in the Big Ten has gone through a stretch this year where they've stunk as well as looked terrible in at least one game. By your logic, every coach in the conference is learning on the job. Shat, look at Iowa: here's a team with overwhelming talent and Final Four potential, and they're sitting with an 8-6 conference record, only two games ahead of the Gophers. It's simply a meat grinder of a conference.

If I were Rich, I'd be trying to give my team some perspective about where they're at and how they got here. I'd be telling them that you have to go through some things to get somewhere and that they shouldn't look back, only forward. I suspect he is telling them these things because he's a hell of a coach, regardless of what some two bit Internet poster who doesn't give a frack about the program he coaches says.
 

Wow, what a win! I wanted to congratulate Selection Sunday on his prediction, but tinyarch and Station 19 beat me to it. If I was going to predict the score for this game, I would have predicted something like Iowa 75 Minnesota 60 and I thought the Vegas line of Gophers just +2.5 was free money. Not only did I think the Gophers matched up poorly with Iowa, but I thought the team looked like it had shut it down against Ohio State.

Obviously have to start with Buggs as he was the catalyst to get the Gophers going after a slow start. I am sure a lot of people have discussed his threes, but I thought he was equally as important defensively and with his general energy on the floor in going after rebounds. I was impressed that Buggs was able to play so many consecutive minutes in the first half with as hard as he was playing.

Really, really happy for Austin Hollins. He's had a very rough season, but he's been an enjoyable player to watch when you consider his entire four year career. I've been hard on him, I've heard the guys on 1500 be hard on him, and other posters on here have been hard on him as well. I think the criticisms of him this year are justified, but it was getting to the point where some (myself included) might remember him more for what he didn't do this year than what he did do throughout his career. Not a star or anything, but this was the type of senior game and moment that you hope a kid like Austin Hollins gets to experience. I hope Lionel was in the stands to watch it.

DeAndre did a nice job handling the ball for the most part and finally made a couple free throws after missing a couple big front ends. The kid had 2-3 moves tonight that got me out of my seat which has almost become the norm for him. The way he makes 2-3 moves and puts in layups over, under, or around guys 6-10 inches taller than him is just amazing.

I thought the Gophers defense was really shaky in the first half, but improved significantly in the second half. The only thing that bothered me defensively in the second half was allowing Ogelsby to shoot jumpers, that kid is pretty easy to defend.

Officiating: I thought it was terrible in the first half and fair in the second half. Obviously we'd like to have had that foul on Elliott not called and for the ref to call a foul on Woodbury elbowing a guy down low instead of a foul on another Gopher defender. Elliott really needs to watch his reactions, they were over the top even for him tonight. The one foul he had on White when he was going for a steal in the back court was obvious and he really showed up the ref on that one. I don't know if that affected the call when White tried to dunk on him, but it's not unusual for refs to hold grudges. Pitino himself seemed close to a "T" in the first half when the whistles were only coming on one end of the floor.

Transition offense was excellent most of the night, and one of the big keys were guys (Malik I noticed especially) being willing to make the extra pass passing up a good shot to get a great shot for a teammate. The guys were much more active digging down on the post or helping on drives and creating turnovers in the paint which got them out in that transition game.

Iowa is a good team, but I've questioned their defense all year. They don't have many guys who move their feet well and we saw Austin take advantage of driving to the basket more than he's done all year.

Now the elephant in the room: this was almost a MASSIVE choke job. The Gophers missed several front ends of one and ones, 'Dre Hollins airmailed a low percentage alley oop to Austin, Joey King left a three foot shot short on one possession and missed a four foot putback on another. Defensively, we broke down and gave up an offensive rebound, bucket, and foul to a guard in Marble, left a couple shooters wide open for threes...I believe the announcers said at one point near the end of the game that the Gophers went the last 8 minutes of play without a fg? Hopefully getting the win will shake some of the "choke" out of this team and start to change the culture. Jim Jackson was completely right when he said what was happening was all mental and the Gophers were just giving it away. The talent/ability was there to put the game away, but nerves/anxiety was getting the better of the Gophers. I thought coming through in the clutch against Indiana might give this team some confidence, at least at home, but it was not to be. Very happy to see Mo Walker step to the line and knock down 4 in a row.

I thought some criticism of the coaching staff has been warranted after recent performances, so they should get a lot of praise for tonight's performance. At best, this was a very fragile team coming home from Columbus that knew it was in a much win situation. To regroup in just a couple practices and get a win over a legitimate top 20 team is impressive. I thought Coach Pitino hit all the right notes tonight in regards to his Mo/Elliott usage, when to use Buggs, taking timeouts to stop momentum/settle down his team, and the decision to slow down offensively with the lead in the last five minutes.

The Barn sounded great tonight, and I credit both the fans and the players for giving the fans a reason to stay engaged in the game.
 

Thats as good as I have seen the two Hollins play in the second half, they were both exceptional on defense, joy to watch.
 

EG#9 said:
Pitino himself seemed close to a "T" in the first half when the whistles were only coming on one end of the floor.
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Good observations but the calls started going our way after Pitino got in the refs' faces. Matter of fact, I laughed at one call because Fran went into even greater histrionics when it went in our favor. Glad we have a coach who doesn't plant himself on a stool because that's life in the BIG. Do wish Rich would stay off the floor though. He has the potential of being as bad as Crean
 

I would love to be able to hear what Richard is telling the refs during breaks in the action. He looks madder n' hell , but more often than not the officials end up with smiles on their faces.
 

Received numerous texts asking about Wally and why he was dressed, etc. Sent out messages to Amelia and Marcus and have gotten nothing back. Could not attend game last night (great timing) so could not confirm if he was dressed or not. Any info on this?
 

dtrain19 said:
Received numerous texts asking about Wally and why he was dressed, etc. Sent out messages to Amelia and Marcus and have gotten nothing back. Could not attend game last night (great timing) so could not confirm if he was dressed or not. Any info on this?
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BTN showed Wally as part of the team coming out of the locker room. I'm assuming it was old video.
 

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