The transfer portal waters have not yet fully settled, and it’s possible Iowa State will add one more player to this year’s roster. They’ve been connected to Jacob Grandison, but they’re one of ten teams on that list, and among other clearly impactful transfers, unless I’ve missed a mention, they aren’t connected. Which, looking at the open scholarship spot, means if they use it, it’ll likely be on either a one-year lottery ticket of a player, someone far off the national radar, or a longer-term investment—a young transfer also far off the national radar. There’s been talk of saving the scholarship for the future, but with four players in their final year of eligibility and four more with only one year left after this one, it’s kind of a drop in the bucket.
So, this Iowa State roster might be it. If it is, it isn’t bad.
It’s unclear how deep the rotation will go. All three incoming freshmen are only three-star recruits on 247, Tre King is an unknown, and Robert Jones had poor numbers just about everywhere numbers were published last year. It’s possible one or more of those five will play significant minutes, but at the moment, it seems that the guys we’ll most often see break down as follows:
- Guards/Wings: Jaren Holmes, Gabe Kalscheur, Caleb Grill, Jeremiah Williams
- Wing/Big: Aljaž Kunc
- Bigs: Osun Osunniyi, Hason Ward
It’s not a bad crew. You basically take last year’s team, remove Izaiah Brockington—who was often very good, but always ran in parallel with the offense more than he was a part of it—swap George Conditt/Jones/Tristan Enaruna for Osunniyi/Ward, swap Tyrese Hunter for Holmes, and fill Jaden Walker and Tre Jackson’s minutes with Williams. It won’t go exactly like that, but that’s the basic idea, with an upgrade on the front line, a downgrade at point guard, Brockington an absent luxury, and hopefully an upgrade in the backup guard role but possibly more of a net even. Hunter will be missed on defense, especially, but the offense should be a good amount better, and overall, the team should be more consistent (reliant on a broader range of guys) and either a tiny bit worse or comparably good to last year’s. That doesn’t mean another Sweet Sixteen is in the cards—the Cyclones got a good draw this March, and took advantage of that draw—but it does mean this is a team that should have the goal of making the NCAA Tournament.
Within the Big 12, things could be tough. Only Kansas State is not currently expected to be in the NCAA Tournament picture out of the ten teams, and Iowa State’s a chop below the Oklahoma schools and West Virginia, at least in systems like T-Rank. The nice thing with this is that if Iowa State can outperform expectations on the court by a little, they’ll outperform expectations in the standings by a lot. So, there’s a very bad way this can go, but if this team is even a little better than expected—which is reasonable to hope on, especially since those returning should improve over the offseason—it could be another really fun year.
We’ll see if anyone does get added in that 13th scholarship spot. If not, though, Iowa State is fine.
The Rangers Are Going to Win
Tonight, anyway.
We published our bets for this a few hours ago, but what’s sitting with me from looking that over is how the Lightning only really played the one great game so far this series. I understand that hockey is streaky, but even with that, the streak-influenced Gelo views this as 50/50, on the nose.
Did the Celtics Take Control? Or Did the Celtics Avoid Pressure?
There’s two interpretations of where the NBA Finals are at after Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum led the way to a comfortable, then uncomfortable, then comfortable-again Game 3 win in Boston. The first is that the Celtics, having seized a 2-1 lead and playing Game 4 at home, are firmly in control. The second is that the Celtics, having avoided falling behind 2-1 and therefore not facing a must-win game at home, have avoided giving the Warriors a massive edge.
They mean the same thing, of course. Either way, the Celtics shifted the series in their favor, but didn’t overwhelmingly move into the spot of being the assumed winner. In a series, from here, in which every game is a coin flip, the Celtics win 70% of the time. FiveThirtyEight’s model has them winning 87% of the time. Betting markets imply a number around 67%. Given all that, if you trust the markets as the best estimate, the Celtics probably would’ve been down around 25% with a loss, and are instead around 67%. That’s the quantified version of all of this.
Contreras, Miley, Nature
The Cubs were rained out last night in Baltimore, meaning they’re now set to finish August playing twenty games in nineteen days, with a pit stop in Maryland on what would have been a day off after visiting the Nationals. Guessing it doesn’t matter when we get there. Guessing, in fact, given how young each team is, that it could be a decently fun afternoon.
The Cubs do still have a 0.3% chance of winning the Central, per FanGraphs’s Playoff Odds (the Reds are at 0.1%, making them an even-value play at 1,000-to-1 odds, which are available in the market if you want to try getting rich that way), and should they, I don’t know, sweep the Yankees on the road then sweep San Diego and Atlanta at home, they’d enter their next four-game set in Pittsburgh exactly at .500 (at which point the Pirates would take three of four and pass them in the standings again). So, we’ll keep hoping on wins, and this weekend, it sounds like it’ll be Wade Miley against Jameson Taillon on Friday, Matt Swarmer against Jordan Montgomery on Saturday, and TBD for Sunday, with all of Kyle Hendricks, Marcus Stroman, and Justin Steele available on plenty of rest. I’m curious if the team will pivot off of the Swarmer plan. If they don’t, it could be taken as implying that it’s nice to get Hendricks a little break.
One nice thing about this team is that it does have starting pitching options, which wasn’t even the case at a couple points in The Good Times (Jen-Ho Tseng, Duane Underwood Jr., Luke Farrell, Eddie Butler, Clayton Richard, Trevor Cahill, Rob Zastryzny, Jake Buchanan, Brian Matusz, Adam Warren: All guys who once spot-started for the Cubs or even spent time “in the rotation”). Maybe Swarmer will be a remember-that-guy? in hindsight, but right now, it’s hard to feel too bad trotting him out there. Clearly, he’s competent, and beyond the five possible starters this weekend you’ve got Keegan Thompson ostensibly still in the rotation, Drew Smyly hopefully back in a month, Alec Mills on the staff, and Caleb Kilian probably coming back up again at some point fully stretched out. That’s nine pitchers on the 40-man roster of whom you can reasonably request a quality start, with Thompson and Mills the biggest stretches among the group and that mostly a question of how stretched out they are.
In the other news of the day, Willson Contreras and the Cubs agreed to meet in the middle on their arbitration requests and avoid the hearing. Probably meaningless, overall, but that little saga is now done.
***
Viewing schedule for today/tonight, second screen rotation in italics:
- 12:35 PM EDT: Diamondbacks @ Reds, Davies vs. Mahle (MLB TV)
- 1:10 PM EDT: Cardinals @ Rays, Mikolas vs. McClanahan (MLB TV)
- 2:10 PM EDT: Phillies @ Brewers, Eflin vs. Burnes (MLB TV)
- 2:10 PM EDT: Dodgers @ White Sox, Anderson vs. Cease (MLB TV)
- 3:45 PM EDT: Rockies @ Giants, Gomber vs. Webb (MLB TV)
- 6:40 PM EDT: Nationals @ Marlins, Strasburg vs. Rogers (MLB TV)
- 7:30 PM EDT: Oklahoma vs. Texas, Game 2 (ESPN2)
- 7:40 PM EDT: Yankees @ Twins, Cole vs. Bundy (ESPN+/MLB TV)
- 8:00 PM EDT: Lightning @ Rangers, Game 5 (ESPN)
- 9:38 PM EDT: Red Sox @ Angels, Pivetta vs. Ohtani (MLB TV)
