Apologies for these notes’ absence the last few days. Still figuring some things out schedule-wise. I’d imagine it’ll be smoothed out entering the new year, but thanks for bearing with us through the chop.
Iowa State vs. Iowa
Cy-Hawk game tonight in men’s basketball, after ISU’s women’s team won it last night at Hilton. Iowa State enters tonight 8-0 but a narrow home underdog, which is fair. The Cyclones have, for the most part, impressed on the year, especially in their three biggest games, but they’re largely unproven, and the Hawkeyes are the best team they’ve played.
On Saturday, the Cyclones forced 21 turnovers and shot fifty percent from three to vanquish Creighton in Omaha. It was more of the same from Iowa State, who’s relied on defense to carry them so far with the offense still rather limited (the fifty percent three-point shooting was an anomaly and came on only fourteen attempts).
The Cyclones will need a lot out of that defense tonight against an Iowa offense that’s among the country’s best, and is the country’s absolute best right now in turnover rate. Iowa lacks a scorer as big as Luka Garza, but Keegan Murray’s been a force down low and at the free throw line, and he’s got plenty of supporting cast. The Hawkeyes are rather unproven, having only beaten a struggling Virginia team (we’ll get to Virginia), but they’ve played enough games for us to have a pretty good idea on how good they are, and that idea says, again, that they’re the narrow favorites here.
On the offensive end, spreading the wealth might help. Iowa is customarily soft on defense, and while the counting stats from the Izaiah Brockington/Gabe Kalscheur/Tyrese Hunter trio are impressive, Caleb Grill, Aljaž Kunc, and George Conditt have been more efficient (Brockington’s at the sweet spot of efficiency and production, but Kalscheur and Hunter have a lot of turnovers to their names). It’s not a situation where any drastic changes are needed, but Hunter’s at his best creating for others, Kalscheur’s yet to find his shot consistently, and Iowa will likely key in on Brockington with whoever’s their best defender (again, not saying much, but they’ve had plenty of time to gameplan for the guy). At the very least, it’s great to be in a situation where this game appears winnable—the win probability has something like doubled since the beginning of the year. Sensational. Win it, and you’ll probably get to New Year’s Day unbeaten. What a place to be.
Speaking of places to be, it’s remarkable Hunter is where he is in life considering the challenges he came from. The Iowa State Daily had a sobering and inspirational piece on him a few days ago. Here’s the link.
Is Gonzaga Ok?
Sticking with college basketball, Gonzaga lost to Alabama on Saturday. It’s the Zags’ second loss of the year, they’ve almost fallen below Purdue in KenPom, and they’ll finish their marquee nonconference games at best 3-2 (beat Texas, beat UCLA, lost to Duke, lost to Alabama, play Texas Tech next Saturday). The WCC is having a strong year, so the Zags will have plenty of opportunities for good wins in conference play, and nonconference has been far from a disaster, but they’ll also have plenty of opportunities for tough losses, and it’s not a guarantee that they’ll be a 1-seed, even if they’re still probably one of the best teams in the country. Will they be fine? Probably. This year’s nonconference marquee games feature a lot tougher competition than last year’s, even if we didn’t realize that about last year’s at the time. Part of this is probably that. Part of it, too, is that this team isn’t as good as last year’s, but last year’s team was historically dominant up until that final tip-off. Finally, part of this is probably youth. Chet Holmgren has been great so far in a very exposed role and has only played nine college games. Give the guy, and the team, some time. No, they’re not historically great. But they’re still a title contender.
Other Guesses at the Best
Purdue’s the big team we’re guessing on, with Baylor kindly requesting some respect after their own strong start, headlined by that 17-point win over Michigan State in Atlantis. Beyond those three, you’ve got Kansas, UCLA, Duke, Villanova, Alabama, Arizona, Houston, and USC in the mix, but each of those eight has an obvious question mark, and a bigger one than just, “Why haven’t they gone at least 3-1 against four top-15 opponents?” Tiers can be annoying, but I think tiers might be fair here, with Purdue, Baylor, and Gonzaga in the first and those other eight in the second.
Virginia Is Not Ok
Not getting a question mark is Virginia. Virginia gets a period. Virginia’s a mess right now. Period. Full stop. The Cavaliers are in significant danger of missing the NIT, and not in the good way. They have, to date:
- Lost at home to Navy.
- Lost on the road to James Madison.
- Only beaten Pitt by a point at home.
- Gone 0-2 against likely tournament teams.
- Gone 1-0 against bubbly teams.
It’s just that win over Providence that’s holding them up right now. The rest is bad. And with just one nonconference game left, there isn’t much space to figure it out. They get a good break here before that Fairleigh Dickinson game, but after that it’s into ACC play, where they don’t get to play Pitt again until the middle of January. The ACC stinks, but so does Virginia.
Speaking of Virginia…
New football coach incoming shortly! Or so it sounds. Bronco Mendenhall surprisingly resigned, and the search seems to have zeroed in on Clemson offensive coordinator Tony Elliott after whiffing on Penn State co-defensive coordinator Anthony Poindexter. Elliott, who’s also up for the Duke job, has reportedly not decided, leading Virginia to reportedly start talking to Michigan OC Josh Gattis.
This isn’t a huge deal in the national landscape at this point (it could be down the line, but for now…sorry, Virginia, but I think you get it), but it could be, and not because of what it means for Virginia. If Elliott leaves Clemson, Dabo Swinney will have lost both his defensive and offensive coordinators following the worst season for the Tigers in a long time. It’s relatively easy to win the ACC, but it’s not a layup, and Swinney hasn’t dealt with this much turnover before during his tenure. If Swinney isn’t the guy behind the great recruiting, or the guy behind the great strength and conditioning (allegations and all, it’s worked, and it’s worked better under Swinney’s administration than previous ones despite Joey Batson being there for two and a half decades)…Clemson might get caught with its pants down. Maybe Swinney runs a great organization. Maybe he had some luck. Maybe we’ll find out.
Now: Miami
Pivoting from the Clemson topic, Tigers athletic director Dan Radakovich is the new AD at Miami, where Mario Cristobal is the new head coach. We’ll get to Cristobal (and don’t worry, we’ll get to Venables and Oklahoma), but the AD job is probably a lot more important than we realize, especially in the age of NIL and during a period of rapid conference realignment and during a period of playoff expansion. So, noteworthy that Clemson got Radakovich. Lot of turnover at Clemson.
As for Cristobal…he killed the press conference, reminding us that Spanish is his first language and avoiding anything that made people laugh at him or at Miami (Miami leads LSU and USC on this front). He’s recruited well at Oregon. He’s been a fine coach up there (winning at Ohio State, as we’ll get to in a bit, is really, really impressive). Miami has plenty of resources to give the program. Will it work? We’ll see. The Canes might suffer from a bit of USC and Texas’s purported problem, which is that none of those teams play in a football city, so students and fans have plenty of other things to keep them happy, and so do the players, meaning…there’s no pressure to perform. To be clear, I’m not fully subscribed to that theory, but it’s relatively widespread and it might hold water, so we’ll mention it.
Miami notably left Manny Diaz out to dry, very publicly courting Cristobal while Diaz was still out having to recruit players, but the narrative is shifting away from that being indicative of dysfunction to that just being unnecessarily cold and heartless. Will Miami be patient enough for Cristobal to work? Will they need to be patient? Would patience even pay off? These are the questions now. We’ll see. Miami wasn’t all that bad under Diaz. It wouldn’t be surprising to look up in 24 months and see them ruling the ACC once more.
What’s Going on at Louisville?
Sticking with the AD theme, Vince Tyra is leaving Louisville and evidently going back into the private sector? Developing situation. Florida State sounded like they wanted him, but they ended up hiring a booster instead (Michael Alford). Meanwhile, Louisville’s president left for Penn State. I don’t know if any of this matters, or if it will matter negatively or positively when all’s said and done, but it could conceivably turn out to be a huge deal for a program that was a mid-major not too long ago.
Oklahoma Got Their Guy
Ok, Venables. Oklahoma got him. So far, the excitement is there. Venables was obviously a large part of Clemson’s success in these recent years. Even this year, the Clemson defense is ferocious. But he’s never been a head coach before, it’s not guaranteed that he’s the recruiting force Oklahoma needs, and Oklahoma’s facing a lot of head winds (we’ve spoken about this before, but the short version is that in addition to facing the daunting world of the SEC, Oklahoma is up against the opposite problem of Miami/Texas/USC, meaning it’s not naturally easy to recruit to Norman, which is also true of Lincoln, to put the reason that matters in perspective). It might work. It might not work. It might work and feel like it didn’t, because working at Oklahoma over the next five years might mean 9-4 seasons, not playoff appearances. That might not be the new ceiling…but it might be the new ceiling.
Who Will Coach Oregon?
No slam dunk hires seem to be out there for Oregon, but Chip Kelly’s reportedly on the radar, which is a big Alonzo-Mourning-meme idea. We’ll see. I don’t think Iowa State’s at risk here, but who knows. You’re never truly safe, I don’t think.
Playoff Thoughts
I wrote about this a good bit on Monday, and we’ll have more to say when we do our model’s post-mortem, but for the most part, the committee did a good job with the playoff rankings, and we’ve got an exciting, fun playoff field that will likely end up with a fairly boring Georgia/Alabama matchup that might produce a fairly thrilling national championship game. We’ve had better, but you can’t ask for much better year in and year out. It’s a good season for a neutral fan, I’d argue. Some continuity, some newness…that’s the combination you want, and getting it without major controversy is bad for talking heads but good for the championship feeling legitimate.
One major thing I think we may stress down the line, though, and I should have stressed this on Monday, is how much this committee loved big road wins. Cincinnati’s win at Notre Dame made the Bearcats an instant contender. Oregon’s win at Ohio State held them higher than anything reasonably could have held them, bar not losing to Stanford like Oregon did. Notre Dame losing at home to Cincinnati was a death knell for the Irish in the end. There doesn’t appear to be too much downside to losing on the road (see: Alabama), too, meaning…go schedule road games, AD’s. Big road games. This sounds weird, and I’ll have to run the numbers sometime, but if the goal is to make the playoff, one huge nonconference road game a year may be the optimal move.
Iowa State’s Bowl Destination
Finally, looping this back to the Cyclones: Cheez-It Bowl, which is now in Orlando, where the Cyclones played Notre Dame two years ago in the Camping World Bowl, which is…this same bowl. Just a new sponsor. It’s a fine bowl. A solid bowl, even. Not a bad destination, and Clemson, who the Cyclones will play, is a strong opponent. The line’s about a tossup right now, with Clemson clearly going through some transitions but those probably not affecting the line too significantly. Iowa State’s about as good as Clemson. How about that? Even before Clemson’s ascent, we would’ve taken that in a heartbeat.
Plenty more to say about this, and we’ll get to that eventually, but one nice thing for the Cyclones is that Clemson doesn’t force that many turnovers, and one terrible thing for the Cyclones is that Clemson hardly allows any yards. Just a good, strong defense. Gonna be hard to score.
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Tonight, for viewing purposes, I’ll probably turn on Texas/Seton Hall’s second half here in a bit, and then it’s hopefully a good dose of Hilton Magic. Go State.
