Eric May's Different Approach in December

Similar to the Gatens post, I want to take a deeper look at Eric May's December. In November he was the best player on the Iowa basketball team. December, though, was a different story. If you look at the number's May seems to have changed his strategy like Gatens did, but with different results.

Just like in the Gatens post let's start with Eric May's shooting:

You can see there is a big difference in the shooting percentages in both months. In November he was hitting almost any shot that he took. He made 60% of his three pointers, which led to a 60.42% effective FG%. Now, there is no way that May was going to keep shooting 60% from three point range. That is an unrealistic percentage for even the best shooters. In December he hit 36.36% of his three points shots. This is actually more realistic for May. He shot 28.7% from behind the arc last year, and it isn't crazy to think he could have improved his three point shooting into the mid 30% range. The problem with his shooting in December is that he only hit 30% of his two point shots. That knocked his unrealistically good effective FG% from November down to an unrealistically bad 40.38 FG%. The graph also shows that May has also not shot real well from the free throw line in either month.

Iowa vs Ohio State Men's Basketball Preview

Big 10 play kicked off last week with a loss to Illinois. Iowa played them pretty tough, but Illinois shot ridiculously well. Ohio State is the next Big 10 foe to visit Carver this Tuesday. So far this season, they seem to be the team to beat in the Big 10. But, how does Iowa match up?

First, let's look at Iowa's offense:

The offensive rating is simply the average of the five scores from the graph. 102 means that Iowa's offense has been a little above average so far. Clearly, this team's strength is offensive rebounding. So far they have been 12% above NCAA average in offensive rebounding percentage.

The 2010 Iowa Hawkeyes Football Team: What Happened?

The 2010 season did not go as many had hoped it would. Iowa had a huge returning senior class, a two year starter at quarterback, a wide receiver on the verge of almost every Iowa receiving record, and a dominant defense returning most of its starters. The first eight games of the season went about as planned. Iowa looked like one of the best teams in the Big 10. Their only two losses came on a just missed comeback against Arizona and a last minute loss to Wisconsin. Iowa then went on to blow out an undefeated Michigan State team, and suddenly they were in control of their own destiny. The next four games though did not go as expected. Iowa won in week ten versus Indiana, but it took a last second dropped pass. They then finished out the season with three straight losses and finished 7-5. So what was the difference in those first eight games compared to the last four games? Let's find out.

First, lets take a look at the passing game:

This is Stanzi's completions and pass attempts by game. For the most part the gap between Stanzi's completions and attempts seem to be the largest in Iowa's losses. But, notice how the gap between the two gets larger and stays larger after Michigan State. Meaning, that over the last four games of the year Stanzi's completion percentage took a dip.

I Think it is Safe to Say that Matt Gatens is Healthy

I touched briefly on this in an earlier post, but I wanted to dig a little deeper. Anybody who has watched Iowa basketball this year has noticed Matt Gatens is starting to play like the player we all knew he could be. The season didn't start off like Gatens would have liked. He dislocated his thumb in practice before the season, and missed the first three games of the season. Fans figured that the one part of his game that would suffer from this injury would be his shooting. Surely enough, it did in November. In December though, he played like his hand was no longer bothering him.

Comparing the 2009-2010 Season to the 2010-2011 Season

The Men's Basketball season is only about halfway over, but I think one thing is pretty clear. This year's team is better than last year's team. Now, I'm not going to make this post into a Lick-bashing/Fran-loving one, I'm simply curious as to what this year's team is doing better so far. In order to figure that out, I compared the numbers of this year's team and last year's team vs their non-conference opponents. Let's take a look.

First, the 2009-2010 Offense:

So, as you can see, Iowa was an above average shooting team last year against their non-conference opponents. Their rating of 108 means they shot 8% better than the NCAA D1 average in effective FG%. They were also above average at sharing the ball, averaging 19% more in assists to field goals made ratio than NCAA average. They also gave the ball away 7% less than the average NCAA team last year. However, they did have trouble getting second chance opportunities, as they were 13% worse than average at grabbing offensive rebounds. Not to mention, that they struggled getting to the free throw line. Their free throws attempted to field goals attempted ratio was 15% below NCAA average.