The Hawkeyes have been merrily rolling along accumulating wins that might help them get into the post season and help build some confidence but is there anything we can actually learn from playing against these opponents?
Last night, I think we learned a couple things.
First, if the team doesn’t pay attention, one guy on the other team can really put up some points. Ed Tyson scored 32 points including 7 of 10 from the 3 point line. To put that in perspective, the Hawkeyes next opponent is Bradley. Ed Tyson scored just 11 points against Bradley just two nights before lighting up the Hawkeyes. In his other two games he has scored 20 each. He clearly can score some points, but still 32?
The team defense is still pretty solid. Other than the 32 points that he scored, MD Eastern Shore only scored 16 points. Only one other player on their team scored more than 1 field goal. That’s pretty decent defense. I’m willing to let a guy get 30+ points a game if the final score is still going to be less than 50.
Freshman point guards are brutal. Peterson has been playing pretty well so far this year. I was watching the live box score on Yahoo! Sports for a few minutes to end the half and start the 2nd. I saw Peterson’s name show up a few times in quick succession and started to get excited. Then I realized that he had just committed 3 fouls in less than 2 minutes. With his 1 foul in the first half, it was time for Peterson to spend some time sitting next to the coaches.
The Hawkeyes are still susceptible to the long scoring droughts. I had hoped that getting rid of Alford would have taken care of our 5 minute plus scoring droughts but the Hawkeyes didn’t score a point for at least 6 minutes into this game.
I don’t think anybody is really expecting too much out of the Hawkeyes this season and we have to be prepared for a lot of unexpected moments of bad play as people learn the new system. I’m sure Lickliter will be able to put together plenty of game tape of things the players need to practice after these first four games.
Still being 4-0 against weak teams is better than losing some of those games.