Big Man Handling The Rock

One of the Hawkeyes’ biggest problems this season is their amazing ability to turn over the ball.  The other teams know this and have found ways to exploit this weakness to their advantage especially when they happen to have a full court press in their playbook.  I remember reading about one of the players on the other team (Minnesota I think) saying that his coach said if they applied pressure against the Hawkeyes that they would cause turnovers.  Dirty cheaters.

Some teams resort to trickery when face with a full court press.  They hand the ball to a really fast guy who can dribble the ball really well and send the rest of the team down the court while that good dribbler zigs and zags through the defense.

Iowa may not have one of those really fast, good dribblers on the team this year but they do have Seth Gorney.  He is so tall they don’t even list his height for fear that it might be a violation of an NCAA rule.  He’s rumored to be 7 feet tall and 245 pounds.  He makes his coaches, teammates and opponents nervous when dribbling around the basket.  It just isn’t very pretty.

So, Iowa has Seth Gorney trail behind the guys trying to break the press and act as a release valve.  When they get trapped, they lob the ball back to him and he swings it to the other side of the court.  In the few minutes of games that I have seen this year, it hasn’t worked nearly as poorly as it should.  He seems to catch and pass the ball with reasonable confidence and the Hawkeyes seem to get the ball past half court relatively well.

The other advantage is that when there is yet another turnover, Iowa already has a 7 footer back to guard against the ensuing fast break.

For those of you able to watch the game (and not constantly falling victim to the Comcast - Big 10 pissing constest), are most of the turnovers happening while being full court pressed and just not having a way to break it, or while in the half court, or does the team just excel in turning the ball over in any situation this year?