Iowa Recap of the 08-09 Season

It's easy to put a brush off Iowa's season as ho-hum. A team that won 6 conference games the year before returns 48% of the minutes and winds up with 5 conference wins the next season. The low point came when Iowa became Indiana's only victim in conference play (probably the last time you'll ever read that sentence). The high points were home wins over Michigan and Wisconsin, and a neutral site victory over Kansas State. Recap over, the end.

Except it was a little interesting how they got there. Consider how many injuries, suspensions, and other circumstances Iowa went through last season. Each of Jeff Peterson, Anthony Tucker, Jermain Davis, and Cyrus Tate missed time. Throw in Jake Kelly and Matt Gatens, and that's the rotation coach Todd Lickliter figured he was going to use before the season began. So although this team was not very good, it sure looks like it could have made some noise in the Big Ten were it not for some tough breaks.

Or maybe not. The most bizarre part of Iowa's season was how whenever someone missed time, a replacement immediately filled the void adequately. When Anthony Tucker missed some games, Jermain Davis strings together some quality performances. After Cyrus Tate went down, David Palmer drops 40 points over a two game span against Purdue and Wisconsin. And suddenly Aaron Fuller appears out of the woodwork.

The brightest spot, however, had to be the freshman Gatens. On the season he shot over 40% from deep, and his 90% free throw percentage suggests that he'll continue to be a deadly outside threat. The school record for three pointers in a career is held by Jeff Horner, with 262. Gatens hit 52 last season, and he's not a bad bet to challenge that record. Iowa's plodding pace will work against him, however, as will the lack of a true point guard. For the second year in a row, Iowa's main ballhandler headed to the MVC.

Stylistically, Lickliter's struggles in implementing his POT system continued. The Hawkeyes continued to be careless with the ball, though there was some improvement from the extreme sloppiness of 07-08. A POT that turns the ball over as often as Iowa did (22.2% in conference play) is not going to score lots of points.

Perhaps the struggles with turnovers stem from Iowa's less-than-frenetic defense? The Hawkeyes were the worst team at forcing turnovers in Big Ten play, and maybe that kind of permissive defending reared itself in practice and lulled the players into a false sense of security when it came to ballhandling. Ok, that sounds nuts, but something has got to explain how a team that passes the ball around the perimeter for the most part can cough up the rock so often. This Geek is at a loss.

Then again, there's also the possibility that Lickliter isn't the TO-reduction genius we all thought he was:

Before Coach Lick arrived at Butler, the Bulldogs were already pretty good with the ball. And over the next 4 seasons, we actually see that the turnovers rose a bit from that initial starting point. It wasn't until Year 5 that the turnovers plunged off a cliff. And they've been steadily increasing in a near linear fashion since that point. More extremely, Iowa's turnovers shot up like a rocket as soon as Lickliter took over. Now, the good news is that none of Lickliter's Butler teams had a turnover problem. The bad news is that they didn't have a problem when he got there, either. The Hawkeyes definitely have a turnover problem, and it's fair to question whether or not Lickliter can fix it.

That said, despite the subpar record, last season wasn't a complete disaster, considering the amount of injuries, off-court issues (almost exclusively concerning talented but troubled freshman Tucker), and personnel losses from the previous campaign. Unfortunately for Iowa fans, that last part will be true for this season as well.