Iowa 76, WSU 66: Quick Recap

The Cougs had a massive opportunity to pick up a resume-building win against Iowa away from home, but despite controlling the game for large sections, they struggled down the stretch in a loss where the final score was certainly not reflective of how the game went.

The Hawkeyes (4-0) outscored the Cougars (3-1) 16-4 over the final three minutes to pull away. When WSU wasn’t missing open 3s in those last minutes, they were turning the ball over. That’s usually a bad combination!

In A Minute

• Cougfan recap

• Box score

• Line o’ the night: Nate Calmese continues to be a revelation, scoring 27 points on 12 of 22 shooting … but also with 5 turnovers.

• One stat to tell the tale: The Cougars shot 5-of-28 from beyond the arc (18%).

Highlights

Three Four Thoughts

1. Encouraging performance

The college basketball season is simultaneously short and long. Thirty(ish) games is not so much that you can miss out on many opportunities to build a resume for the NCAA tournament, but it’s also enough that one missed opportunity four games in is not necessary to get super worked up about. Conversely, it’s an opportunity to take a long view, and to that end, I found this performance super encouraging.

A lot went wrong for WSU in this one, starting with the poor outside shooting. I won’t go so far as to say that every one of those missed looks was clean, but the Cougars generated a lot of open-enough looks from beyond the arc and they just bricked nearly all of them. Isaiah Watts had the roughest go of it, missing all six of his 3s. He is now 0-for-13 from out there in his last three games, which you certainly wouldn’t expect. Sometimes, variance just bites you in the butt.

And yet! There’s reason to think they still could have won this game if not for a couple of other factors. They turned the ball over too much, even beyond what we know is going to regularly happen in David Riley’s pass-happy offense; so many of the errors were not of the aggressive variety, which are the ones you can live with. Additionally, the refs were also absolutely atrocious; in a game where each team took a similar proportion of 3s and 2s with a similar proportion of offensive and defensive rebounds, the refs called 23 personal fouls on WSU compared to just 11 — for the entire game — on Iowa.¹ It’s extremely rare to see that kind of split under those circumstances. Riley’s teams typically make a living at the free throw line, but they posted their lowest free throw rate of the season (by miles) in this one.

They probably could have survived poor shooting or turnovers or tilted reffing … maybe they could have even barely survived two. But they were never going to survive all three. And that’s exactly why I’m encouraged here: Those three things would otherwise indicate getting run off the floor. They did not get run off the floor — as the win probability chart demonstrates, the game was a toss up until those final three minutes. I think that speaks volumes about this team’s quality.

To that end …

2. Defense shines again

Craig and I called this a “stress test” for the improving defense. If this was that, the Cougs absolutely passed it with flying colors — yet another reason to be encouraged, even in a loss.

Improvement is rarely linear, but right now, it certainly is for the defense. The Cougs allowed one of the more explosive offenses in the country to score just 0.99 points per possession, which works out to an adjusted defensive efficiency³ of 0.86 ppp. It’s the third consecutive game in which the adjusted defense has gone down. Iowa did miss some open 3s, but the Cougs also did some great work. Their rotations are getting much better, they’re doing a better job of staying in front of guys.

For what it’s worth, Dane Erikstrup — who has been a popular whipping boy for the defensive issues — did a hell of a job despite fouling out. I think one of the fouls was just total baloney, and at least two others were extremely questionable. The effort is there, and that will take Erikstrup (and the rest of this team) a long way.

However, a massive nit to pick: WSU gave up basically 7 free points on horribly defended baseline out of bounds plays. Work on your BLOB defense, boys!

3. Calmese also shines again

WSU’s point guard now has scored 17, 18, 18, and 27 in the first four games for an average of 20 points. This, from a guy who couldn’t get off the bench at UW last season under Mike Hopkins. He caused all sort of problems for Iowa with his quickness — so much so that Iowa, a team that loves to play fast and get up and down the floor, decided to intentionally slow the game down with a “pester press”² just to try and limit Calmese.

Check out this breakdown from barttorvik.com on where his shots are coming from:

We have intimate knowledge of what it means for an offense to have a point guard who can put pressure on the rim — Myles Rice made 61% of his shots there last season. Calmese is stepping right in where he left off without missing a beat.

4. Two-foul strategy

Riley likes to tell people what a nerd he is — “voice of the Cougs” Chris King noted after last game that Cedric Coward had a huge plus/minus despite not scoring a ton, and Riley basically said, “I like that stat, but I’m a math major, and while it’s nice in one game, we really need six games before it means anything.”

Last night, Riley’s nerdery helped keep the Cougs in the game. Many coaches automatically bench importantly players in the first half if they pick up two fouls. Iowa coach Fran McCaffrey did that when he banished one of his best players — Owen Freeman — to the bench after he picked up his technical foul with 7:24 to go in the first half and Iowa leading by three points. To here the announcers tell it, McCaffrey had no choice in the matter.

Around that same time, Riley brought Calmese — who had picked up his second foul a couple of minutes earlier, leading to a brief trip to the bench — back into the game. He played the final 7:41 of the half with two fouls, scored 9 points, and WSU turned that three-point deficit when Freeman left the floor into a three-point halftime lead.

Is playing guys with two fouls risky? You bet! But the idea that you simply can’t do it because of what might happen in the future is simply foolish. It doesn’t always work out — Riley actually lamented after the game that he probably shouldn’t have let Dane Erikstrup play with two fouls — but I’m of the opinion that coaches, who are generally conservative by nature, are simply choosing to make their teams worse when they treat two fouls in the first half as a de facto disqualification. Riley understands this and used it to generate an advantage for his team in the first half.

Oh, and Calmese finished with … two fouls.

Up Next: Northern Colorado

The Cougs turn right around and host the Bears on Monday night at Beasley Coliseum. This is another one of those “probably better than you think” teams. The metrics say the Cougs are quite a bit superior to UNC, but they also said that about Colorado, and the Bears went to Boulder and took the Buffaloes to two overtimes before losing.

If Iowa was a bit of a stress test for the defense, this one is a stress test for the offense. UNC specializes in limiting open 3-point looks, holding opponents to both few attempts and a low percentage of makes on the shots. But! Their interior defense is nothing special — they are the 10th-worst team in all of Division 1 at blocking shots — and they will give up offensive rebounds.

Look for the Cougs — particularly Calmese, LeJuan Watts, and Cedric Coward (who had a limited impact last night) — to get to the rim early and often in this one.

Tip off is at 6:30 p.m. PT on ESPN+.

1  The foul totals were actually 25-13, but two of WSU’s fouls were in the final minutes to intentionally send people to the foul line, one of Iowa’s was a technical foul, and one was a tactical “foul to give” with a few seconds left in the first half. In terms of “legit” foul calls, it was 23-11.

2  A three-quarter court zone press where there are just a couple of guys in the back court and another at midcourt that is designed to make you slow down and pass the ball a few times to beat it. It’s not trying to take the ball away, really … unless you want to give it to them with impatience or a bad decision. Which, of course, the Cougs did a couple of times.

3  Basically: At what rate would a merely average offense have scored on this night? In this one, giving up 0.99 ppp to Iowa is like giving up 0.86 to an average offense because Iowa’s offense is much better than an average offense.