Wow, what a heck of a game. After seemingly digging themselves into an insurmountable deficit, Drake kept pounding away and away only to be answered by the Cyclones. But then, Drake managed to score 16 of the final 19 points to come back from 10 down to win 66-63. Josh Young led the Bulldogs with 19 points on 5-12 shooting and Bucky Cox added an enormous 14 and 14. Adam Templeton had his best game of the year by far by chipping in 13 points, 10 boards, and 4 assists.
Overall, this was a great win for the Dogs. This was their first true road game of the season, and it couldn't have started any worse as Iowa State bolted out to a quick 22-9 lead as Lucca Staiger was lighting it up from the three on his way to a season high 24 points. But Drake was able to finally find their rythym on the offensive end, and they at least limited the Iowa State shooting that had been previously knocking them down at a torrid pace.
Next on tap is this weekends tournament, which features a Friday matchup against Georgia Southern. While they're from the Southern conference, they've proven to be a formidable foe in the past. They are coming into the game 3-3 on the season with a win over Houston, but they were blown out by a strong Duke team in Cameron Indoor. They seem outrageously deep with 10 players averaging 13+ minutes per game, and their scoring is spread out amongst them. In fact, only one player averages more than 10 shots per game (Willie Powers, who scores 12.7 PPG on 10.2 shots per game). Altogether, if they're anything like they've been in the past, they're a scrappy team that relies on a different person each night to step up (sound familiar?).
Winner of our game plays the winner of North Dakota State / Stephen F. Austin in a true battle of the northmen (The Bison versus the Lumberjacks!). Stephen F. Austin is 4-2 with a tough close loss to Texas A&M. They are led by the two man combo of F Josh Alexander (16.7 PPG 6.5 RPG) and 6-9 C Matt Kingsley (16.3 PPG 4.3 RPG). More impressively, they've allowed only an average of 49.3 PPG to all of their opponents, so their defense against NDSU will be key to watch.
For the Bison, senior G Ben Woodside leads the way with 20.7 PPG and just over seven assists per game. Other key players are F Brett Winkleman (18/8 per game) and 14.5 PPG from Mike Nelson. The Bison appear to be a tremendous shooting team at 51.4% FG and 45% from the three point line. It truly appears to be the showdown of the shooting against strong defense... we'll see who sticks it out.
Speaking of shooting, anyone else notice that teams shoot consistently better against our zone than they do on average? I took a look through and overall, all of our opponents are shooting a full two points better against us (69/195, 35.4%) than against all other teams they play (361/1080, 33.4%). On top of that, they both make (8.6 makes against us, 6.1 makes against others) and take (24.4 takes against us, 18.0 takes against others) more three pointers as well. In short, I think the numbers back up what you're seeing on the court -- teams are certainly finding the weaknesses of our 3-2 zone and exploiting it with ball movement and the three point shot. Just when it started to improve, Iowa State dropped a 13/33 three point shooting night on us.
Fortunately, Phelps made an excellent halftime adjustment and started mixing in some man-to-man in the second half. It was a great move that definitely got the Cyclones out of their comfort zone on the offensive end, as they really struggled to score down the stretch. More importantly, hopefully moves like these can help us with our defensive three point woes as we attempt to take away something that has been plaguing us all season.
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