Iowa basketball thoughts

Impressive showing on a number of fronts from Clemson in tonight's win at Iowa.

Some thoughts:

-- Losing Demontez Stitt and Jerai Grant hurts, and this team is going to have trouble scoring at times, but you can overcome a lot when you play really good defense. And Brad Brownell's teams will play really good defense most of the time.

They were really sticky tonight, getting into guys on the perimeter, disrupting passing lanes and playing good help defense and curls and cuts and such. Also a good job on the defensive boards in the first half when the game was still close.

-- To me, the most encouraging development of the night was seeing the progress of T.J. Sapp and Rod Hall. We've seen from the beginning that these two kids are simply not scared or awed by this college basketball thing, and they showed that again in this one.

In the second half, they both showed that they can get to the rim off the dribble. Hall showed more of a burst than I thought he had, getting by his man on a drive. And Sapp had a really nice baseline drive and score after Iowa went to a zone.

Getting penetration from Sapp and Hall is going to be big if they can do it with regularity, because there are going to be a lot of nights when this team isn't on fire from 3-point range.

Sapp has a quick trigger at times, but that's something Brownell can work with.

-- Excellent job against the full-court press. Tigers had some problems with it early, but by the second half they were carving it up and running what appeared to be set plays that produced easy fast-break buckets. The one that produced a free release for Andre Young was a thing of beauty.

-- Some loose passing tonight, and there easily could've been more turnovers.

-- Not a good game for Milton Jennings. Still has trouble finishing, and he seems to descend into one-on-one stuff when he gets the ball and faces the basket. He did make a really nice decision off the shot fake in the first half, dishing to Devin Booker for a dunk after Booker's guy came out to challenge Jennings.

-- Like how Young is finding different ways to get open for 3-pointers. He popped to the perimeter off a backscreen and drained a 3 with the aid of a screen from Bryan Narcisse. Hard to defend that.

All things considered, a really good night for the Tigers. Taking a young team on the road and winning 71-55 in Big Ten country is a nice early boost early in Brownell's second season.

LW