Worse Than Iowa in 1980

[DallasHoya]

A complete collapse

How do you lose a game where:

We shoot 64%, including 56% on three
They shoot 39% and 21% on threes

Here's how:

Macklin takes more shots than Hibbert or Wallace

[757hoyafan]

Vern was effective. I understand both should shoot more than him, but it isn't like he keep shooting & missing. he had a good game.

[hoyarooter]

Iowa was worse. While that Iowa team was certainly better than this Davidson team, that game cost us a trip to the Final Four, where we would have had a reasonable chance of winning a national championship. Because it occurred much closer to the ultimate goal, that loss was worse.

[HoyaChris]

I need to understand in which context we are using the word "worse." If the context is "what did it mean and how did it make us feel", there is no question that Iowa felt worse. For many of us who lived through it, the Iowa loss was crushing in that we had every reason to believe that we had probably lost our best ever chance to make, and possibly win, a Final Four, as we were graduating 2 of the three NBA calibre players on the team. And the nature of the loss was crushing in that we lost a 10-12 point halftime lead.

If by "worse" you mean the performance of the team, I would vehemently object to the suggestion that the 1980 team "choked" in any way. We shot 57% in the second half and did not turn the ball over a lot. Iowa just kept throwing in bomb after bomb (almost all beyond the current three point line) from multiple players. Sometimes the other team just wins the game.

This is not to say that I think we choked yesterday, just to say that we did not play our best in the second half, in part because we were really hampered by the way the game was called.

[FrazierFanatic]

Mar 23, 2008 16:15:09 GMT -5 DallasHoya said:

A complete collapse

How do you lose a game where:

We shoot 64%, including 56% on three
They shoot 39% and 21% on threes

Here's how:

Macklin takes more shots than Hibbert or Wallace

20 turnovers to 5. An incredible number. We have done a horrible job of valuing the ball for weeks, and it finally bit us badly. Cut the turnovers in half and we win, period. This needs to be a focus of the staff for the next 12 monthes.

[Hoya Rich]

The loss to Iowa was as bad as it gets. As Hoya Chris points out above, that game was every bit the "collapse" that yesterday's was, but it cost us a trip to the Final Four and quite possibly a National Championship. We were that good that year, and capable of beating anyone. I honestly never thought this team had it in them to win the championship, though losing the way we did was extraordinary and something I'll never be able to put aside, along with Iowa and obviously the two championship game losses.

[hoyarooter]

By "worse", I never intended to imply that we played badly in the second half against Iowa. We didn't. If anything, Iowa second half was the precursor to Villanova 1985. We ran into a team that, despite our best efforts, just couldn't do anything wrong. It's just hard to believe that the same university could experience something like that twice in a five year period. And I totally agree with hoyachris, in that, at the time, I found that loss devastating, because I didn't know if we would ever be that close to a national championship again. In that way, the Iowa loss was light years worse than this one.