Stickboy46 wrote:I'm going to defend Jake on this point. He is REALLY good at knocking off the good teams. That's something his teams excel at. He just struggles to get them to consistently beat teams that they should.
Part of that is style. He frustrates good teams because he mucks it up and doesn't allow them to play a game that really flows and that allows inferior talent to hang and make one or two big plays that can have a huge impact. Conversely, unless the 3 ball is really falling, we allow teams to hang around and again one or two big plays can cost us a game. It's a double edged sword for sure.
The middle part of this year was an anomaly where we were getting blown out, that doesn't happen terribly often to Ben Jacobson teams. Last year had a bad start too in league play, but they weren't blowouts. Margins of those first 6 losses were 2,1, 10, 4, 10, 19 (Wichita). Totally different than this year's 4 (Down 24 at one point, but Lusk), 12, 11, 14, 11.
That's where, even as a UNI fan, I'm trying to pull back expectations a bit that this year's team is last year's team. That team was more talented and WAY more experienced. We'll know a lot more after Saturday.
This group is going to be awfully good when it's all said and done, but growing pains are a real thing right now.