All previews: click here for the full 2023 NCAA tournament schedule
Iowa Hawkeyes
Seed: 8
Record: 19-13
Conference: Big Ten
vs.
Auburn Tigers
Seed: 9
Record: 20-12
Conference: SEC
Date: Thursday, March 16
Time: 6:50 pm Eastern
Region: Midwest
Location: Birmingham, AL
Channel: TNT
8-seed vs. 9-seed games are hard enough to pick without a team like Iowa being involved.
Iowa Auburn
Power Ratings
Strength: #33 Strength: #28
Median: #36 Median: #32
Markov: #41 Markov: #35
Pomeroy: #37 Pomeroy: #29
Offense: #3 Offense: #48
Defense: #167 Defense: #29
BPI: #32 BPI: #27
LRMC: #40 LRMC: #31
Other Measures:
SOS: #35 SOS: #18
Tempo (Offense): #31 Tempo (Offense): #121
Consistency: #355 Consistency: #318
Str + Reliability: #69 Str + Reliability: #43
Str + Potential: #14 Str + Potential: #22
2nd half season: #33 2nd half season: #23
Last 6: #77 Last 6: #65
Injury Mod Rank: #30 Injury Mod Rank: #32
MegaScreen Ranking MegaScreen Ranking
Final 4: NA Final 4: NA
Sweet 16: NA Sweet 16: #21
9-seed Auburn slightly outranks 8-seed Iowa pretty consistently across the board by a narrow margin. The divergence comes when comparing offenses, where Iowa is one of the best teams in the nation, and defenses, where Iowa is atrocious for a Major conference program.
Both teams played tough schedules of course, both play fairly fast (though Iowa likes to play extra fast on offense), and neither team is consistent at all (though Iowa is extremely inconsistent, top 10 in the nation in inconsistency). This means that Iowa is theoretically capable of beating just about anyone or losing to just about anyone; their breadth is amazing. Both teams faltered at the end of the season but this might mean more for Auburn than Iowa, which I'll explain later on.
Iowa doesn't have the consistency level to make a Final Four run as judged by the MegaScreen, while Auburn just isn't good enough either. They do get on the board as a Sweet Sixteen possibility where Iowa does not.
- Wins vs. tournament teams (8): (6)Iowa St.+19, (16)Southeast Missouri St.+31, (4)Indiana+2, (8)Maryland+14, (7)Northwestern+16, (9)Illinois+2, (7)Michigan St.+OT, @(4)Indiana+22
- Losses to tournament teams (6): =(6)TCU-13, =(5)Duke-12, @(10)Penn St.-4, @(7)Michigan St.-2, @(1)Purdue-14, @(7)Northwestern-20
- Other losses (7): Wisconsin-OT, Eastern Illinois-9, @Nebraska-16, @Ohio St.-16, @Wisconsin-12, Nebraska-4, =Ohio St.-4
Overview: 8-seeds don't typically have a winning record against the tournament field, but Iowa is a stellar 8-6, including non-conference wins over 6-seed Iowa State and 16-seed Southeast Missouri State (ok that inflates their total a bit). They also lost to TCU and Duke before the Big Ten season. The reason they're just an 8-seed? Probably the 7 losses to non-tournament teams, including the shocking home loss to Eastern Illinois in game 12 as a 30-point favorite. That loss carried over to the next game (a loss to Nebraska) but somehow Iowa was back to normal within a few weeks beating Rutgers and Maryland like nothing happened. Of course there was the Michigan State game where Iowa came back 12 down in 40 seconds or something to that effect. And witness Iowa's best game, a 90-68 road demolition of Indiana, followed by two awful losses to end the year. Who can predict how this team will play minute to minute, let alone game by game?
Iowa is led by Kris Murray, twin brother of Keegan Murray who is now in the NBA. Like the team he leads Kris is a bit erratic but at his best he's having a Keegan-like season, averaging 20.4 points and 7.9 rebounds per game.
**************************************************************
- Wins vs. tournament teams (7): (16)Texas Southern+16, =(7)Northwestern+1, (15)Colgate+27, (8)Arkansas+13, (11)Mississippi St.+6, (7)Missouri+33, (4)Tennessee+9
- Losses to tournament teams (10): =(8)Memphis-9, @(10)USC-3, (7)Texas A&M-16, @(9)West Virginia-3, @(4)Tennessee-3, @(7)Texas A&M-5, (1)Alabama-8, @(6)Kentucky-32, @(1)Alabama-OT, =(8)Arkansas-3
- Other losses (2): @Georgia-12, @Vanderbilt-2
Overview: At one point in the season Auburn was 16-3 overall and 6-1 in the SEC. Remember that? Not many people do since the Tigers finished 20-12 and 10-8 and lost in the first round of the SEC tournament, a 4-9 finish that counts in my book as a "collapse". There were signs before it, though; the Tigers didn't really beat anyone in the pre-conference season other than 7-seed Northwestern (16-seed Texas Southern and 15-seed Colgate hardly count). They fell to the two other best teams they played, 8-seed Memphis and 10-seed USC. And they had a really bad loss at Georgia in their 2nd SEC game.
6-10 forward Johni Broome leads the Tigers with 14.0 points and 8.4 rebounds per game.
**************************************************************
Game Analysis: Tough to analyze what Iowa's going to do this game. One reason for their erratic performance is their style: run and gun, score a lot on offense and hope the other team doesn't score as much. They do settle in on defense and have long defensive possession on average, but they aren't good at stopping teams. Opponents tend to shoot very well against the Hawkeyes, it's a matter of whether they can keep up.
Style wise, Auburn's defense is good enough to slow down Iowa's offense, maybe not literally but in terms of efficiency. The Tiger offense isn't great but it's good enough to burn through the weak Iowa defense. If Auburn plays with discipline they can control the game and beat the Hawkeyes. So why wouldn't they?
Let's talk about Auburn's slump. Auburn played some good games near the end, but Alabama was in an odd situation with Brandon Miller when the Tigers almost beat them; Tennessee had just lost their point guard when they beat them; and they fell to Kentucky by 32. Their other win was over Mississippi. It looks hard to turn this ship around, as the team probably had expectations of being a 3-seed not an 8-seed. But against an erratic foe like Iowa anything is possible, I suppose.
Which brings us to Iowa's late slump, where in recent play they've been even worse than Auburn. All I can say is, it probably means nothing for Iowa to be in a slump as they have no continuity. It might even be better for them as they tend to reverse. But in fact, I think Iowa is literally random. And the dice one day shows a loss to a team they should beat by 30, the next it shows a 1 in a million comeback in the last minute after playing poorly for 39 minutes. So while Iowa's slump may or may not continue just by sheer randomness, Auburn's slump looks like the team giving up on the season.
Vegas Line:
Auburn by 1
Power rating: spread
Auburn by 0.9 (4.3 with HC)
Game-comparisons: % Chance to win
Iowa: 47.8% | 39.4%
Auburn: 52.2% | 60.6%
Auburn is favored by 1 because that's what the power ratings say, as exemplified by the Strength power rating favoring the Tigers by almost exactly a point. But we wonder whether there could (or should) be some home court advantage for the Tigers playing so close to home? Seems like the line could easily be 3 or 4 points, and Auburn's odds to win would be over 60%. Or somewhere in-between is appropriate.
Bottom line: There's no predicting Iowa so why bother? But Auburn is predictably having a bad late-season collapse and those things really do persist and result in a first-round loss like clockwork. Iowa may test that clockwork by having a bad game, but that's what Auburn has to hope for. The Hawkeyes might also play a shockingly good game, you never know.
Final prediction: Iowa 79, Auburn 66
More previews: click here for the full 2023 NCAA tournament schedule.
Comments