(03-13-2023 07:00 AM)northcoastRocket Wrote:  This will be the 1st time ever Toledo will play Iowa State.

For all his proclaimed affection for Toledo, the fact that Fennelly has never scheduled UT even once in 22 years says a lot. They've played a lot of mid-majors over those years, but no Toledo, In fact, you are hard-pressed to find a MAC opponent. Checking schedules for the last 10 years, the only MAC teams they played were CMU once (but that was in a MTE, so not specifically scheduled by ISU) and EMU once in a strange game they scheduled to play up in Canada in the home town of one of the ISU players. That was played in a tiny gym, and I don't know why EMU was picked to play that, but maybe they were the only team willing to.

Iowa St and Toledo are very similar statistically, but of course ISU had a much tougher schedule. The only comparative games one might use is that ISU split 2 close games with Oklahoma State - a team that lost to Kent State in Stillwater, and of course, UT beat Kent 3 times. They also beat Cleveland State handily 87-54. CSU beat badly four of UT's weaker opponents - CMU, Akron, Oakland (2x) and Wright State (2x).

The teams won't look similar when they get on the floor. I looked at their roster and all of their starters are 5-11 or taller. And their post player is 6-6 and averages 14 points a game although I am not sure that this player is still on the active roster. And the first two players off the bench are 6-3 and 6-2. So they may actually be bigger than Tennessee.