Iowa has four games left to claim a Big Ten title, beginning with Wisconsin this evening.
By Kyle Mann
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After a welcome weeklong break before the home stretch of the regular season, the No. 8 Hawkeyes are zeroing in on an outright Big Ten title beginning with Wisconsin tonight.
Iowa enters the matchup at 20-6 overall, 11-3 in the conference, just a half game behind Indiana. The Hawkeyes will have a chance to take down Indiana next week, but they must first focus attention on the Badgers. After being up-ended by Penn State in Happy Valley a week ago, the Hawkeyes can’t afford to look past anybody.
The loss at Penn State was a culmination of relatively lackluster play by the Hawkeyes recently, 3-2 in their last five games, but a week away from competition and a players-only meeting Feb. 20 should have the Hawks feeling rejuvenated.
“It was very nice to get to step back and relax your body,” senior Jarrod Uthoff said. “Get a couple days off and kind of recharge.”
Iowa will need all of its energy available this evening; although the Badgers are unranked and only 9-5 in the conference, the traditionally powerful Wisconsin program still has a plethora of talented players.
Preseason All-Big Ten forward Nigel Hayes is fifth in the Big Ten with 16.7 points per game, and he also grabs 5.8 rebounds per game. Bronson Koenig is also in the top 20 in scoring with 13.4 per game, and Ethan Happ sits third with 8 rebounds per game.
The Hawkeyes know the Badgers will try to stretch the floor to create space, and Hayes in particular will command a team effort on defense.
“He’s a really difficult cover because he’s a terrific ball handler,” Hawk head coach Fran McCaffery said. “He gets to the free-throw line, and he can make 3s, so those kind of guys are tough to guard because he can post you, but he can also pop out of the post and go one-on-one off the dribble … he’s got a really quick first step for a guy that big.”
Luckily for the Hawkeyes, the 2016 Wisconsin team doesn’t have the usual array of sharpshooters, and it shoots 35 percent from beyond the arc, right near the middle of the Big Ten.
Furthermore, while the Hawkeyes have struggled recently with rebounding, Wisconsin is uncharacteristically mediocre in that regard as well. Iowa averages more rebounds per game (38 to 35) but still is aware that Wisconsin has a lot of players that can do a lot of things.
“They have a lot of versatile guys, can do a lot of things on the floor,” senior Adam Woodbury said. “They’re always a tough game for us; they play everybody very tough, and they’ve got a lot of talent on that team.”
The beginning of the end for the regular season will tip off at 8 p.m. in Carver-Hawkeye Arena; it can be seen on the Big Ten Network.
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