By Blake Dowson
Eastern Iowa has become a factory for college basketball players in the past five years or so, and many of those players will be on display in the Prime Time League starting tonight.
Each summer, players from Iowa, Northern Iowa, and other area schools come together to play in the league, designed to give the players an opportunity to get some game action in during the off-season.
There are six teams in Prime Time, and each team will have two to three Hawkeyes and two to three Panthers on its roster.
Team 1 has Hawkeye senior Peter Jok, along with freshmen Cordell Pemsl and James Dockery. Klint Carlson and Wyatt Lohaus will represent the Panthers on the squad.
Obviously, Jok will be the main attraction for most fans in attendance. The Iowa players always fill up the scoring column, and Jok will routinely score around 30 points per game. Carlson and Lohaus are two UNI players who logged quite a few minutes last year, and they will hold their own against anybody in the league.
Team 2 showcases Iowa sophomore Nicholas Baer and freshman Jordan Bohannon, as well as the Panthers Bennett Koch and Spencer Haldeman.
Baer will have a much more prominent role with the Hawkeyes this season, and Prime Time will be a great opportunity for him to work on creating his own shot. Bohannon is about as solid as they come at point guard, and he will score a lot of points over the course of the summer.
Team 3 has Iowa sophomore Ahmad Wagner and freshman Riley Till, along with Jordan Ashton and Justin Dahl of UNI.
Ashton may be a familiar name for some; he spent last season playing for Iowa State. The Mount Pleasant native graduated from Iowa State last year and will spend his final year of eligibility playing as a graduate transfer for UNI.
Team 4 is sure to draw big crowds whenever it is in the gym with former Hawkeye star Matt Gatens serving as a player/coach along with current Hawkeye juniors Dom Uhl and Brady Ellingson.
Gatens plays professionally in Europe, but his season does not span the summer months, so he is playing close to home (he’s from Iowa City).
Team 4 has a couple Iowa question marks in redshirt freshman Isaiah Moss and sophomore Christian Williams, along with UNI’s Ted Friedman and Isaiah Brown.
Moss was a highly regarded recruit last season for Iowa head coach Fran McCaffery, but the coaches decided that a redshirt year would benefit him. Williams came on strong toward the end of the year and slots in as the team’s starting point guard at this point, and it will be interesting to see how he handles being a go-to guy in Prime Time.
Team 6 has two of the best players in the league in Iowa’s incoming prized recruit Tyler Cook and UNI’s Jeremy Morgan. Maishe Dailey, another incoming Hawkeye freshman, is also on the team.
Cook is a top-75 recruit in the country and is the most athletic and possibly the most talented freshman Iowa has had since Tyler Smith in 2006.
Morgan, an Iowa City native, jumped onto the national stage during the Panthers NCAA Tournament run last season, in which he averaged 26 points per game, including 36 against Texas A&M.
Most people will show up to games to watch Jok try to score 50 points every game, but the real story line is just about every Hawkeye not named Jok.
With the loss of four senior starters from last year’s team, every role on the roster will change this year, with the exception of Jok’s. During Prime Time, guys can grow as players and put what they have worked on this off-season into game action.