By Jordan Hansen
Prime Time League is now over, with Cordell Pemsl’s (and Peter Jok’s before he headed to the Nike camp in Los Angeles) team taking the championship over Tyler Cook’s squad.
It’s the one early season look Iowa gives for its basketball team, and while it’s hard to take anything statistically away from the competition, there still are a few bigger things that always stand out. Let’s dive in.
Cook is going to be really good, you guys
This, of course, was obvious from the first time he stepped on the court in North Liberty and started dunking on everyone. He’s a big dude with a good wingspan and displayed just about everything Iowa fans should want out of the highly touted power forward.
What jumps off the page first is his athleticism. Cook has a lot of muscle, but he’s also coordinated enough to make ridiculous things look easy. He’s not completely fluid in all his movements yet, but he was also basically playing a pickup game, and it’s impossible to judge how he’ll look in a real offensive set piece.
Want another reason to be excited about Cook? Look no further than his willingness to step behind the arc. He’s very confident and was quoted as being confident enough to shoot from anywhere on the floor. While it’s safe to say he probably won’t take 28-footers like Steph Curry, a solid stretch-4 will be huge in Hawkeye head coach Fran McCaffery’s offense.
Defensively, Cook isn’t bad, either, and will probably have a couple blocks this season that will leave people’s mouthes open. He also has solid rebounding skills, so expect him to bang around in the post quite a bit this season.
Expect Cook to start at some point this year and with the lack of depth Iowa returns, it’ll probably be sooner rather than later.
Transition buckets and playing fast
Even from the early going of the McCaffery era at Iowa, it was impossible not to notice how different the offense looked than it did under Todd Lickliter.
McCaffery has pushed for transition buckets and generally wants the team to play fast. Under his tutelage, the Hawkeyes have finished better than fifth in the Big Ten in scoring per game all but two of his six years.
Under Lickliter, the Hawkeyes never finished higher than 10th.
During Prime Time, a number of Iowa’s players — both returning and incoming — noted that McCaffery wanted to play even faster this year. Transition buckets are an emphasis, and while the Hawkeyes did do that last season, it’ll be even more important this year.
Having a true 7-footer in Adam Woodbury slowed Iowa’s pace a little bit over the past four years, which changed the overall game plan. Now, the Hawkeyes will probably start lineups without a single player who is taller than 6-9.
That’s a huge shift. Iowa will certainly both look and play differently this year.
Guards, guards, guards
Like the center position, for the first time in four years, there’s not a lot of clarity at the guard position.
Peter Jok, of course, will start at shooting guard, but there is very little clear beyond him. McCaffery is looking for a starting point guard as well as backup positions at other spots.
It seems sophomore Christian Williams and redshirt freshman Isaiah Moss are in line for more playing time, with the former already looking at the point position. Both players were on the same Prime Time team and spent a lot of time on the scout team together last season.
There seems to be chemistry between the two, and Williams’ having a bit of late-season playing time last year showed McCaffery has at least a little bit of trust in him.
Outside of Williams and Moss, it gets a little grey, but Brady Ellingson, Jordan Bohannon, and perhaps even Maishe Dailey could be in for some playing time. Oh, and here’s the kicker: Jok is the only listed guard with more than a year of being on the team.
Everyone else is an underclassman.
There’s plenty of playing time to go around, and it’ll be interesting to watch who takes advantage.
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