By Adam Hensley | [email protected]
After cruising to victories in its first two games of the season, Iowa will have a tougher time handling its next opponent.
Seton Hall, the 2015-16 Big East tournament champion, will travel to Iowa City for an 8 p.m. contest in Carver-Hawkeye today.
“They have an expectation of winning,” Iowa’s head coach Fran McCaffery said. “They have a winning culture. Kevin [Willard] is a terrific coach. I’ve known him a long time.”
Iowa scored 116 points in its win over Savannah State, the highest total in a single game for the Hawkeyes under McCaffery. A school-record number of 3-pointers taken (43) and made (18) helped to accelerate the offense.
Sophomore Brady Ellingson led the 3-point charge with four en route to a team-high 23-point night.
As the shots piled up, so did his confidence. With the amount of open space he was given, he was able to set his feet correctly — a major key for his shots to fall.
“I just go into every game focused, and let the game come to me, and do what I need to do to help my team win,” he said.
Including Ellingson, Iowa’s bench proved to be too much for the Tigers to handle. The Hawkeye bench contributed 76 points — only 8 fewer than the entire Savannah State team scored.
One of Iowa’s biggest surprises off the bench this season is freshman forward Cordell Pemsl.
The Dubuque native has scored 10-plus points in his first two regular-season outings. More impressively, he was 7-of-7 in shooting against Savanna State, improvement over his 2-of-5, 6-point exhibition stat line.
“It was a lot different than the exhibition game and our first game,” Pemsl said. “There were shots that I knew I could make that I was missing. I did a lot of practice just on fundamentals, techniques, and stuff like that.”
Unlike Kennesaw State or Savannah State, Seton Hall is relevant on a national level. The Pirates beat NCAA Champion Villanova in the Big East Championship game last season.
Isaiah Whitehead, who led Seton Hall in scoring last season, now resides in the NBA.
Enter Khadeen Carrington and Angel Delgado.
Carrington is shooting a whopping 90-percent from 3-point range through two games this season, averaging 22.5 points a game.
The shooting guard will go head-to-head with Peter Jok, Iowa’s senior guard. The deciding factor will be defense rather than offense.
“I think that’s the challenge for anybody in that position that sort of views themselves as an NBA prospect; you gotta play both ends,” McCaffery said.
Delgado, a junior forward from the Dominican Republic, is a force in the paint, averaging 18 points and 15 rebounds a game.
McCaffery praised Delgado’s toughness and post game, and noted that he has a bigger role than last season.
However, the Hawkeyes are fully prepared to defend their home court.
“They’re a great team, and we know that we’re going to have to play a really good game to beat them,” Ellingson said. “We’re all aggressive and confident in our offensive abilities; we just need to get better defensively.”
