By Blake Dowson
One game can never really tell a story one way or another, but after a convincing win over then-No. 25 Iowa State, it looks as if the Iowa men’s basketball team may be back on track after a turbulent first 10 games of the season.
After one star freshman went down for head coach Fran McCaffery, a handful of other freshmen stepped up, and the numbers those guys have put up rival any other program in the Big Ten this season.
Here is a look at how the Iowa freshmen — Tyler Cook, Cordell Pemsl, Jordan Bohannon, Isaiah Moss, Ryan Kriener, and Maishe Dailey — stack up against their counterparts in the conference.
Points per game
The newcomers score a bulk of the points for the Hawkeyes. That isn’t a surprise. Three of them are in the starting lineup, and Cook was the team’s second leading scorer before he went down with an injury.
The surprising part of the 37.6 points per game the Hawkeye freshmen put up is that they are leading the conference in scoring per contest.
Cook leads the way, with 13.7 points per game. That’s only in six games, however. Pemsl has more than 100 points this season in 10 games, and Bohannon and Moss aren’t far behind with 84 and 72 points.
Michigan State, which boasts one of the best freshmen in the nation in Miles Bridges, averages 36.6 points per game from its newcomers.
Bridges averages a healthy 16.6 per game, followed by Nick Ward with 11.9 points per.
Penn State follows in third with 34.4 points per game from its freshmen, and Maryland is fourth with 28 points per game.
Part of Iowa leading the league in freshman scoring is simply that it plays so many. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. Michigan State, Maryland, Penn State, Indiana, and Minnesota play just as many freshmen.
The Hawkeyes are learning on the fly, and the buckets are starting to drop more often.
When Cook gets back, even more points will be scored by the first-year players. It’s certainly something to look forward to for years to come if you’re a Hawkeye fan.
Minutes per game
Although the Hawkeyes don’t top this category, they come in second behind the Nittany Lions.
Pat Chambers plays his freshmen to a total of 86 minutes per game altogether. McCaffery plays his 83 minutes per game.
The sheer number of minutes being played by freshmen at Iowa should let people know there are going to be growing pains on this team, and if you expand those minutes played to everybody, the overall age doesn’t get much higher.
Throw out senior Peter Jok, and it’s mostly sophomores Ahmad Wagner, Nicholas Baer, and Christian Williams getting playing time.
In a sense, the 2016 season is starting to mirror the 2012 season.
In that year, Mike Gesell, Adam Woodbury, and Anthony Clemmons were all freshmen, and all got quite a bit of starting experience.
By the time those guys were seniors (and gained the contributions of All-American Jarrod Uthoff) they carried the Hawkeyes to a top-5 national ranking and a pair of NCAA Tournament victories.
If Cook, Pemsl, Bohannon, Moss, and the others can replicate that, no one will complain.