By Blake Dowson | [email protected]
It wouldn’t be smart to plan a spring-break trip revolving around the Iowa basketball team playing in the NCAA Tournament.
It wouldn’t be smart to plan a spring-break trip a week and a half before spring break, but that’s beside the point.
The point is that Iowa is an extreme long shot for the NCAA Tournament. If it wants to make the dance, there will need to be mass chaos during championship week, with a lot of bubble teams losing (badly) in their first-round games.
If Iowa wants to sniff the NCAA Tournament, it will need to win at Wisconsin on Thursday.
A win there would make two in a row on the road against a ranked team and would join good wins against Purdue and Iowa State, as well.
Here is how Iowa can pull off a win in Madison, something it has only done once in its last 13 trips there.
Get Ethan Happ in foul trouble
Happ, who has fashioned his game after former Wisconsin big man Frank Kaminsky, is arguably the Badger’s best player.
The 6-10 sophomore averages 14.1 points and 9 rebounds per game and is on the short list for Big Ten Player of the Year.
Happ does a little bit of everything for the Badgers, and he’s surrounded by a bunch of really solid players. He handles the ball as well as any other 6-10 player in college basketball, he passes really well for his size, he shoots the ball at a high rate, he blocks shots, and he probably passes out the water during the time-outs, too. He does it all.
He does, however, have a tendency of getting into foul trouble.
Wisconsin has lost two-straight games. On Feb. 23 in an 83-73 loss at Ohio State, Happ played only 22 minutes because of foul trouble (he ended with 4 fouls). His absence from the lineup was felt — he scored only 4 points, grabbed only 6 rebounds, and had only 2 assists.
Three days later in an 84-74 loss at Michigan State, Happ fouled out. In that contest, he only scored 8 points.
The Hawkeye forwards have done a good job of keeping pressure on opposing bigs in the past couple games — in their most recent matchup against Maryland, Damonte Dodd fouled out, and against Indiana, four Hoosiers fouled out.
If Iowa can limit Happ’s minutes — and therefore his impact — it increases its chances of pulling off the upset.
Keep pushing the ball in transition
Iowa has a bunch of guys who thrive in transition: Dom Uhl, Ahmad Wagner, Tyler Cook, Isaiah Moss.
Cook and Moss can navigate in the half court and make shots in sets, but Uhl and Wagner get a lot of their buckets when they are running the court.
Iowa did a lot of running against Maryland, and it was not-so-coincidentally its best game of the year.
The Hawkeyes scored 7 transition points and 22 points on 14 Maryland turnovers.
Wisconsin isn’t a team that turns the ball over all that much — it had 7 in the Ohio State loss and 8 in the loss at Michigan State.
It has struggled with empty possessions lately, though. So if Iowa can get the Badgers to turn the ball over 10 to 12 times and get some easy baskets in transition, it could be on track to an upset.