On the eve of last season, expectations seemed high for the Iowa men’s basketball team. The Hawkeyes were coming off a 19-15 (10-8 Big Ten) season that had them on the bubble of an NCAA Tournament berth.

Although they had lost their best player, Peter Jok, the rest of the roster from that 19-win season was still intact and had a year’s experience.

All signs pointed to another solid year for Iowa basketball, but that didn’t happen. Instead of making another run at an NCAA Tournament berth, the Hawkeyes wound up simply trying to run away from last place in the Big Ten.

When the nightmare season was put to rest, Iowa was 14-19 (4-14 Big Ten) and in second-to-last place in the Big Ten.

So what happened to this team?

While there are probably numerous factors that led to the disastrous season, one problem seems to stick out like a basketball player at a concert.

Defense.

A kind person would say Iowa’s defense was bad last season, but the reality seems to be far worse.

While a Fran McCaffery-led basketball team isn’t usually known for its defensive play, this past season’s defense even worse than usual.

To say that Iowa had one of the worst NCAA Division 1 defenses last season is no exaggeration.

There are 351 NCAA Division 1 basketball programs across the country; Iowa finished 317th in opponents’ points per game, allowing 78.7.

It doesn’t really matter how good of an offense a team has, having to put up 80 points a game to win in college basketball is extremely tough.

Given the number of points per game the Hawkeyes gave up, it shouldn’t come as a shocker that they were also 287th in the country in opponents’ field-goal percentage, 46.2.

But that stat looks tame next to the percentage their opponents shot from beyond the arc. Iowa’s opposition shot 37.6 percent from deep, which put Iowa at 313th in the nation.

While the Hawkeye opponents put the ball in the basket with ease, they also found it easy to maintain possession.

With just 172 steals last year, Iowa wound up near the bottom of another list, this time coming in at 271st. That, along with their 13.4 turnovers per game, put the Hawkeyes at 317th in the country in turnover margin at minus-2.2 (365 takeaways to 441 turnovers). Tyler Cook can throw down as many rim-shattering dunks as he wants, but that will do no good if Iowa can’t defend at the other end of the floor.

The good news for Iowa is that it is still a relatively young team that surely gained some much-needed experience last year. The Hawkeyes also boast a pretty solid offensive team that ranked 48th in the country in points per game last season with 79.7.