After Iowa men’s basketball guard Payton Sandfort answered a question about his recent Big Ten Sixth Man of the Year award, he hinted the season’s most important games are just beginning.

“It’s just another drop in the bucket,” Sandfort said of his award. “Now we get to go play real, meaningful basketball.”

That “real, meaningful basketball” begins on Thursday afternoon for the Hawkeyes as they take on Ohio State in the second round of the Big Ten Tournament at 1:30 p.m. at the United Center in Chicago on Big Ten Network.

Seeded fifth — just as they were last season when they won the tournament title — head coach Fran McCaffery’s team will have to win four games in four days to bring the trophy back to Iowa City.

McCaffery said last season’s run took a mixture of good play, mental discipline, and toughness. The same recipe will be needed for a repeat.

“I think you’ve got to get really good performances from a lot of different people, which we did,” McCaffery said of last year’s championship team. “You have to be mentally tough, because not only is it grueling physically, but you’re processing scouting reports on a daily basis four times against four really good teams, against four really well-coached teams.”

McCaffery and his players echoed the message of concentrating on one game at a time in the single-elimination format.

“Just get ready for the first time we play, and then turn the page and try to take a very business-like and professional approach to the next game, and carry out the game plan,” McCaffery said. “As we’ve also talked many times, sometimes the greatest game plans don’t work, so you’ve got to make game adjustments. That takes incredible maturity, both individually and collectively, so we’ll do that. Just get the guys to play as hard as they can.”

Sandfort said Iowa may have overlooked Nebraska in its regular season finale on March 5, an 81-77 loss, something he knows Iowa has to avoid from here on out.

“You can’t focus on the next one, get caught up in it,” Sandfort said. “I think there might have done that a little bit on Sunday, so we won’t make that mistake again.”

Unlike the six or seven players the Hawkeyes largely relied on during that latter part of the regular season, center Filip Rebraca said a four-game winning streak in four days, is going to take contributions from nearly everyone on the roster.

“We understand that it’s gonna be difficult,” Rebraca said of a repeat. “But it’s not undoable,  four games in four days we did last year. So, we got to take care of our bodies, we know what it’s going to take. “It’s going to take effort from every single player. So, it’s not impossible, we just got to put our minds to it first.”

In both Iowa’s second-round victory over Northwestern last year and the Hawkeyes Championship win over Purdue, 10 Iowa players played 10 minutes or more.

Sandfort said last season’s tournament title took a “completely united effort.”

“It took a lot of togetherness, Sandfort said. “A lot of people were involved. I mean, I think we went 12 or 13 deep on the bench in a few games. Everyone’s got to be connected. Everyone’s got to be really putting their best effort forward.”