When I last wrote this column back in late December, the Iowa men’s basketball team was in pretty good shape.
The Hawkeyes didn’t have any marquee wins but showed plenty of promise, nearly pulling out huge ranked victories over Michigan and in-state rival Iowa State.
January offered a chance for Iowa to compile wins before facing a grueling February slate, but the Hawkeyes have done the exact opposite. In fact, they aren’t just losing.They are getting embarrassed on a nightly basis.
The Wisconsin game on Jan. 3 proved to be an unfortunate precursor to this ongoing free-fall. The Kohl Center has been a house of horrors for Iowa in recent years, but the Hawkeye faithful felt their squad was ready to take the next step toward a return to the NCAA tournament.
Instead, the Hawkeyes took five steps in the wrong direction, suffering additional road blowout losses to USC, UCLA, and Ohio State. Sandwiched inside those losses was a dismal home defeat to Minnesota, who came into the contest with only one victory in the Big Ten.
Fran McCaffery certainly has had some embarrassing losses during his 15-season tenure in Iowa City, but this month alone he has probably produced a quarter of those defeats, which is not a good sign for a longtime coach.
That brings us to the big picture issue.
Iowa’s NCAA tournament hopes aren’t totally dead, but they are just about on life support at this point. The Hawks certainly have some chances to earn some big wins with home games against Purdue, Wisconsin, and Oregon on the schedule, but those look like long shots considering how poorly this team has defended and even shot the ball at times.
Every team goes through a down period at some point in the season, but I can’t recall a McCaffery-coached team ever looking this lifeless in these types of winnable games during his entire tenure. Even his 2017-18 team that finished 4-14 in league play fought hard in games where they shouldn’t have had a chance.
The difference? That squad was filled with underclassmen and was expected to have a down season, while this team was supposed to take the next step forward. It just hasn’t clicked at all this year.
On paper, this is actually a talented roster. Josh Dix and Payton Sandfort, and Owen Freeman have immense potential to be elite players in this league. Drew Thelwell is a stud on both sides of the floor. Brock Harding, Seydou Traore, and Pryce Sandfort have all shown that they are capable of filling in extra scoring gaps when needed.
Dix and Sandfort have plenty of experience under their belts, but they seem to disappear in games far too often. Dix didn’t even record a point in last week’s blowout loss at Ohio State, and most of Sandfort’s points came when Iowa was down big in the second half.
The Hawkeyes are a team that is built to outscore teams with their offense, so when two of their best players don’t show up in crucial moments, that is a major problem. Both of these guys are too talented and valuable to this team to not perform well each and every night.
Defense will always be an issue for a McCaffery-coached squad, but it’s hard not to address how badly this unit has performed this season. I thought this team would have the potential to defend at a high level coming into the year,, but Iowa’s inability to snag rebounds and defend basic ball screens has turned it into one of the worst defenses in the country.
“I think as guards, we kind of try to fight over screen,” Harding said at a press conference on Jan. 20. “Sometimes we hit screens and kind of die down, and that’s on us. That keeps our big guy dragging out a little bit too long, and then guys are open at the rim, and that gets an open kick out for threes, and then kind of just all starts on the ball with me.”
It’s clear the Hawkeyes aren’t afraid to hold themselves accountable for their mistakes, but they just haven’t been able to fix them thus far. Fans have complained about how Iowa is supposedly “checked out” during games, but that’s a statement I’ll never judge.
Iowa has enough horses in the stable to compete in the Big Ten, but its last month of action has proved the exact opposite. It’s hard to fathom the Hawkeyes suffering a losing season, but that idea could turn into a reality if they continue to play this way moving forward.
Unless Iowa turns this ship around, expect more empty seats and apathetic roars at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.