-Jim Root
Key Returners: Luka Garza, Joe Wieskamp, Jordan Bohannon (injury), CJ Fredrick, Connor McCaffery, Joe Toussaint, Jack Nunge (injury)
Key Losses: Ryan Kreiner, Bakari Evelyn
Key Newcomers: Ahron Ulis, Tony Perkins, Josh Ogundele
Lineup:
Outlook: Many of your reactions probably ranged somewhere between “surprised” and “abjectly furious” to see Iowa pop up at this point in our countdown, and perhaps that’s reasonable. We are unquestionably the lowest on the Hawkeyes of any human-based outlet out there:
We get it – Iowa outside of the top 15 flies in the face of the collective college hoops opinion. But hopefully you know 3MW to be a rational outlet that isn’t seeking clicks (whether a preview gets one million hits or zero, we’re still raking in a total revenue of $0 via site traffic), so before you besiege us with your fury, please allow me to present our side of the story.
The first and most abstract of these reasons is the idea of a program and coach “ceiling.” Iowa has not finished in KenPom’s top 20 since the 1999 season, and if you knew the coach at the time was Tom Davis, you are more of a Hawkeye Historian than me. Since the turn of the millennium, though, the team has not been able to break through into the elite:
Similarly, the best NCAA Tournament seed Fran McCaffery has ever had is a 7, and bracketmatrix.com’s projection of a 6-seed indicates that a similar fate awaited his Hawkeyes had COVID-19 allowed it. Sure, this team has a clear NPOY candidate in Luka Garza (so did 2019-20…), but jumping all the way to a 1- or 2-seed is a lot to ask.
Possibly an obvious note: it’s not impossible to break through a ceiling like the one Iowa seems to have. Mark Turgeon cracked KenPom’s top 15 for the first time in his career last season, and teams like Baylor and Dayton had their program’s best seasons en route to being elite teams. Still, it’s risky to bank on a major outlier, even with Iowa’s roster overflowing with offensive talent.
That final qualifier – offensive talent – is the more concrete concern with this squad. Iowa has fluctuated between “fairly bad” and “quite awful” on the defensive end over the past four seasons, and with a rotation constructed similarly to those teams (most notably, a dearth of high-level athletes), it’s hard to expect that to change much this season. A lot of what makes the offense deadly is also what cripples the other end: McCaffery encourages his guards to get out in transition and run the wings rather than sticking around to help secure defensive rebounds, giving opponents copious second shots, and the outstanding offensive talents like Garza are mostly shaky individual defenders.
To try and compensate for the team’s struggles, McCaffery changed defenses constantly, mixing in man (58.4% of the time) and zone (41.6%) at nearly equal proportions, and he even pressed quite a bit (11.0% of the time, 83rd-highest rate nationally). Unfortunately, none of these approaches proved terribly effective. The guards and wings often weren’t quick enough to keep opponents out of the paint, and Garza’s lack of lateral mobility when pulled out to the perimeter made it tough to defend ball screens. Foes were able to get the Iowa defense rotating with relative ease, and the Hawkeyes simply lack the athletes, both on the perimeter and at the rim, to succeed when in scramble mode. This was an especially large problem when Garza and Ryan Kreiner shared the court in a two-big lineup; McCaffery may want to avoid pairing Garza and Jack Nunge too frequently.
The most glaring flaw, though, was the awful transition defense; foes scored 1.080 PPP in transition, per Synergy, which ranked 322nd in the country. A team keen to snag offensive rebounds was often slow and undisciplined at getting behind the ball, leaving open lanes for opponents to counterattack:
This is fixable, but it takes an extra commitment and sense of urgency that the Hawkeyes simply did not display in 2019-20.
If we’re wrong about Iowa, it will likely be because the offense is too much of a supernova for the flaws on the other end to matter. Despite being a conference rival, 2015 Wisconsin provides a structural model: a generational offense based around a multi-skilled center who can dominate inside and stretch the floor (Kaminsky/Garza), made even more potent by an arsenal of shooting and skill dotting the perimeter around him. The personnel on this team lends hope to the possibility of Iowa becoming a total titan scoring the ball.
Garza is the unquestioned cornerstone of the offense. He’s one of the best post up players in the past decade of the sport, a hyper-physical specimen who combines a furious desire to battle for great positioning with deft post moves and a soft finishing touch. The positioning (against the enormous Kofi Cockburn):
And the footwork/touch (against another monster, Daniel Oturu):
Garza helped Iowa rank 2nd in the country in post up efficiency at 1.074 PPP, with Garza himself ranking in the 91st percentile on a staggering 9.2 possessions per game. The evolution of his perimeter stroke made him even more of a nightmare to guard, and there’s every reason to believe he’ll push 25 PPG in 2020-21.
Joe Wieskamp and CJ Fredrick made it hugely difficult to double-team the brutish big man, as the two combined to go 99/252 (39.2%) from deep. Wieskamp actually struggled a bit relative to his own lofty standards, but his form is gorgeous, and he should see an uptick this year. That could be partially offset by a return to Earth for Fredrick, who was floating in the stratosphere by ranking 7th nationally in 3P%. The brothers McCaffery (Connor McCaffery and Patrick McCaffery) offer more versatile options on the wing; though neither is as deadly from the outside, both players have strong feel for the game (they’re coach’s sons, after all). Notably, Connor McCaffery was probably Iowa’s best and most willing feeder of Garza in the post last year - did you happen to notice who entered the ball in both of the above clips?
The graduated Bakari Evelyn was the team’s least efficient player, and replacing him with a healthy Jordan Bohannon, a proven Big Ten scorer and one of the country’s best shooters, should be a boost to an already-deadly offense. Bohannon will rotate between being the primary ball-handler and moving off ball when Joe Toussaint enters the game. Touissant was an efficiency drag himself, but that’s to be expected from a freshman point guard in a high-major league. He’ll need to rein in his turnover issues, and his finishing at the rim should also improve with a year of experience and added strength. Importantly, though, McCaffery’s system isn’t reliant on its point guards to create shots. It’s a web of constant motion, with shooters like Wieskamp, Fredrick, and Bohannon running off screens, most of which are designed to open up Garza for scoring opportunities as foes focus too much on what’s happening around the arc.
It’s hard to expect much from the freshmen with so much experience already on the roster, but Ahron Ulis (Tyler’s younger but bigger brother) can play some point guard minutes if Bohannon’s hip issues flare up, and Tony Perkins probably has the most vertical bounce on the roster. Either Keegan Murray or Kris Murray could snag some forward minutes, the thinnest position on the roster, while Josh Ogundele is more of a long-term prospect at center. Iowa is in prime enough position to say that any major contributions from this group will be a bonus.
Bottom Line: Maybe we are “sleeping” on the Hawkeyes, insofar as we can “sleep” on a team about which we just published a 1,100+ word preview. The offense could be the best in the country, rendering any defensive shortcomings irrelevant, and/or Fran McCaffery could somehow smoke-and-mirror this roster into respectability on the defensive end. Garza’s presence means the floor is high; it’s hard to imagine the offense falling off much with him dominating the paint. If this preview hasn’t changed your mind, hopefully it has at least given a valid defense to our position. One thing we can all agree on: Iowa games will be must-see TV next year, as the tempo, nuclear offense, and leaky defense set up for some highlight-heavy shootouts.