The Hawkeyes have been somewhat off their game in recent weeks, but they had a week off to prepare.
By Kyle Mann
Fran McCaffery’s No. 8 Hawkeyes have lost two out of their last three games for the first time since Big Ten play began, and while the Hawkeyes are still quite obviously a good team, they’ve looked a little different recently.
Iowa boasts one of the more dangerous offenses in the conference; Jarrod Uthoff and Peter Jok have led the team to 80.1 points per game. However, in going 3-2 in their last five games, the Hawkeyes haven’t hit the 80-point mark a single time, the longest such stretch of the season.
The Hawkeyes benefited early in the season from a strong schedule that allowed four wins against ranked conference opponents before the start of February, and five ranked opponents in their first eight conference games played a large role in their national ascension.
And the tough opponents didn’t simply make the Hawkeyes look better, they made them better. But now, six-consecutive unranked opponents have the Hawkeyes looking relatively lackadaisical and in their biggest “rut” of the year. It seems possible that Iowa had been lulled by its own schedule, and a week off before Wisconsin came at just the right time.
“We’ve had some time to work on some things,” McCaffery said. “The next four games are really all against very good teams. So hopefully, we’ll play well, play a little better than we have recently.”
Those O-Boards
The Hawks were never going to be the strongest rebounders, but they proved early that they were strong enough in other areas to offset that weakness.
With just one player over 6-9, Iowa sits middle of the pack in rebounding margin and is in fact slightly positive (plus-0.8). Recently, however, teams have been finding spaces to snatch an inordinate number of offensive rebounds.
The Hawkeyes have surrendered 68 offensive rebounds in the recent five-game stretch, an average of nearly 14 per game. Michigan State, the Big Ten leader in offensive rebounding, grabs 12.3. In other words, Iowa’s opponents in the last five games have been the best offensive rebounding team in the conference.
The Hawkeyes aren’t panicking over their recent struggles, and they have a simple strategy to alleviate the rebounding issues.
“Just play aggressive, play hard all the time,” Dom Uhl said. “Crash the boards and don’t give up on loose balls.”
Have to get that bench back
One of the other surprises that has led to Iowa’s success thus far has been the productive play of its young bench players. Uhl has hovered near the top of the league leaders in 3-point shooting, Ahmad Wagner brings energy and defense, and Nicholas Baer established himself as a fan-favorite hustle guy.
But where they were once as crucial to the team’s successes as Uthoff and Jok, the bench unit collectively hasn’t scored more than 10 points in the last four games. Responding to the idea that Iowa had become too reliant on its top two scorers, Baer says the bench will return to form by returning to the way players performed early.
“These last couple practices have been doing a really nice job for us, just getting back to the basics of what was successful for us earlier in the season,” he said. “Just getting back to what was successful for us.”
