Iowa lost its fourth game in a row and left the arena feeling … better?

By Kyle Mann | [email protected]

After starting the 2015-16 season with a 19-4 record and climbing as high as No. 3 in the AP Poll, aspirations were as high as they’ve ever been for the Iowa basketball program.

The Hawkeyes have now lost four of their last five games, however, and it would seem finding some momentum against Indiana entering tournament time would be helpful if those hopes were ever to come to fruition.

As it turns out, Indiana doesn’t care. The Hoosiers were completely uninterested in doing the Hawkeyes any favors on Tuesday. on Senior Night

The Hawkeyes got off to a hot shooting start, going 4-of-5 from the floor and 2-of-2 from 3 to take an 8-3 lead. The opening minutes were reminiscent of fast starts from the beginning of the season, when the Hawkeyes won seven Big Ten games in a row.

But Iowa’s recent struggles have been caused by fundamental shortcomings, such as turning the ball over, giving up offensive rebounds, and missing open shots. It would’ve been naïve to think the Hawkeyes showed up for their final home game of the season and things had magically gotten better.

Granted, the Hawkeyes went 8-of-19 (42 percent) from beyond the arc, a promising sign for a team shooting around 34 percent in its last five games, but they allowed Indiana to shoot 50 percent both from the floor and from distance.

And oddly enough, the Hawkeyes did improve in several areas of recent concern. Turnovers were below 10 for the first time in three games, their 16 assists were the most since Feb. 14 against Minnesota, and they even won the rebounding battle 42-39.

Head coach Fran McCaffery focused mostly on these improvements in his postgame press conference and went so far as to make a very curious assertion.

“I think we already have [turned] things around,” he said.

It’s an interesting response, to say the least, following such a heartbreaking loss that extends his team’s losing streak to four. And while McCaffery’s positivity is admirable, it raises a question about whether this Iowa team is being too nonchalant about its struggles as it comes down the home stretch.

“You look at any of the great teams in college basketball right now, they’ve all went through a little bit of a slump,” Nicholas Baer said. “Now, we’re hitting ours.”

Iowa’s struggles hardly start with Baer, but his comment seems somewhat reflective of a team that is lacking a competitive fire as the season collapses before them. The team is veteran-led and as such has a remarkable sense of collective composure, but the Hawks have almost remained too composed and relatively unconcerned with their struggles.

So it’s great that the Hawkeyes could draw positives from another tough loss, and nobody will ever be mad at a team for keeping too cool of a head. But at some point, one would expect at least a little sense of urgency that is apparently lost in the Iowa locker room.

“It took us a couple games to get into the slump,” Mike Gesell said. “And it’s going to take us a couple games to get out of it.”

By Gesell’s theory, mathematically the skid should stop at four. He better hope so, because the Hawkeyes are out of time.

Iowa will conclude its regular season at Michigan on Saturday.