Iowa State lineup
Ever hear the phrase “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”?
Well, the Iowa men’s basketball team has had a lot of things broken with it this season, which has led head coach Fran McCaffery to flirt with several different starting lineups this early.
For the Iowa State game on Dec. 7, McCaffery went with the starting five of Jordan Bohannon, Brady Ellingson, Isaiah Moss, Jack Nunge, and Tyler Cook.
Though the Hawkeyes lost this game, there was still plenty of good to come from the game.
Bohannon is regarded as the main point guard for Iowa, but he’s not a TRUE point guard. Yes, he has handles and can score the ball, but he’s not the type of guard that can dictate the tempo and do the little things a floor general does for his team to be successful.
That being said, we all know Bohannon as the Hawkeye’s most dangerous 3-point threat. So, with another shooter who can also run the point such as Ellingson on the floor, this allows Bohannon to play more off-ball and look for his shot off a catch.
Against the Cyclones, Bohannon had one of his best games of the season, scoring 19 points and shooting 5-of-10 from 3.
Nunge had 16 points and 8 rebounds in 23 minutes. Cook wasn’t himself as he battled fall trouble all night and ended up with only 2 points.
The big hole in Cook’s game is his perimeter skills. That said, the idea of Nunge, who seems to prefer playing outside, is the perfect complement to Cook, because he makes a living in the paint.
There was some disconnect as these two aren’t used to playing on the floor at the same time, but there’s defiantly potential with this duo in the frontcourt.
Southern lineup
I’m smarter than Sean Bock when it comes to a lot of things, but college basketball is not one of them. Despite that, I’m going to try to make my case anyway.
The Iowa men’s basketball team put out a new starting lineup on Sunday against Southern, and it was the team’s best yet.
Maybe not in sole numbers but because it resulted in a 91-60 win at home to break a four-game losing streak for the Hawkeyes.
It doesn’t really matter that Iowa State or Indiana was probably a tougher opponent. A win is a win, and a win is what Iowa needed. Desperately.
The quintet of Bohannon, Moss, Nunge, Cook, and Nicholas Baer led the Hawkeyes to their first W in the United States since Nov. 16.
The lineup was pretty much the same against Iowa State, but Ellingson got the start over Baer. Ellingson had 7 points against ISU, while Baer had 4 against Southern.
From that, one could make the case that the lineup against ISU was stronger. However, Iowa didn’t emerge from Ames victorious, tacking on another loss to its sad record.
And then the Hawkeyes turned it around and put on a show for the loyal fans in Carver-Hawkeye that included both a blowout game and a Tyler Cook dunk that could have caused an Iowa City earthquake.
My point is that you don’t get to that win without that particular starting lineup. The win is all that matters, and the process to achieve that was started by Bohannon, Moss, Baer, Nunge, and Cook when they walked on the court.
