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Black and Gold Morning Brew – Iowa Basketball: It’s Time to Press the Panic Button

By Dylan Burn

Feb 28, 2016; Columbus, OH, USA; Iowa Hawkeyes head coach Fran McCaffery reacts to a call against his team during the game against the Ohio State Buckeyes at Value City Arena. Ohio State won the game 68-64. Mandatory Credit: Greg Bartram-USA TODAY Sports
Feb 28, 2016; Columbus, OH, USA; Iowa Hawkeyes head coach Fran McCaffery reacts to a call against his team during the game against the Ohio State Buckeyes at Value City Arena. Ohio State won the game 68-64. Mandatory Credit: Greg Bartram-USA TODAY Sports /
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The Iowa Basketball team is limping towards the end of the Big Ten regular season.  They’ve now lost three straight games in Big Ten play after their loss to Ohio State on Sunday.  That’s also four losses in the last five games.  I’ve been denying it for a couple weeks now, but it’s time to press the panic button.

Iowa didn’t look good on Sunday.  They haven’t looked good in about a month.  I kept saying that it was just a bump in the road, but it’s starting to look like this may be the Hawkeye team we’ll see for the rest of the year.  Over the past five games they’ve went 1-4 with that lone win coming against Minnesota by a score of 75-71.

This recent skid started when Iowa visited Assembly Hall back on February 12th.  Indiana, like Iowa, has been one of the surprises in the Big Ten this year and Iowa knew they’d be in for a dogfight.  The Hawkeyes left Indiana with their second conference loss.  It wasn’t the loss that bothered me, it was more so the way they lost.  Not having any bench points was an issue, but we didn’t know it’d snowball into something bigger.

They had chances to win the game, but ultimately let it slip away.  Fans could swallow the loss because it was to a good Indiana team, on the road, in a tough environment.  On to the next one.

They got back on track against Minnesota, but that wasn’t pretty either.  Minnesota never went away and had a couple chances to actually steal the game away from the Hawkeyes.  Jarrod Uthoff and Peter Jok combined for 51 of Iowa’s 75 points.  The bench chipped in just six.

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Now we get to the current three game slide.

Iowa went to Happy Valley to take on the Penn State Nittany Lions who they had pummeled just a couple weeks prior by 24 points.  Iowa shot 41% from the field, turned the ball over 13 times, and lost 79-75.  Uthoff and Jok combined for 47 of Iowa’s 75 points.  Starting to see a trend here?

The Hawkeyes then got a week off before taking on the Wisconsin Badgers.  They shot 33% from the field and 28% from behind the arc, turned it over 14 times, and got four points from their bench in an eight point loss to Wisconsin.  Iowa looked like they were more rusty than rested.  Wisconsin is one of the hottest teams in the Big Ten, so it wasn’t a loss that was tough to swallow even though Iowa was at home and favored.

That leads us to Sunday.  Iowa had several chances to pull away from the Ohio State Buckeyes late in the game, but just couldn’t seem to put them away.  They shot 41% for the game and just 25% from behind the arc.  They turned it over 15 times in the game, and got 10 points from their bench.

Next: Offense Disappears Late in Loss to OSU

It looks as though Iowa is becoming too easy to guard.  They realistically have two scoring options in Peter Jok and Jarrod Uthoff.  Uthoff didn’t shoot the ball in the last nine possessions of the game on Sunday, which isn’t ideal considering he’s the best scoring option.

Uthoff needs to demand the ball in those situations.  Go and get the ball, call for it, anything.  It was that kind of mindset that had Hawkeye fans worried coming into the season.

They aren’t shooting the ball well at all, which isn’t going to win you games, obviously.  They are turning it over at an amazing clip, something we didn’t see early on in the year.  And lastly, they aren’t a deep team at all.  Coming into the year, we figured they’d have a pretty deep bench.  That has not been the case lately.  It’s a very young bench, which doesn’t help the Hawkeyes because they don’t have any experience on it.  It appears as though Dom Uhl’s hot streak to start Big Ten play is fading, along with Nicholas Baer’s.

At 20-8 now, two games left in the regular season, and then the Big Ten tourney, there is a chance Iowa could possibly finish 20-11.  Who would’ve thought that would be the case a month ago?  They have given me no reason to believe they’ll beat Indiana on senior night this Tuesday or beat Michigan on the road to wrap up the year.  That puts them at 11-7 in the conference after a 10-1 start and most likely gets them a five or six seed in the BTT.

I don’t know where this team is headed because it seems like we’ve watched two completely different teams play basketball this year, but one thing is for sure.

You can press that panic button now.

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