Dear Old Gold
Fansided

Iowa Basketball: Big Ten Tournament Preview Against Illinois

By Dylan Burn

Feb 7, 2016; Champaign, IL, USA; Illinois Fighting Illini center Maverick Morgan (22) is boxed out by Iowa Hawkeyes forward Ahmad Wagner (0) and guard Peter Jok (14) during the first half at State Farm Center. Mandatory Credit: Mike Granse-USA TODAY Sports
Feb 7, 2016; Champaign, IL, USA; Illinois Fighting Illini center Maverick Morgan (22) is boxed out by Iowa Hawkeyes forward Ahmad Wagner (0) and guard Peter Jok (14) during the first half at State Farm Center. Mandatory Credit: Mike Granse-USA TODAY Sports /
facebooktwitterreddit

The Iowa Basketball team looks to boost it’s resume a little bit with a run in this years Big Ten Tournament.  They’ll first have to get through the Illinois Fighting Illini, who clobbered Minnesota earlier this evening.

Over the course of the last five seasons, the Iowa Basketball team hasn’t played more than two games in the BTT.  Last season, they lost their first game to the Penn State Nittany Lions and the year before they were upset by Northwestern.  They were able to get to their second game back in 2011-12, but came up short against Michigan State.  They defeated Illinois in their first game that year, 64-61.

They’ll meet the Fighting Illini (14-18) tomorrow afternoon in Indianapolis.  The Illini defeated a depleted Minnesota team by 33 points on Wednesday evening in the first round of this years Big Ten Tournament.  They got a balanced effort with four players in double figures, but will face a much better team tomorrow in the Iowa Hawkeyes.

Iowa will look to avoid the upset in the second round that they’ve experience in the past two seasons.  Obviously, it isn’t a must win game, but Iowa needs to win a lot of games this weekend to have a chance at playing in Des Moines in the first couple rounds of the NCAA Tournament.

More from Dear Old Gold

Iowa is going to need to rebound well on Thursday.  They out-rebounded the Illini 43-32 the last time they met in Champaign, IL and had two guys with double digit rebounding numbers in Adam Woodbury and Jarrod Uthoff.  The Hawkeyes are one of the more effective teams in the conference in terms of rebounding as they rank third in rebounding offense, while Illinois ranks dead last.

If they are able to create some second chances for themselves, it will really benefit the offense and the confidence.

As obvious as it sounds, they’ll need to shoot it well.  With the exception of last Saturday’s game in Ann Arbor, the Hawks haven’t exactly stellar from the field in the latter part of the regular season.  Uthoff wasn’t shooting over 40 percent from the field in the five games prior and Iowa’s offense wasn’t pretty to watch.

The Hawkeyes will need to be efficient with their shots as they face an Illinois team fresh off a 30 point rout, so their confidence is up.

Eliminate the boneheaded turnovers.  It seems like sometimes they just lose focus on the court.  An example would be Woodbury walking out of bounds after a missed free throw.  They aren’t going to be able to have these kinds of turnovers going deeper into March and they might as well get used to being sharp now against inferior teams.  It starts tomorrow afternoon.

Next: Uthoff and Jok Named All-Big Ten

The last thing Iowa needs to do is, play with confidence.  They need to play like they’re the better team.  Be confident and be aggressive.  It starts with Uthoff, who looked like his old self on Saturday, and it ends with the bench.  They’ve looked a lot more confident and aggressive these past couple of games and it could be thanks to the emergence of Christian Williams as a contributor.

With Williams playing well, it gives Iowa another option off the bench aside from Ahmad Wagner, Nicholas Baer, and Dom Uhl.

Iowa and Illinois will take the floor at approximately 1:30 p.m. CST tomorrow afternoon in Indy.

Home/Iowa Basketball