Iowa Basketball Needs New Starting Lineup Against Ohio State

Iowa’s slow starts have decimated them in Big Ten play, and that has to change

In conference play, Iowa basketball‘s slow starts have been their Achilles heel. They have allowed teams to jump out to an 8-0 lead in four of eight Big Ten games this season, including in each of the past three games. The Hawkeyes are 0-4 in such games, too.

Slow starts give opposing teams confidence, drain their’s and force the Hawkeyes to face an uphill battle the rest of the game. For a young team, it’s hard to shake off a slow start and slowly chip away at the lead before it becomes unmanageable, especially when it continues to happen.

Fran McCaffery continued to throw out his usual starting lineup against Illinois on Wednesday night, though. Evidently it did not work as Iowa lost 76-64 and played with minimal energy for the most of the game.

Poor performances paired with pressure from the media should lead to a new starting lineup on Saturday against Ohio State. The Hawkeyes have started the last 15 games with Jordan Bohannon, Peter Jok, Isaiah Moss, Cordell Pemsl and either Nicholas Baer, Ahmad Wagner or Tyler Cook.

For a while it worked. The Hawkeyes ended non-conference play with five straight wins and beat 17th ranked Purdue, but McCaffery has to get creative with the starting lineup now with Iowa on a three-game skid.

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Jordan Bohannon and Peter Jok, barring him sitting out due to a bad back, aren’t going to move to the bench. Bohannon has been significantly better than Christian Williams this year and Jok, the Big Ten’s leading scorer, will start if he is healthy enough to play.

It’s unlikely Cook will move to the bench, either. After returning from a finger injury, Cook came off the bench his first game back but immediately moved back to the starting lineup after Iowa’s 89-67 loss to Purdue. He’s had the most consistent playing time in Iowa’s frontcourt and it’s no secret McCaffery, and many others, love his potential.

That still leaves two spots in the starting lineup, though. Iowa will need to add size alongside Tyler Cook but have flexibility when it comes to their other wing player because of Jok’s ability to play shooting guard or small forward.

He played shooting guard to start the season with Baer and Dom Uhl in the starting lineup, although switched to playing more small forward when Moss became a starter. Either way, his role as Iowa’s most trusted scorer won’t change.

It would make sense to keep Moss with the starters. He adds a versatile offensive arsenal on a team whose offense has been horrific to start games and has continued to produce despite a smaller role — eight points in two of the past five games despite seeing fewer than 20 minutes.

However, considering Moss played just six minutes, and none in the second half, against Illinois, it’s likely McCaffery hasn’t been pleased with his play. At this point, it’s unknown whether Moss will remain in the rotation let alone a starter.

Nicholas Baer and Ahmad Wagner are both options at small forward.

Both Baer and Wagner would help with Iowa’s energy problem to start the game. Even though neither is a great scorer, both make a lot of hustle plays every game and would help Iowa’s defensive issues to start games, too.

Because Baer has been so much better off the bench, it would make more sense to move Wagner back with the starters. Here’s a look at Baer’s per game averages during his eight games as a starter compared to his eight games coming off the bench in conference play.

Starter: 6.8 PPG, 5.3 RPG, 1.5 SPG, 1.1 BPG, 39.5 FG%, 34.6 3P%
Reserve: 6.9 PPG, 6.5 RPG, 1.3 SPG, 1.5 BPG, 50.0 FG%, 40.9 3P%

It’s evident that Baer is thriving off the bench as a reserve in Big Ten play. Plus, Wagner has started to hit his stride on offense over the past couple of weeks. Along with his 2.1 steals per 40 minutes in conference play, which ranks second on the team, he also scored 12 points in back-to-back games for the first time in his career.

Since seeing under 10 minutes in three straight games, Wagner has responded with averages of 8.7 points, 4.0 rebounds, 3.7 assists per game on 64.3 percent shooting with 15 free-throw attempts over the past three games. This is the best he’s looked in his career.

Plus, he already has experience as a starter and proved that the mindset and role didn’t impact his play like it did to Baer. In fact, Wagner’s production improved. In five starts, Wagner averaged 7.6 points, 3.8 rebounds, 0.8 steals and 1.0 block per game in 20.6 minutes.

The Hawkeyes could start both Baer and Wagner but they’d have a significant height disadvantage and already don’t have great height off the bench. Therefore, it could lead Iowa to choosing one or the other with Cordell Pemsl also moving back to the bench in favor of Ryan Kriener.

The Pemsl and Cook experiment hasn’t worked thus far. Iowa is 3-4 with them both starting, and their offensive games haven’t clicked because of their inability to score outside of the paint, not to mention their poor defensive presence in the paint, too.

Iowa’s paint defense won’t be fixed with Kriener, who has just four blocks in 132 minutes, in the starting lineup, but he and Bohannon have been successful running pick-and-pops.

Iowa relies too heavily on getting the ball inside to start games, especially since Cook and Pemsl only shoot 47 and 46 percent, respectively, from the field in conference play.