Iowa basketball: Hawks ready to play first regular season game against UMKC

The Iowa basketball team is ready to put last season behind and will begin doing so when they open their season Thursday night against the UMKC Kangaroos.

It’s been a long few months for an Iowa basketball program that suffered through the second worst season in the Fran McCaffrey era last season when the men’s team struggled to a 14 and 19 record. Despite their struggles last season, expectations are high this year as the Hawks return nearly every player from last year’s roster plus an addition that is expected to make them immediately better in Iowa Gatorade Player of the Year Joe Weiskamp, who is a top-100 recruit for the Hawks out of Muscatine, Iowa.

Thursday night, the Iowa basketball team kicks off their season against the University of Missouri – Kansas City Kangaroos. The Kangaroos, a Division 1 team out of the Western Athletic Conference, are coming off a season in which they were one of the worst teams in college basketball. Their winning percentage of .313 was good for 304th out of 351 Division 1 programs.

This struggling program did only lose one key player from last year’s team, Broderick Robinson, who averaged 11.1 points per game, but they are likely to be at the bottom of a relatively weak conference that featured just one NCAA tournament team last year, the New Mexico State Aggies.

Needless to say, it should be an easy warmup victory for the Iowa basketball team as they help kick off the 2018 2K Empire Classic Benefiting Wounded Warrior Project. This tournament is Iowa’s opening season tournament where they will play four non-conference games. The first two will be at home before the Hawks travel to New York City for their first real test against the #14 Oregon Ducks.

Tip-off for Thursday night’s contest will take place at 7 PM and will be aired on BTN Plus. If you are around the Iowa City, however, you can get tickets for the low price of $3 to watch the Hawks hopefully cruise to an easy opening night win.

As we will with all Iowa basketball games this season, we will be live tweeting from our Twitter account and providing analysis of the game shortly after on Dear Old Gold.