Iowa basketball: Men look to continue strong start against Alabama State

After a surprising 4-0 start, the men’s Iowa basketball team is ranked #20. They look to build on this strong start against Alabama State Wednesday night.

Not many people would have taken a look at the Iowa basketball team’s schedule the first two weeks and said that they would be 4-0 at the conclusion. Yet, here we are. After two wins against smaller schools that saw the men’s team struggle out of the gate, the Hawks turned it on and made easy work of a ranked Oregon basketball team and the always tough University of Connecticut Huskies.

This strong start led to their inclusion in this week’s AP Poll as the Iowa basketball team went from unranked (and no votes) to being ranked 20th in the nation. With expectations getting higher by the day for Fran McCaffrey’s squad, Iowa has one more quick warm up game before getting into the meat of their schedule which includes a non-conference game against a 5-0 University of Pittsburgh team and then opening Big Ten conference play against Wisconsin and Michigan State.

The Alabama State Hornets enter Wednesday’s night contest at Carver Hawkeye arena just 2-2 after suffering two early season losses to the Iowa State Cyclones and the South Dakota State Jackrabbits. They then beat up on two division three opponents to even out their record.

Their slow start to the season isn’t an anomaly though. Last year, the Hornets were arguably one of the worst teams in college basketball only posting eight wins and finishing seventh out of ten teams in the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC), which sent just one team to the NCAA tournament in the 2017-2018 season.

Needless to say, this should be an easily winnable matchup for the Iowa basketball team. In terms of playmakers that Iowa needs to be weary of, the Hornets top two scorers are both guards. 6’3” Reginald Gee leads the team with 16.5 points per game on 48% shooting from the field. The junior shooting guard is joined by sophomore point guard Jacoby Ross (5’9”, 165 pounds) as the only two Hornets players averaging double-digit points for the season.

Defensively, the Hawks should match up well in terms of athleticism and the length of Connor McCaffrey and Jordan Bohannon should cause fits for the Hornets top two leading scorers.

Offensively, it will likely be another big day for Iowa’s big men considering Alabama State only has one player over 6’7”, and he is a reserve player.

As always, we will have analysis and a recap after the Hawks take cares of Alabama State and begins looking towards a matchup with undefeated Pitt.