Iowa basketball: Hawks open up 2019 with tough game vs Purdue

It’s been almost a month since the Iowa basketball team played a formidable opponent. Tonight, the Hawks take on a strong Purdue team in West Lafayette.

Let’s chalk the Bryant game up to a weird situation where Fran had a short bench and Bryant had a team perfect for counterpunching the Iowa basketball team. Outside of the Bryant game, the Hawks haven’t really played a tough game since their victory over Iowa State, which was nearly one month ago. In that time, we’ve seen the Hawks fall one spot every single week in the AP Rankings for no apparent reason.

Having started Big Ten play off poorly with losses to #22 Wisconsin and #8 Michigan State, it’ll be nice to see the Iowa basketball team get back in action and begin the rest of their Big Ten slate of games starting with the Purdue Boilermakers.

Although unranked, Purdue is a strong opponent who has had some tough breaks this season. The 8-5 Boilermakers have lost games to #10 Virginia Tech, #9 Florida State, #2 Michigan, 9-4 unranked Texas, and a 10-4 unranked Notre Dame. To be honest, none of those are bad losses and with a few wins over the next two weeks in the Big Ten, Purdue will quickly be regarded as one of the tougher opponents in the conference.

For the Iowa basketball team, it’s pertinent to get off to a good start considering how talented this conference is this season. They need to still a few away wins, and playing at West Lafayette against Purdue is the ideal time to do so. That being said, it won’t be easy and most people don’t believe the Hawks will emerge victorious. Oddsshark.com has Iowa as an 8-point underdog and KenPom gives them a 26% chance of winning this game.

According to KenPom, Purdue is the 19th best team in the nation in Adjusted Efficiency Margin (click here for more information on how that is calculated) while the Hawks sit at 39th.

Through 13 games, three-year starter, 6’1” guard Carsen Edwards has been the spark plug of the team leading the team in scoring with 25.8 points per game and assists (3.5 assists per game). Senior guard Ryan Cline is the only other Boilermaker to average double-digit points with 13.1 points per game. Both Edwards and Cline do a good chunk of their scoring damage from being the three-point line (they’re averaging 18 attempts combined), and that seems to follow the general pattern of how Purdue is scoring as a whole. They are tenth in the nation in reliance on three-pointers in their overall points scored at 41.8%

In addition to strong back court play, Purdue has the height and length to match up with the Iowa basketball team better than any team this year so far. Within their top six players, three of them are over 6’8”.

For an Iowa basketball team that is working its way back from a few injuries, it’ll be important to lock down on Edwards and Cline who are scoring more than half of Purdue’s points. This isn’t exactly Jordan Bohannon’s strength so I expect to see a heavy dose of Maishe Dailey, Connor McCaffery, and Isaiah Moss bugging those guys all day.

In the front court, Purdue’s big men haven’t proven to be adept at pulling in rebounds. 7’2” center Matt Haarms has a terrible offensive rebound percentage at 9.1, and the team’s leading rebounder is 6’6” Grady Eifert who is averaging 5.2 rebounds per game.

This is important for two reasons. First, Tyler Cook should be able to attack with ease and Luka Garza (or vice versa) can clean up the boards. Second, Iowa’s perimeter players can have the green light to shoot the three with Cook, Garza, and Ryan Kriener down low fighting for boards.

In just a few hours, we will get the chance to see these two teams square off for real and see exactly what kind of advantage the Iowa basketball team will hold.

Tip off is scheduled for 6 PM Central Standard Time at Mackey Arena in West Lafayette, and the game will be aired on the Big Ten Network.