Iowa basketball: Fran McCaffery uses extra scholarship in house

With available scholarships heading into the 2019-2020 season, the Iowa basketball team handed out a scholarship to redshirt junior Riley Till.

It’s not necessarily the exciting splash that many Iowa basketball fans were hoping for when multiple scholarship spots opened up after the transfer of Maishe Dailey and Isiah Moss, but it’s arguably the right one.

The Iowa basketball program announced yesterday that redshirt sophomore Riley Till was awarded an athletic scholarship for his final two seasons in Iowa City.

Till has been currently playing for the Iowa basketball program as a walk-on the last three seasons, and has played in just 24 games, but as we have seen in the past (i.e. Nicholas Baer and Darius Stokes), this move isn’t unprecedented.

While some fans may wondering what is going on, consider this:

Till has given his all to the Iowa basketball program the last three years, and with three available scholarships and a transfer market that is drying up every day, there was almost no way the Hawks were going to fill all of those spots externally.

Fran McCaffery is rewarding the efforts of a native Iowan that has been with the Iowa basketball program for three seasons, and I can respect the heck out of that.

Riley Till, formerly from Dubuque Wahlert, has averaged 4 minutes a game in the 24 games he saw game action the past two seasons. For his career, he has 24 points, 10 rebounds, 5 assists, and 7 steals. At 6’7” and 205 pounds, he’s got a similar size to former walk-on-turned-scholarship-stud Nicholas Baer. While it’s unrealistic to expect Till to be like Baer considering Baer made a much bigger impact in his redshirt freshman and sophomore seasons, it’s still a hopeful ceiling for the Iowa basketball program.

With the announcement of this scholarship, Fran McCaffery still has two scholarships remaining for the 2019-2020 season. So far, there have been zero indications or links to any other available transfer prospects on the market.