After a spring of attrition for the Iowa basketball roster, the Hawkeyes added some much needed help to the guard court.
Iowa has added graduate transfer Bakari Evelyn from Valparaiso after his official visit this weekend.
Evelyn is a 6-foot-2 guard from Detroit, who originally started his college career at Nebraska. In his freshman year with the Cornhuskers, he appeared in 18 games and decided to transfer to Valparaiso, where he sat out for a season due to NCAA transfer rules.
In his redshirt sophomore year he was named to the All Newcomer team in the Missouri Valley Conference, averaging 12.6 points per game and shooting 38% from three point range. In conference games only that year, he averaged 14.1 points per game and shot 42.3% from beyond the arch.
This past season he averaged 8.4 points per game and shot 30.6% from three as he battled a number of ankle injuries during the year.
Since the end of the 2018-19 season, Iowa has had departures and injuries that have thinned out their guard court heading into the 2019-20 season. While Iowa will add freshman point guard Joe Toussaint to the mix this fall, they have lost shooting guard Isaiah Moss, who decided to graduate transfer following the season. Also there is the possibility that senior point guard Jordan Bohannon could miss this year after hip surgery last month. Bohannon’s recovery timeline could push right up to the start of the season or beyond and he has said he would rather get fully healthy and play and with a redshirt season at his disposal, he could miss the upcoming year.
With the addition of Evelyn, Iowa adds a combo guard who could help at the point or shooting guard position this season. Connor McCaffery and Toussaint are expected to handle the point guard duties, but we could also see Evelyn or redshirt freshman C.J. Fredrick play some point guard. Evelyn and Fredrick, along with potentially sophomore Joe Wieskamp could see time at the shooting guard.
Iowa is still pretty deep up front and with Evelyn on board, the Hawkeyes now has enough depth in the guard court for the upcoming season, should Bohannon end up redshirting this year.
