The Iowa men’s basketball team did something special on Friday night. The Hawkwyes defeated Washington State by a score of 76-66 in a game that had 77 possessions. Iowa scored 76 points in 77 possessions (0.987 points per possession) … and won.
This is a big deal. Wins under that circumstance have been scarce under Fran McCaffery especially in recent years. In fact, Luka Garza and Joe Wieskamp were still on the team when Iowa last won a game despite scoring less than one point per possession. That game was a 62-57 win over Wisconsin in the Big Ten Tournament on March 12, 2021.
Since then Iowa had lost 16 games in a row (!) when scoring less than one point per possession (PPP). The 16-game losing streak spanned three entire seasons. That losing streak has now been slain.
Winning these types of rock fight has always been a struggle under McCaffery. Since the 2012-13 season, Iowa is 16-67 when scoring less than 1 PPP, a mere 19% winning percentage. Even when the defense was good during the Adam Woodbury years, winning those games was still a struggle as Iowa went 5-23 in those games during that timeframe.
I’ve done a little digging into these rock fight games and it turns out that it is quite difficult to win when scoring less than 1 PPP. Obviously, there is a selection bias for these games - it usually means that you are playing a tougher opponent. It also means that, on top of the opponent’s quality, your offense is probably having an off night.
It isn't just Iowa that struggles to win these games, either. Under Greg Gard, Wisconsin teams seem well suited for rock fights. They have also struggled in those games, though, with a 13-29 record when scoring under 1 PPP since 2020. Even elite defensive programs like Iowa State and San Diego State have won just 34% and 41% of their games, respectively, when scoring less than 1 PPP since 2020. These are inherently tough games to win. Two seasons ago, Iowa State had the 7th best defense in the nation and only won one such game in thirteen tries.
So Iowa just managed to do something that is quite challenging and they didn’t just win, they won by 10 points against a quasi-high major opponent. Obviously, it’s too early to make any sort of definitive statements but I am firmly in camp “be happy when good things happen” and something good just happened.
There have been encouraging signs in these early days of the season.
Last season, things really went south when Owen Freeman was not on the court. Against high major opponents, Iowa went from outscoring its opponents 1.15 - 1.12 PPP with him to being outscored 1.09 - 1.20 PPP without him. The offense and defense both got significantly worse when he was absent. Backup center was a problem as Ben Krikke couldn’t handle the position defensively while Ladji Dembele struggled on offense.
So I was encouraged that the Hawks blasted South Dakota, a team that has a couple of legit players, without Owen Freeman playing a single minute. The team’s ability to weather his absences will be a key determinant of success this season and they certainly passed their first test in that regard.
This team has obvious potential on offense. Payton Sandfort, Josh Dix and Owen Freeman can each go off for 20+ points on any given night and there are also a number of solid contributing scorers with Pryce Sandfort, Drew Thelwell and Seydou Traore all currently averaging over 8 PPG. This team has a lot of skilled offensive players; they are smart, they play unselfishly and they move without the ball. I’m not worried about the offense and neither is anyone else who knows anything about the game.
That leaves the defense which, justifiably, is an enormous question mark. In the last two seasons, Iowa’s defense has ranked 168th and 157th in adjusted defensive efficiency, per Ken Pomeroy. For this team to accomplish anything noteworthy, that will have to improve dramatically. Obviously, there are some defensive challenges baked into this roster but if they can just get up to 80th defensively, roughly where the Garza and Keegan Murray teams were, it could be a fun season. Can that happen?
There were a couple of things that really stood out in analysis of last year’s team. The first expands on an earlier point: the team lacked rim protection apart from Owen Freeman. Last season, Freeman accounted for 61 of Iowa’s 125 blocked shots, nearly half. The trio of Payton Sandfort, Ben Krikke and Pat McCaffery combined to block one shot per game despite logging 82 minutes per game. The two point defense is probably not going to be good if the forwards are blocking so few shots and, indeed, it wasn’t: Iowa’s opponents made 51.4% of their two point attempts (226th nationally).
Therefore, it is encouraging to see several more players contributing in that category this season. So far, 16 of Iowa’s 22 blocked shots have been from players other than Freeman. Seydou Traore is leading the way in this regard with two blocks per game. Yes, the competition has probably been weak but there has still been improvement. If we examine Iowa’s first four games against weak competition last season (North Dakota, Alabama State, Arkansas State and North Florida) and exclude Freeman, the rest of the team managed to block 11 shots total. This season that number sits at 16 shots and it is against a better quartet of opponents as well.
An even more shocking defensive trend is what happened when McCaffery went to his bench at point guard. When Tony Perkins or Josh Dix was at PG, Iowa allowed 1.07 PPP. When Dasonte Bowen and/or Brock Harding checked into the game that number went up to an alarming 1.29 PPP. That difference of 0.22 PPP is about as large as I ever see when doing these kinds of analyses. It’s over a 15-point difference when extrapolated to a full game, which is gigantic.
One (or both) of Harding/Bowen were in the game on 39% of the defensive possessions last season -- a large chunk -- and the defense got sliced apart on those possessions. The team should be able to dramatically improve upon those possessions as the bar is quite low.
The flip side, of course, is that the team also has to replace Tony Perkins. I don’t think Tony quite lived up to his very high potential as a defensive player. Nevertheless, the numbers above (as well as my own eyes) show me that he was dramatically better defensively than either Harding or Bowen. One of those guys (Harding) will now have to play twenty-ish minutes per game without getting picked apart defensively.
So the question becomes: can a team with Brock Harding playing 20+ mpg be among the top-80 defenses nationwide? Here’s why that's possible: in 2020-21 and 2021-22, the team had top-80 defenses with Jordan Bohannon playing major minutes.
Harding has the potential to become a better defender than Bohannon. They possess similar size but Harding is much quicker and is also quite active defensively and scrappy. To my eye, he is already a better defensive player than Bohannon and if Iowa can have a top-80 defense with Bohannon, then it seems plausible that they could have one with Harding as well. Now getting into the top 50 defenses might be a different story…
One last positive thing to note is how beneficial it is to have Seydou Traore on this team. At the end of last season, I looked around at various good defensive teams that had made sudden defensive improvements and one of the most striking examples was Nebraska. Nebraska was 152nd in adjusted defensive efficiency in 2021-22, improved that to 73rd in 2022-23 and got all the way up to 29th last season. What happened?
Well, one thing that happened was that they brought in Juwan Gary prior to the 2022-23 season. He does everything for them defensively. He’s very athletic and 6’6" so he can defend on the perimeter and also protect the rim and rebound. Traore has the potential to be that kind of guy for Iowa and so far the results are encouraging.
Things aren’t all sunshine and roses though.
Despite blocking a respectable 13.9% of opponents’ two point attempts, Iowa is still allowing opponents to shoot a concerning 55.7% on twos. That ranks 260th in the country -- very, very bad for a high major team -- and it gets worse when you factor in the weak competition. There were several wild close outs in the South Dakota game that led to a lot of straight-line drives to the basket. That has to get fixed. The team is allowing its opponents to rebound 30.2% of their misses as well which ranks 193rd nationally. That’s also far too high.
While many of Iowa’s players have contributed in the shot blocking department, one player who hasn’t is Ladji Dembele. He has yet to block a shot, which is disconcerting. The team needs him to be a rim protector since he is currently the starting 4 and also serves as the backup 5. His defense will be critical for team success. He will need to become productive in that department soon - and also on the defensive glass, where he is only collecting 11.4% of the available defensive rebounds.
Iowa is doing a very good job of keeping opponents off the free throw line (8th nationally) and are also forcing turnovers on 22% of opponents’ possessions (54th nationally). They are also defending the three point line surprisingly well as opponents are only making 27.2% of their threes (61st nationally). So if they fixed the two point defense and rebounding, they would be putting up good defensive numbers. The obvious scheduling strength caveats apply, of course.
There's no reason panic yet. Freeman and Traore have only played one game together and that game was a ten point win despite significant offensive struggles. Winning like that on a day that the offense was bad is certainly a good sign. Hopefully, it means that this team will be able to win in more ways than those in recent years.
