Fran McCaffery was almost speechless after the shooting performance he saw from his Hawkeye team on Sunday. The Iowa head coach met with the media following Iowa's 95-71 win over the Fighting Illini. McCaffery discusses the hot shooting performance by Isaiah Moss and Joe Wieskamp, the return of Tyler Cook to the lineup, and his team riding a five game win streak in conference play heading into a showdown on Thursday evening against Michigan State.

Q: How do you explain the shooting today?

McCAFFERY: The only way to explain it is to empower your guys and give them the confidence to shoot it without hesitation. That’s one of the things that I pride myself in. If you will remember, Isaiah had an open three in the second half and he drove it and missed the pull-up. A guy kind of ran at him. I said just shoot the first one. Just keep firing. Same thing with Joe. If I ever tell them anything related to their shooting, it’s shoot it again or why did you shoot that one. It’s never don’t shoot that one and get them over thinking about that one.

Q: What did you think of Illinois today?

McCAFFERY: Illinois a very difficult team to play against. They compete. They are athletic. They are quick. They fight you and they keep coming. They have some really good young players, which I think is pretty obvious. An impressive group of young guys that Brad has brought in there. When you see it come together, like it did in the last game and you see it not come together today, but we shot it extremely well. We were ready to defend their stuff and they run really good stuff. It’s a team that you are going to have to deal with for a long time with those young guys.

Q: Can they make a turn like your team has this season?

McCAFFERY: No question. It takes time to come together as a group, to come together and play for a coach that you are playing for the first time. They probably didn’t need that schedule early, but you play the schedule that you are handed.

Q: What did you think of your defense in the first half?

McCAFFERY: It was spectacular. We were really locked in and grinding hard. They were really fighting over and putting a lot of attention to stopping them in transition. They are at their best in transition. You get Ayo out on the floor, he’s a handful. We got back and walled off. A lot of times that’s a result of shot selection on our end and not turning the ball over. You take bad shots and have live ball turnovers against Illinois and you are going to have problems on the other end.

Q: Moss was out for nine or ten minutes in the first half and when he came back in he was good to go. Is that harder to do than people realize?

McCAFFERY: It’s hard to do, but it’s not hard to do for him. He has a pretty confident mindset as it relates to his offensive skills. As impressive as he was shooting the ball today, he was more impressive with what he did off the dribble and his decision making. When he went and when he didn’t go and how he moved without it. We dribbled it a little more in the first half than maybe we should have, but they make you do that. I thought Connor did a good job of keeping his dribble. You can’t pick it up because they are going to deny the next pass and you just have to find people. He found Isaiah on the last shot of the half. When I put him back in, he hits the curl cut jump shot and then the three at the buzzer. Then he kind of took over in the second half along with Joe.

Q: You had 29 assists on 34 field goals. What did you like about your passing today? Might have been the best numbers this year.

McCAFFFERY: Yeah I don’t remember too many times when I looked down at a stat sheet and saw 29. That’s a big number. It means two things, obviously. We were unselfish in sharing the ball and also we were making some shots. We had a mixture of layups and open three’s off of transition and or ball movement.

Q: Joe Wieskamp was perfect on the day. He seems to be getting better and better.

McCAFFERY: The thing about him is he’s never going to take a bad shot and he’s a really good shooter. There’s a good percentage that he’s going to make it every time he shoots it. He doesn’t hunt shots or over-think it. He has an incredibly mature approach to this level.

Q: What do you like most about your team in this five game winning streak?

McCAFFERY: Just that we are together. If somebody is out, like Tyler being out, somebody else steps up. You go one game to another, somebody plays great and then somebody doesn’t have such a great game and somebody else steps up. We didn’t have a lot of that last year. We have more depth this year. You don’t know game to game who is going to be the man. Today is was Joe and Isaiah and I thought Connor was terrific. They Bohannon at the start of the second half catching fire, I thought he was terrific. Tyler has to get his legs back underneath him. I thought he did some really good things. Same thing with Luka. In the first half he was decent and in the second half he was tremendous. That’s the kind of team we have.

Q: You man to man defense has been up and down and today it was very good.

McCAFFERY: Today was great and they are hard to guard because they are quick off the dribble, they run a spread offense where there’s a lot of cuts and they invert, so there are a lot of people in different spots. Then they mix in some weave action with some set plays. You have to be locked in. Are we switching or not switching? Are we showing or going under? Then you have to rebound.

Q: How important is it to be old in this league. Illinois is a young team and your team is older.

McCAFFERY: I think it helps. There are some teams that are younger that are still pretty good. It depends on what young guys you have. I think the grind of 20 games in this league and the road atmosphere that you walk into and the sort of pressure that you walk into from media and social media is a lot to handle for you a young guy. I think once they go through it, alright you have it figured out now. Then it becomes second nature for the next three years.

Q: Is Tyler Cook back to 100%?

McCAFFERY: He’s not 100%, but he’s getting close. I thought he looked like he had some explosion. He had the one dunk in the first half. He pushed it a couple of times and got some big time rebounds. I think you will see him play better.

Q: Is there a thought looking ahead to Michigan State on Thursday of correcting what happened earlier this year?

McCAFFERY: It’s always the same. It’s not about correcting. You have to be able to stop them in transition and execute your offense against what is arguably the best defense any team will face. Then, of course, you have to rebound because that’s a component of the defensive side. Offensively you have to take care of the ball against a team that will be up in your space and trying to take you out of the stuff that you do. Then you have to sustain that effort for 40 minutes. That’s not easy to do, but we will get them ready.