On Friday night, the Iowa men's basketball team will play an exhibition matchup with Division II Minnesota-Duluth to start the 2024-25 season at 7:00 PM CT in Carver-Hawkeye Arena. The game will only be available to watch/stream through BTN+.

The Hawkeyes, who have a host of new faces on he roster as well as young players expected to step up, are going to look quite different this year.With tip-off less than 12 hours away, here's a list of three things we'll be watching for tonight.

Fran McCaffery is set to enter his 15th year as the head man for the Hawkeyes. At Iowa's media day, he stated that "this is probably the deepest team" he's ever had.

With 13 athletes on scholarship, he'd feel confident playing each and every single one.

"I legitimately have 13 guys I feel comfortable playing and playing a number of them in different positions and relying on them to be productive in those different positions," he said. They're smart, and they've been around."

The question is, how deep in his bench is actually willing to go?

Though an exhibition matchup against a Division II opponent isn't exactly the greatest litmus test to determine how much the end of the bench will play this season, the first 30-ish minutes should give Iowa fans a decent gauge as to who will play significant minutes to start the season. A solid rotation likely won't be set for a few months, but we'll get a better idea of who's going to play the most.

Several names are easy to pin down as regulars that will play a majority of minutes this season -- Payton Sandfort, Owen Freeman and Josh Dix. Other than that, it's a big question mark.

Of course, the likes of Brock Harding, Ladji Demebele, Pryce Sandfort, Cooper Koch, Seydou Traore and Drew Thelwell will also be fixtures in the lineup. But how often they see the floor relative to Iowa's big three will be the question. Throw in other fringe rotation pieces like Chris Tadjo, Even Brauns and Riley Mulvey, and the waters get a little murky -- and then there's walk-on turned scholarship player Carter Kingsbury as well.

It will be interesting to watch how McCaffery and staff balance out the lineup, who sees time where and in what situations and how the versatility of the roster influences rotations and time on the court.

As stated before, Payton Sandfort, Freeman and Dix are the solid pieces in Iowa's starting lineup going into the season. Between Harding and Thelwell, the Hawkeyes will be just fine at point guard as well.

That leaves power forward.

McCaffery discussed the conundrum of determining who will start and play a solid contingent of minutes at the position at Iowa's media day:

"All the guys that are competing for playing time there, they're all really good, and they're all different," McCaffery said. "Ladji, Seydou and Cooper. But, again, all three of them, they're not four men. ... Ladji maybe more four, five. Coop and Seydou, maybe three, four. I would be comfortable playing Seydou in the back court. Same thing with Coop. Somebody is going to start there, but there are going to be a lot of different guys there."

Though we received intel out of Iowa's secret scrimmage regarding who started at that spot, it remains a question mark who will be the consistent starter throughout the season.

Like McCaffery said, each of the options have their respective skill sets they bring to the table. Iowa may be best served to have a true four at that spot in Demebele, but Traore brings an added athleticism to the starting lineup they would otherwise lack and Koch is a young guy who may well be in the running for Big Ten Freshman of the Year by the end of the season.

It's possible that Tadjo may elevate his game to getting consistent minutes at the four-spot by the end of the season as well.

"We love [Chris] and we respect his work ethic, his intensity level. That's a talent. That's an underestimated talent. Hard work, physicality, intensity level on every possession, not everybody does that, and he does."

Regardless of who starts at power forward, the rotation at that position will be very interesting to watch.

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Throughout the summer, we heard bits and pieces from the players and coaching staff about more of an emphasis on defense this season. In McCaffery's prior decade-and-a-half in Iowa City, it's been nothing but offense, offense, and more offense. Adding a stronger defensive element would be a change of pace -- and a welcome one for the fan base.

"We've made some changes on some things in terms of how we're going to guard stuff," McCaffery said in July. "We also feel like the guys we brought in are capable of doing that."

The belief from McCaffery is that the roster now includes some personnel that allows them to do different things on that end.

"Athletically, sometimes when you don't have a lot of depth, the defense might struggle a little bit," he said. "Two years ago, we played three guys 1,000 minutes each. We just didn't have a lot of depth there -- now we do. Hopefully that intensity level will be able to ramp up now that we'll have some fresh legs and fresh bodies out there."

Whether or not it all comes to fruition on the defensive end is still TBD.

To reiterate the previous point, playing against Minnesota-Duluth probably won't be the best time to determine as to whether or not the defense will be up to par this season. However, we can still get a sense of the effort, intensity and schematics of the Iowa defense in his game.

How the defense -- or lack thereof -- operates is something to keep tabs on against the Bulldogs.