Iowa basketball's battered season and a team that still won't quit: 'We’ve kept fighting'

Iowa basketball’s battered season and a team that still won’t quit: ‘We’ve kept fighting’

Posted by author February 13, 2025 Basketball

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Driving to the basket late in the first half of Wednesday’s Iowa basketball game against Rutgers, Payton Sandfort turned his ankle awkwardly on the foot of a defender.

His layup attempt got blocked. He hopped on one leg before laboring his way down to the defensive end of the floor.

At the next stoppage of play, he walked gingerly to the sideline.

Beaten and battered, Iowa had so many reasons to give up.

The Hawkeyes entered the contest having lost six of their last seven games. Star sophomore Owen Freeman is out for the season after undergoing surgery. Drew Thelwell, who turned his ankle against Wisconsin, wasn’t available.

Iowa had still not won a true road game this season entering Wednesday’s contest. The Hawkeyes were 0-5 — with four of those games being decided by double figures.

The game against the Scarlet Knights was trending in that direction too. Rutgers led by as many as 11 points late in the first half as Sandfort watched from the bench after exiting the game.

But Sandfort did not fold. Neither did Iowa.

Sandfort was back on the floor before the halftime buzzer. Then Iowa outscored Rutgers by 20 points after the break en route to an emotional 84-73 victory.

“No,” Sandfort said when asked if there was any doubt of whether he would continue playing. “I mean, I’m dealing with a lot worse than an ankle turn. It just turned it right away. It’s probably going to hurt tomorrow. If I’m alive, I’m going to be out there.”

Wednesday’s win doesn’t solve all the team’s problems. The Hawkeyes knocked off an underperforming Rutgers squad that fell to 12-13 overall. Iowa (14-10, 5-8) is still a long shot to make the NCAA Tournament.

In the grand scheme of things, maybe Wednesday’s win won’t mean much. But regardless, it was a rewarding day for a team that refuses to quit.

“This is about as hard of a season as I’ve gone through in my years of basketball,” Sandfort said. “I’m just so proud of the way that the coaches have stayed together. They’ve tried to keep us together. The way that we’ve stayed together in the locker room. It’s been tough. There’s been a lot of outside noise that a lot of guys, including myself, have struggled dealing with.”

This clearly hasn’t been the season Sandfort envisioned when he elected to put his NBA aspirations on hold and return to Iowa. His lofty ambitions now seem far-fetched as the Hawkeyes’ season has taken a sharp decline since back-to-back wins over Nebraska and Indiana in January.

Individually, his play has been good, but not great for someone who went through the 2024 pre-draft process and was expected to be a star of this year’s team. But that doesn’t tell the entire story of the sacrifices being made behind the scenes.

Speaking rather vaguely, Sandfort said he has been playing through injuries that put him “in a tough spot going forward after this year with injuries and stuff and what I have to get fixed.”

On Wednesday, Sandfort and Josh Dix outshined a Rutgers duo of Ace Bailey and Dylan Harper who could both very well be lottery picks in the upcoming NBA Draft. Sandfort and Dix combined for 46 of Iowa’s 84 points. Meanwhile, the Hawkeyes contained Rutgers’ star duo to just 24 points combined.

“I’ve learned a lot that (will) really help me going forward for the rest of my career — about how to keep a locker room together, how to keep yourself up when it feels like the world’s given up on you,” Sandfort said. “It’s been a tough stretch for me. I haven’t played my best basketball. But I’m battling through injuries like crazy and I’m so proud of myself for the way that I’ve been fighting. I’m not the only one going through something like that.”

Just last week, Brock Harding was benched. Freeman’s absence spurred Iowa coach Fran McCaffery to mix and match the starting lineup. Harding, who started the first 21 games of the season, was forced to sit.

But Thelwell’s injury opened the door for Harding, who was inserted back into the starting group against Rutgers. On Wednesday, he played one of his best games in recent history, tallying 13 points, four rebounds, seven assists and just one turnover.

Ladji Dembele is a similar case.

He started Iowa’s first nine games of the season before moving almost exclusively to a reserve role. He hadn’t been playing well recently, totaling just seven points, all of which came in one game, in his five appearances before Wednesday.

But McCaffery put him back into the starting lineup against Rutgers, marking his 12th start of the season. He delivered nine points, four rebounds and two assists.

“It was a total team effort and I’m so proud of the way that everybody battled,” Sandfort said.

Iowa’s roster is full of these types of stories.

Riley Mulvey, who Dembele replaced in the starting lineup Wednesday, had four rebounds and one block off the bench in the victory. Carter Kingsbury, who was put on scholarship before this season, played some valuable first-half minutes. Pryce Sandfort, whose frustration boiled over after the Wisconsin loss when he said, “I want to f—ing win,” scored 10 points against Rutgers.

Though this hasn’t been the season Iowa wanted, it hasn’t been for a lack of trying.

“We have had injuries,” an emotional McCaffery told Big Ten Network’s Andy Katz after the game. “We’ve had some setbacks. So do other teams, Andy, I mean, you know that. Other teams have it. But it’s how you respond. How you do respond in practice? How do you respond in meetings? Do you try to carry out the game plan? Do you stay together? Do you stay focused? And at the end of the day, that’s all we could ever ask.”

Can Iowa actually ride this momentum into something more?

That remains to be seen but doesn’t seem likely. With its share of quality opponents on deck in the last seven games of the regular season, there is still plenty of time for things to take a turn for the worse.

But given what Iowa has shown thus far, it would be surprising if the Hawkeyes go down without a fight.

“The way we’ve stayed together, the way we’ve kept fighting, putting on that jersey with pride,” Payton Sandfort said. “It means a lot to me as someone who’s been in this program for a long time.”

Follow Tyler Tachman on X @Tyler_T15, contact via email at ttachman@gannett.com