Iowa men's basketball: Can 2024-25 Hawkeyes restore energy surrounding program?

Iowa men’s basketball: Can 2024-25 Hawkeyes restore energy surrounding program?

Posted by Admin October 4, 2024 Basketball

ROSEMONT, Ill — Before finishing his speech, longtime Iowa men’s basketball assistant coach Sherman Dillard wanted to get across a specific message.

Dillard was speaking in June to a fleet of golfers who were about to play Finkbine Golf Course for a Johnson County I-Club event.

“Winning, to me, is the greatest feeling in the world,” Dillard said. “And I want you to understand that’s with us — our basketball program. And I say this and Fran (McCaffery) says it all the time, guys. We will continue to chase winning. We will continue to chase winning. We will continue to build a great program. We will continue to recruit high-character young men that will represent this university in a first-class manner, all right. We want you to know that, OK?”

For any competitive sport — and certainly in power-conference college basketball — this was not some earth-shattering statement. But given the state of the Iowa men’s basketball program, it was an important message to hear.

If 2023-24 was truly a rebuilding season for Iowa, the Hawkeyes need to prove it actually leads to bigger and better things this season. Waiting any longer for those growing pains to bear results is a dangerous game for the program to play.

“We’ve accomplished good things in my career at Iowa,” senior Payton Sandfort said at Big Ten Media Days on Thursday. “But I have bigger goals than we have accomplished and I think this is the team that can do it.”

Payton Sandfort: Iowa filled with players ‘hungry to prove something’

Payton Sandfort and Owen Freeman discuss a variety of topics at Big Ten Media Days on Thursday, Oct. 3.

In June, Sandfort even admitted last season was expected to be “a growth year.”

The Hawkeyes had four true freshmen in the regular rotation, one of which became a starter in December, plus a sophomore in Josh Dix who was among the team’s best players. Iowa looked its age at times, succumbing to drastic swings of play in a matter of minutes, which is ultimately part of what led to several blown second-half leads.

Some late-season momentum wasn’t enough to get the Hawkeyes into the NCAA Tournament.

“When you get here (at the college level), winning takes another level,” Sandfort said. “It takes leadership. It takes a lot of grit. And once we figured out how to do that, we can carry that into this year. I think the hardest thing to do at this level is learning how to win.”

The challenge now is turning those tough lessons from last season into actual wins this season.

Preseason predictions wouldn’t exactly indicate it — the Hawkeyes were picked to finish 11th in the Big Ten by a media poll — but Iowa has the pieces to be in win-now mode.

More: Iowa men’s basketball: Hawkeyes picked 11th in preseason Big Ten media poll

Sandfort enters as one of the best players in the league. Owen Freeman is the reigning Big Ten Co-Freshman of the Year. Dix made a big jump from freshman to sophomore year and has a chance to do so again as a junior. The Hawkeyes have several others with the potential to emerge — Pryce Sandfort, Ladji Dembe, Brock Harding and Cooper Koch, among others, along with a pair of transfers Seydou Traore (Manhattan College) and Drew Thelwell (Morehead State).

“People are confident,” Payton Sandfort said. “Anyone that has been around practice this year thinks this team is special. The energy is different. The intensity is different. The attention to detail is different. I think it’s going to be a great year.”

The window to win in college basketball can open and close very quickly — a byproduct of the modern landscape. That means it’s important that Iowa takes advantage of the opportunity while it’s available.

Sandfort and Thelwell will have exhausted their eligibility after this season. Beyond that, there’s no guarantee that any player will be at a certain place for more than one season. And it’s not as if Iowa has the resources to pick and choose from the top talent in the transfer portal.

This is to say that it’s far too early to tell what shape Iowa might — or might not — be in further down the road. Which makes the present all the more important.

If Iowa is the team Sandfort believes it is, now is the time to ascend, regardless of what external perception might suggest.

“We’ve got a really good team,” Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said. “I’m also aware that there’s a lot of other really good teams in this league and in the country. So we’ll figure it out later. We’ll play the games. We’ll be ready.”

More: Iowa basketball: Are Hawkeyes men being undervalued in the preseason again?

Fran McCaffery on Payton Sandfort: ‘I think he’s going to have a fabulous year’

Iowa coach Fran McCaffery discusses a variety of topics at Big Ten Media Days on Oct. 3.

As a program, Iowa could very much use a jolt of positive momentum.

Fan engagement was lacking last season and the environment at Carver-Hawkeye Arena reflected it. You could point to various reasons as to why, but one would be a lack of success in the NCAA Tournament. Iowa hasn’t reached a Sweet 16 during McCaffery’s lengthy tenure, despite featuring talented players. The Hawkeyes have not won a game in the Big Dance since 2021.

Extending that drought would put the trajectory of the program further into question.

“Obviously the NIT is a great tournament but we know what our goal is,” Freeman said. “And when we didn’t accomplish that (last season), that kinda stung a little bit. So knowing what happened last year and not wanting to go through that again is just fuel for us. We feed off of that. We all kinda took that to heart. That’s giving us our competitive edge and giving us our energy. But also just that want, for my class especially, that want to get somewhere you haven’t been yet.”

To say this is a make-or-break year would be an overstatement. Last season was the first time Iowa didn’t make the NCAA Tournament since 2018 (excluding the year it was canceled due to COVID-19), illustrating the fact that Iowa has at least remained relevant enough to clear that bar. But it does feel important that Iowa delivers something this season to restore energy surrounding the program.

“I have the utmost confidence that this will be a really, really good basketball team,” Sandfort said, “and something that everyone should be excited about.”

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