Hawkeyes' rotation still a bit of a puzzle

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Even this far into the season, it's hard for Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery to find a rotation and distribution of minutes he feels fully comfortable with.

There's nothing set in stone night-to-night with respect to who plays for how long — save for Peter Jok, Jordan Bohannon and Tyler Cook, who play consistently in the 20-30-plus minute range.

In Iowa's 77-66 loss to Michigan State on Saturday, forward Cordell Pemsl had 10 points and seven rebounds in 17 minutes of action — but just five minutes in the first half. He was just one example of the struggle to get so many capable guys on the floor for long enough to have a significant impact.

'That's a struggle for me; that's a struggle for our staff,' McCaffery said. '(Ryan) Kriener deserves to play, Pemsl deserves to play, Cook; all those guys deserve to play. I thought Dom Uhl was good in the first half, but only played five minutes as well. So I'm trying to be fair and I'm trying to get guys going, but maybe I'll have to scale back and play some other guys more and see how that works.'

Pemsl stands out as well because he went from a starting role throughout the middle portion of the season to coming off the bench since Jan. 28 when the Hawkeyes (14-12, 6-7 Big Ten) beat Ohio State.

The freshman forward said after the game Saturday the key to being able to handle the unknown of his and everyone else's minutes is simply understanding it will be an unknown. Accepting the fact that you have to make the most of your minutes without knowing how long you have, he said, can be a challenge, but it's the only way to show coaches who deserves to be out there.

'If I go out and play hard, he's going to have no other option than to play me. I knew what our game plan was and what he wanted us to do,' Pemsl said. 'There's so many forwards and so many guards who you would think do the same thing; they all bring their own different taste to the game. Sometimes it's hard to balance that out and it's hard to figure out which two play better at this time or which guys we need at this certain point of the game. It's something that even this far into the season we're still trying to figure out and progress forward in.'

Adding to McCaffery's uncertainty, Iowa's frontcourt carried the load against the Spartans (15-10, 7-5). Cook (13 points), Pemsl, Uhl (four points, three assists), Kriener (four points), Ahmad Wagner (seven points, four rebounds) and Nicholas Baer (nine points, four rebounds) combined for 47 of Iowa's 66 points.

That was the good, but the frontcourt — which by nature takes the brunt of this abuse — got beat up on the glass. The Spartans out-rebounded the Hawkeyes 46-32.

After having a halftime lead, losing a second straight game they felt they had a hand on and amid dealing with an uncertain rotation, the Iowa players seek positivity in the week off before Illinois comes to Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

'Obviously we want to pull these kinds of games out. We've just got to stay positive,' Cook said. 'Being negative and mad at everything is not going to help anything. Of course we want to pull these games out, but we've got to stay positive and keep improving our work ethic in practice so we can translate that to the game better.'

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