Consistency, tangible gains the aim for Iowa in opening games

IOWA CITY — The first few games of a college basketball season aren't usually set up for teams like Iowa to face the toughest competition they'll see all year.

Until non-conference travel tournaments come around, teams like Kennesaw State, the Hawkeyes' opening foe, are served up as an opponent Iowa should easily beat, while also offering an opportunity to burn off any warts a team might have early on.

After Iowa's exhibition win against Regis, defense and the fact the Hawkeyes played it in spurts was the frustrated message. Get used to that, for a while, because Coach Fran McCaffery and Co. know what they have on offense. Aside from the obvious of winning, finding consistency across the board — particularly on defense — tops the agenda for the opening pair of games this weekend.

'I wasn't really pleased with the consistency of anything, to be honest with you. And it's kind of been the trend since June. We look good some days; we look just OK some days,' McCaffery said Wednesday. 'Individually, there's days when guys are absolutely spectacular, and then there's days when they go missing. That's not uncommon for a young team.

'That's a challenge we face every day when we come to work is to get whatever team you're coaching to play that way all the time, and it's often harder, obviously, with younger guys.'

Offensively, McCaffery said consistency improvements are needed execution-wise in half-court offense, transition and ball movement. Defensively, it's transition pickup and communication, among other things.

The Hawkeyes' youth has not been used as an excuse, but rather one facet of the explanation offered by McCaffery and his players as to why they've seen the issues they have. Senior guard Peter Jok said it's not enough to have talent. The team has to find a way to shake the trappings of its inexperience in a hurry.

The players see the same things McCaffery and his staff do on film, and the defensive focus has sunk in — at least so far in preparation for the season-opener.

'We're talented, but everybody's talented now, so we've got to do something that separates us from everybody else, and that's playing hard,' Jok said. 'We have spurts where we play really good defense, but then we have other spurts where we don't look like we've been practicing. Our consistency on defense definitely needs to improve a lot.'

Kennesaw State isn't figured to be a test Iowa will fail by any stretch, but the fact that the Owls are coached by former NBA player and National and Big East Coach of the Year Al Skinner (while at Boston College) means it'll be a team that might be outgunned, but will know where to be. It's a chance — even against a team that went 11-20 last year and 33-122 in the five seasons before this one — to make identifiable gains.

It's hard to make tangible improvements in those areas until you've played an actual game. Other than the Regis exhibition, it's just been Iowa vs Iowa since June, so it's very hard to actually know, one way or the other, how much work Iowa really needs.

So what are those improvements, and can the Hawkeyes make them in the first few games?

McCaffery said they have to come from Friday onward. Forward Ahmad Wagner said it'll take viewing the film to see if people are in the right gaps, rotating quickly enough, staying in front of the player they're defending or being quick enough on help side.

What the players do individually in those areas folds directly into how the team performs as a unit, freshman forward Tyler Cook said. It's all doable, and the benchmarks in terms of numbers and results will come as long as the team is committed to making the changes they know they can and need to make.

'Everybody's got to be focused on themselves individually to make sure they're giving what they can to the team. Once you get past that point, it's, 'How far can we go as a collective unit?'' Cook said. 'The numbers speak for themselves. Once you feel like you're giving what you can give, it's a good feeling. As a team, once we're playing the defense we know we can play, then we'll say, 'OK, we're doing better, now let's reach the next goal.' Numbers, those take care of themselves. It's all about doing what you know you can do — individually and as a team.'

Iowa and Kennesaw State tip off at 8:30 p.m. Friday, and can be seen on BTN Plus or BTN2Go.

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