Hawkeyes racking up unexpected experiences

IOWA CITY — Experience is a word that's been thrown around a lot to discuss the Iowa men's basketball team — namely its lack thereof. The 2016-17 season, though, has been full of experiences.

So many, in fact, it's beginning to feel a lot like a career's worth of situations and scenarios for the underclassmen who've played such a big role in what the Hawkeyes have been able to do this season. Good and bad — close wins, close losses, blowout wins, blowout losses and controversy — Iowa seemingly has seen it all inside 11 Big Ten Conference games.

The Iowa coaches could try, but there's no real way to simulate much of what the Hawkeyes have come across.

'We've been at home, overtime; two double overtime games on the road. We have executed to perfection at times. We have not executed well at all at times,' McCaffery said. 'It's understanding just how precise you have to be when you're in a one-point game in overtime. If you're running late-game action, if you're running late-game defense, are we switching, are we staying with, who's guarding who, where are the shooters, do we have any quick hits set up? And if we do, make sure you're in the right place. You think, 'Well, that should be easy enough.' We had guys at times exactly where they're supposed to be and at times guys were not where they're supposed to be. That's not uncommon.'

It's not uncommon no matter what the makeup is of any particular team, because basketball can generally be very unpredictable.

There's no question age plays a bigger factor, though. The highs and lows of this season haven't only been because only two upperclassmen contribute to the Hawkeyes, but it would be naive to think that doesn't matter — and McCaffery has consistently acknowledged that.

'Clearly it happens less with veteran teams because those guys have been through it and their thought-process is so different,' McCaffery said. 'You're not thinking about the situation and atmosphere, you're thinking time and score and what we have to do and how we have to manage it. That just takes some time.'

So now, in going to play at Michigan State at the Breslin Center at 5 p.m. on Saturday (BTN), Iowa gets probably its toughest back-to-back games of the season.

The Hawkeyes are coming off a controversial and close loss at Minnesota. The Spartans are coming off a blowout loss to their in-state rival Michigan. Iowa swept Michigan State last season. They both have young rosters with a few experienced guys to circle the wagons when it's needed.

McCaffery said he couldn't rate the difficulty of Iowa's current back-to-back pair of games, saying 'to me, every game in our league is tough back to back, whether it's home or away. We played Virginia and Memphis back to back, that was pretty tough. These two games are on the road, they're pretty tough."

He added, "I don't think about it that way at all, to be honest, but it's a legitimate observation.'

His team has faced a ton of different scenarios so far, but they haven't faced a Tom Izzo-led team yet.

McCaffery said he's tried to impress upon his players they can expect things typical of Izzo teams: players who 'get after the ball, they're going to be in passing lanes, they're going to pressure the post and they're going to be physical.'

The types of players Michigan State offers in Miles Bridges, Nick Ward, Erron Harris and others won't be unique, but the way Izzo deploys them will be. McCaffery said, '(Izzo) knows who his really good players are and does a really good job getting them shots and setting them up. They play fast but also can grind at half-court. When they do, he has a million plays they run and execute.'

There's always the 'tenacious defense' the Spartans bring with them, too.

Iowa got it done twice last year, but McCaffery said there was no magical method for getting that done. Playing the ball they want to play was it. He and his team are banking on going through a ton already this season to help prepare them for a second straight hostile environment and tough basketball task.

'That's how we want to play all the time,' McCaffery said of how Iowa played against Michigan State last year. 'It doesn't always work out that way, but that's the plan. It's not like we came up with some ingenious master plan that worked just for Michigan State. We're going to do what we do, or at least try to do what we do, and they're going to try to stop it.

'The thing you're going to have to be able to do is execute your offense knowing you're going to see incredibly tenacious defense.'

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