New Iowa State men’s basketball team, but with very familiar players to Hawkeyes

“To ISU: Thanks for memz.”

That’s what Jordan Bohannon wrote on the shoes he left on the Hilton Coliseum floor two Decembers ago, adding his initials and jersey number.

“I won’t be back in this place,” Bohannon said after the Hawkeyes broke their eight-game losing streak in Hilton with an 84-68 triumph over Iowa State. “That’s something Iowa fans can hold onto for a little bit.”

It’s something Iowa State fans have held onto for two years.

The shoes, by the way, were immediately returned to Iowa’s locker room and — wait, what? — there’s an actual basketball game Thursday night to discuss here?

Yes, and an interesting one at that. Sixth-year senior Bohannon and a Hilton Coliseum crowd that will try to torment him are the subplot, presumably.

The main story would seem to be Iowa (7-2) trying to snap back from two Big Ten losses in the last week to put the first smudge on the record of the 8-0, No. 17 Cyclones.

Iowa State was 12-20 that season, 2-24 last season. Now, it’s T.J. Otzelberger’s team, brand new and yet familiar to the Hawkeyes. They’ve faced leading Cyclone scorer Izaiah Brockington three times and shooting guard Gabe Kalscheur on five occasions. The former transferred here from Penn State, the latter from Minnesota.

Transfers from Kansas, Washington State and Denver are also in Otzelberger’s nine-player rotation. So is guard Caleb Grill, who started his career at Iowa State, transferred to UNLV to play for Otzelberger there, then followed him back to Ames.

That is college basketball in 2021, and it’s worked beautifully to date for Iowa State this season.

“It’s not easy to do by any means,” Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery said about quickly molding a group of players into a team able to defeat pedigreed programs Xavier, Memphis and Creighton.

“They’re a veteran group. They have some really good players. They’ve really bought into (Otzelberger’s) defensive concepts.”

The Cyclones steal the ball. They average 10.3 swipes, tied for 13th in the nation. Six-foot freshman guard Tyrese Hunter averages 2.8 to go with his 11.6 points and 5.4 assists.

Iowa’s last two foes, Purdue and Illinois, were very big, thus bad matchups for the Hawkeyes. Iowa State is a guards’ team, with three of them starting. Its leading rebounder with 7.5 per game is 6-foot-4 Brockington, who also averages 16 points.

Brockington scored 23 points against Iowa in a Penn State win over the Hawkeyes in his Philadelphia hometown two seasons ago, so McCaffery knows him all too well.

Speaking of old vets, Bohannon will try to bounce back into prominence after being muffled in the Purdue and Illinois games. He totaled eight points and didn’t make a 3-pointer in either game, with just three tries.

Meanwhile, sophomore guard Tony Perkins left the bench to score 14 and 16 points, respectively, against the Boilermakers and Illini, and was integral to big second-half rallies in both games.

Bohannon, McCaffery said, is “always going to have the green light. We’ve got to do a better job of freeing him up, finding opportunities for him to get shots.

“I don’t want to put it on him. I think we have to put it on us to get him shots and find him openings.”

You’ll know when Bohannon does have the ball in this game. Hilton’s jet plane-level noise will escalate into a rocket-launching sound. It won’t be a warm one.

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com