Hawkeyes men’s basketball linked to productive college post player Fardaws Aimaq of Utah Valley

What the Iowa men’s basketball program might do in the NCAA transfer portal remains to be seen. If Fran McCaffery brings in a transfer, that player may be someone whose name has yet to be publicly connected to the Hawkeyes.

That said, it would be easy to get excited about one specific player who has been linked to Iowa, among several other schools. Six-foot-11, 245-pound center Fairdaws Aimaq of Utah Valley is in the portal, and reportedly is looking at Houston, Texas Tech, Washington, Arkansas and Iowa for now.

Aimaq's main focus right now, however, may be the NBA draft and seeing if he has a place in it. There are a lot — a whole lot — of NBA early entries, and only so many draft spots. Sixty, to be precise. Many players enter the draft, try to get an invitation to May’s NBA Draft Combine in Chicago, and then base their decisions from there.

Aimaq has numbers and then some. He averaged 18.9 points and 13.6 rebounds this season for Utah Valley, a Western Athletic Conference school in Orem, Utah. The Wolverines were 20-12, and defeated BYU and Washington.

This was the second-straight season Aimaq was on the WAC’s All-Defensive Team. He averaged 13.9 points and 15.0 rebounds last season. That’s a lot.

He’s from Vancouver, B.C. He began his college career with one season at Mercer, then transferred to Utah Valley where he has played two. He entered the NBA draft last spring, but withdrew to return to UVU.

“I’m going to go through the pre-draft process and figure it out from there,” Aimaq said in this recent story by Will MacDonald of WAC Hoops Digest.

Reportedly, Aimaq will visit the five aforementioned schools in the next few weeks, though these things can change on a moment’s notice.

It would seem the Hawkeyes’ most-likely targets of any potential transfers would be post players. They seem well-positioned on the wings and should have adequate backcourt depth even with the transfer of junior point guard Joe Toussaint.

Were you to list all the 6-10, 6-11, 7-foot players in the portal, the list might stretch from the rim to the court. Aimaq jumps out because of the statistics he has produced. Also noteworthy, he played 34.4 minutes per game last season.

Iowa brought in 6-9 transfer Filip Rebraca from North Dakota last April 22. He averaged 16.8 points for UND in 2020-21. He started all 36 games for the Hawkeyes this season, averaging 5.8 points.