The sights and sounds sitting in the student section of an Iowa men’s basketball game.

IOWA CITY — The high-fives at the end of the Iowa men’s basketball game are a staple this year. It was something the team brought over from Drake, as a way to say thank you to the fans after every home game.

“Everybody knows how much of a difference it makes whenever people come out and support us,” forward Cam Manyawu said. “So if we can continue to pack Carver, we’ll continue to show love to everyone.”

I stood behind a few students after the Hawkeyes’ win over Western Michigan on Dec. 14. There weren’t tons of students, maybe just a handful, but enough that I could blend into the crowd on the lower bleachers.

One student pointed to wave at Manyawu, who sent him a smile back.

“Let’s go! That’s so cool.”

There were lots of comments like that throughout the entire basketball game. All from students. All trying to see if it really is OK to have hope for a new era in Hawkeye men’s hoops.

“If we have to keep proving it, then we're going to keep proving it,” head coach Ben McCollum said. “That's just what we have to do.”

McCollum has done the work throughout the preseason to show face to Iowa fans. He’s been to football games, soccer games — he’s been everywhere. The Hawkeyes head coach wanted to start building a connection to the students on campus and get them excited for this new team.

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By the season opener, there were a good chunk of students sitting in those new bleachers behind the basket. Carver-Hawkeye Arena hadn’t been at capacity much all season, but that’s part of the reason McCollum wanted to do the preseason work to convince fans, especially students, to come to games.

The student section trickles all the way up to the main concourse, but for a nonconference game against the Broncos — scheduled the day before finals began and when it was all of 6 degrees outside — it wasn’t full.

Not that I blamed the student body for prioritizing studying or staying warm over a blisteringly cold trek to Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

There was chatter about the NFL games going on, I kept overhearing score updates on the Buffalo Bills’ comeback over the New England Patriots. A group of boys stood behind me all comparing their fantasy teams during the last part of on-court warm-ups.

They finally started talking about the Hawkeyes just before Herky made his entrance onto the court.

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“How long do we want to stay? Like, if they’re up by 30 at halftime, do we wanna just dip?”

That seemed like the general consensus. I found a spot toward the Western Michigan bench, which was filled about halfway by tipoff. The other side trickled in a little later, almost so that I didn’t see or hear anyone until halftime.

On every seat in the lower student section where were miniature game notes. Just a page long, it had the basic rules of sitting in the Hawks Nest and a list of Broncos to watch for — that included some basic stats. I’d never seen any student section do that before (well, except for the Cameron Crazies at Duke, of course).

It’s a pretty genius concept, truthfully. It’s easier to get a fan base invested if they understand what’s actually happening in front of them. I skimmed through the list and was pretty impressed, though I caught a typo mentioning Maryland as the Hawkeyes’ opponent and not Western Michigan, which I giggled at.

Then, I heard it coming from two girls sitting in front of me.

“I wonder how packed it’ll be when we get to play a team we know.”

Maybe it was the first time I had heard it, because by then I’d been sitting with students for the better part of a half hour. But I heard it very clearly. It was a tone of genuine wonder, almost as if the girl who said it was imagining what a completely sold-out Carver would look like while saying those words aloud.

She might find out later this year. She earned a prize pack from the promotions team during a first-half media timeout, and it included a ticket to Iowa’s game against Illinois on Jan. 11 — though it’s nine days before spring semester starts.

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Iowa spirit teams stood in aisle of the bleachers, megaphone in hand and shouting the same old basketball cheers you’d expect. More chatter caught my attention.

“I’d love to see him get hot in this game.”

“Him,” referring to guard Bennett Stirtz. He only ended up playing about 24 minutes against Western Michigan, since Iowa held a 30-plus-point lead at halftime.

“Him” eventually started referring to Cooper Koch and Brendan Hausen, too. One person asked why Hausen didn’t play more often, the other wondered why Koch so often was left alone in the corner pocket for an open triple.

It reached a point where the student section tried their best McCollum impersonations — making coaching calls and justifying it with their ever-so-present wisdom on a Sunday afternoon.

“I want to see him play more,” someone said of Hausen.

“I love this defense,” added another.

It rambled on for the entire second half. All the giant cutout heads used during opposing free throws started getting passed forward in the final few minutes, as we all wandered toward the baseline for the handshake.

The I-O-W-A chant echoed through Carver, even as some of the paying customers had already left for their cars in the cold.

McCollum’s debut nonconference schedule wasn’t exhilarating, especially at home. And yes, there weren’t a ton of students at this particular game, but there was a small bit of hope. They were hesitant to fully commit on the spot of a win over Western Michigan, but the energy was palpable.

“It's like, why can’t you create that here?” McCollum said in the postgame press conference that evening. “We're going to get that thing full. That's what we're going to do, and we're going to fight for it until we can't anymore. We want it to rock, we want to show out, like, this is what the Iowa Hawkeyes are like.”

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Well, Ben McCollum, I think you’ll like this final sentiment I heard as I walked back toward press row.

“We definitely need to go to a Big Ten game next semester.”

Comments: madison.hricik@thegazette.com, sign up for my weekly newsletter, Hawk Off the Press, at thegazette.com/hawks.