Iowa Hawkeyes need better shooting to have a shot at Ohio State Thursday

The Iowa men’s basketball team better shoot better.

It’s just that simple. With just ordinary, unremarkable shooting, the Hawkeyes would have won their last two road games, against Rutgers (a 48-46 loss) and Penn State (Monday’s 90-86 double-overtime defeat). They would have been 6-4 in the Big Ten instead of 4-6.

Iowa has shot 35.2 percent from the field over its last four games, three of them losses. To put that in perspective, all 350 Division I teams are shooting at least 37 percent this season and all but 25 are over 40 percent.

Senior guard Jordan Bohannon is 12-of-54 (22.2 percent) over his last six games, 10-of-42 (23.8 percent) from 3-point range. He and point guards Joe Toussaint and Ahron Ulis were a combined 0-for-18 at Penn State.

Forward Keegan Murray averages a team-high 22.3 points. After making 59.7 percent of his shots over Iowa’s first 16 games, he is 19-of-55 (34.5 percent) in his last four.

Iowa clearly needs better shooting to have a decent chance to beat No. 16 Ohio State in Columbus Thursday night.

“What you want to do is not get them to overthink it,” Hawkeyes Coach Fran McCaffery said Wednesday. “We’ve got good guys that are good shooters taking good shots. I think that’s the key.

“I haven’t felt like we’re taking bad shots. I think the one thing you can do is you can try to make your offense a little more crisp so maybe you don’t have some bad shots at the end of the shot clock. They’re not bad shots, but they’re not great shots.

“So you can run more-efficient offense to make sure that you’re at least getting a really good shot. The other thing you can do is get second shots.”

Translation: Rebound. That’s become a tired topic in Hawkeyeland, but you can’t overlook Iowa getting out-rebounded by 7.2 a game in league play. In its last two road games, it had 11 fewer boards than Rutgers, 10 fewer than Penn State.

Ohio State is a better team than either of those two, and a good rebounding club. The Buckeyes are 6-3 in the Big Ten, one game out of first-place in the loss column.

Six players in Chris Holtmann’s rotation played against Iowa a year ago, and starting point guard Jamari Wheeler played against the Hawkeyes six times before transferring from Penn State.

The Buckeyes’ potential first-team All-America is 6-foot-7 junior forward E.J. Liddell from Belleville, Ill. He averages 19.7 points, 7.5 rebounds, 2.8 assists and 2.7 blocked shots.

“I know him well,” McCaffery said. “We recruited him hard. I saw him a lot in high school.

“You look at him and say he’s a guard, he’s a forward, he’s a center. He makes threes, he drives the ball to the basket. He’s got a bunch of assists, so he’s making plays for other people. He plays both ends, he blocks shots. That’s why he’s going to be a pro.

“A lot of guys can do what he does once. But he does it every night.”

McCaffery said he incorrectly said Monday night that Iowa guard Connor McCaffery separated a shoulder in the Penn State game, clarifying Wednesday that “he just got a bad contusion to his arm that affected the nerve,” and will return to playing “when he gets complete feeling back and it’s not painful.

“It probably doesn’t look good for tomorrow. Maybe Sunday (at home against Minnesota), but maybe not until the game after that.”

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