Hawkeye men try to end a torturous week with a home triumph against Michigan

Iowa needs a win today. It needs to play well in getting one, too.

The Hawkeyes men’s basketball team got whomped twice last week, 87-68 at Purdue and 90-65 at Iowa State. It hosts Michigan (3:30 p.m., BTN) today at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. A loss would put Iowa at 0-2 at the Big Ten and 5-5 overall.

Iowa needs a win today. Of course, so does Michigan, which has lost its last three games to drop to 4-5, and has four losses of five points or less.

With games against Florida A&M, Maryland Baltimore County and Northern Illinois following this one, this is the Hawkeyes’ last game of note before Big Ten play resumes for good in January.

If nothing else, Iowa’s four freshmen got a pretty big taste of what conference life is like.

“There’s a different level of intensity, and I think you see that execution is really important,” Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery said Saturday.

“Owen Freeman, the other night. He didn’t play well when he first went into the game. But at the end, I’d say he played well, 11 (points) and eight (rebounds). He really impacted the game. The second half, he figured it out.”

Freeman is averaging 10.4 points, 5.4 rebounds and 2.6 blocked shots in 18.6 minutes over his last five games.

Freshman guard Brock Harding played a personal-high 22 minutes at Iowa State and played more at point guard than any of his teammates.

“He really competed,” McCaffery said. “He made some mistakes, but I thought he made more good plays than bad. And he grew.

“There’s just no substitute for that kind of experience.”

But that kind of experience came in one-sided losses. The Hawkeyes are home, where they are 4-0 and have averaged 99.8 points against mid-majors. A win today is the kind of experience they need to take into New Year’s.

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