Hawkeye men’s basketball seniors have earned the thanks they’ll get Sunday night

IOWA CITY — It’s been said a dozen times in this space, and there’s nothing unlucky about a 13th. Namely ...

The players are the best things about college athletics.

It’s not the coaches, fans, administrators, or the soft-serve ice cream on the arena concourses, and it’s certainly not the pandering media mopes leading their lives of not-quiet-enough desperation. It’s the athletes.

Sunday is Senior Night for the Iowa men’s basketball team. The Hawkeyes’ 6 p.m. game with Illinois is their home finale.

A win would put Iowa very much in the hunt for an NCAA tourney berth. Three players with big roles in that may be making their Iowa City farewell Sunday night when the Hawkeyes take on a sturdy Illinois team.

Ben Krikke, Patrick McCaffery and Tony Perkins are trying to help their team pull off what seemed highly unlikely not long ago, earning an at-large berth into the NCAAs.

Krikke has spent just one season here, but “I can’t imagine a more seamless transition,” said Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery.

Krikke, perhaps the best basketball player to come from Alberta, transferred to Iowa after four years at Valparaiso, where he experienced three losing seasons and no postseason play.

Yet, he was first-team All-Missouri Valley Conference last season on an 11-21 club, which says a lot. So does scoring 2,000 points in a career.

Krikke averages 13.9 points for the Hawkeyes. He had 18 points and 14 rebounds in their win at Michigan State on Feb. 20. That was large. So was his 25 points in a win at Minnesota nine days earlier.

Patrick McCaffery hasn’t had a smooth five seasons at Iowa. He played in two games and then redshirted his first year for health reasons. He had anxiety issues and missed some time last season. This season, he was entrenched in the starting lineup until suffering an ankle injury in January that took a good month to heal.

When he came back to play, it was as a substitute. McCaffery has 60 career starts, but embraced the role of a sub and has played some very good ball during his team’s recent run of success. He contributed greatly to road wins against Michigan State and Northwestern.

McCaffery gets regarded as the coach’s son first and a player second, but he has over 1,000 career points in a program that has won 85 games over the last four seasons. As a sophomore, he had 16 essential points in Iowa’s 2022 Big Ten tournament semifinal win over Indiana.

Ten years ago this month, McCaffery was a 14-year-old diagnosed with thyroid cancer. He had surgery to remove the tumor. He has had to be cognizant of a lot more things than the average athlete or person. He’s had to eat and eat to keep his weight up and be strong enough to play Big Ten ball.

Last season, he sat out a few games to deal with an anxiety issue. This season, the ankle problem.

“He’s had some things to deal with, but he has really persevered,” Fran McCaffery said.

Here he is, still playing and contributing in the highest level of college ball. Patrick McCaffery says he’s probably moving on instead of playing one more season of college ball. He can be proud of what he’s done here.

Perkins came to Iowa in 2020-21, the pandemic season. Imagine starting college in lockdown. Yuck. Then you do it as a freshman finding your way in major-college athletics, and you aren’t playing much.

The 6-foot-4 guard from Indianapolis stayed for four years and has grown in each of them. He’s been so fun to watch when he’s cooking, and he’s cooked a lot.

In Iowa’s four wins at the 2022 Big Ten tourney, he averaged 10.3 points and 4.5 assists. That was enormous.

Perkins riddled Illinois in Carver last year, scoring 32 points in Iowa’s 81-79 win.

This season, he leads the Hawkeyes in minutes, assists, free throws and steals, and is second in scoring and blocked shots. No Hawkeye had 15 assists in a game since 1989 until Perkins did on Jan. 12. He had 14 at Northwestern on March 2.

Perkins, Krikke and Patrick McCaffery have earned their flowers. Good players. Good people.

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