Hawkeyes and Michigan State seeking some late-January traction

Maybe Patrick McCaffery will play for the Iowa men’s basketball team Thursday night at Michigan State.

If the junior forward doesn’t return to action against the Spartans, he will be back eventually.

“At some point, without a doubt, he’ll be playing,” Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery said Wednesday.

Patrick McCaffery has sat out the last five games while dealing with anxiety. He started 32 games last season and the first 14 this season. He is third on the Hawkeyes in scoring with 12.8 points per game, with a high of 24 against Wisconsin.

His status for Thursday night’s game will “be determined at game time,” Fran McCaffery said.

“He’s still practicing, doing better. He’s doing everything that everybody else is doing right now. He’s running, he’s lifting, shooting, practicing. I think his conditioning should be OK, whenever he decides to play.”

So, about this game: These are two teams situated in everyone’s NCAA tournament brackets right now, but it’s still January and the Big Ten roads are slippery. Purdue is ranked No. 1, and everyone else in the conference is outside the Top 25 trying to gain some traction.

Iowa got whomped at Ohio State last Saturday and Michigan State got whomped at Indiana on Sunday. So both want to return to adding a slice of good stuff to their tournament resumes.

Things are a little strange in East Lansing, where people have come to expect the Spartans to be great each season. That will happen when you’ve gone to the last 24 NCAA tournaments under Tom Izzo, and have been to eight Final Fours and won 10 Big Ten regular-season titles in that time.

The current unavailability of 6-foot-8 forward Malik Hall (9.9 ppg) to an aggravation of the stress reaction in his left foot has cost Izzo the use of a key player.

With Michigan State 5-4 in the conference and 13-7 overall and a member of the 13-team unranked faction of the Big Ten, apparently some Spartan fans have been knocking certain MSU players.

“I got some idiot out there ripping my guy that spends no time with my guy and I see what that does to my guy?” Izzo said at his 55-minute Tuesday press conference. “You’re damn right I fight those people. They want to rip me, I get paid to get ripped.

“You don’t deal with the mental health issue,” Izzo told reporters. “You don’t deal with the confidence issue. You just come and write about a guy that’s out there.

“I deal with it morning, noon, night and late night.”

Like Iowa, Michigan State has been among Big Ten teams that are the least-reliant on transfers. However, the Spartans’ top two scorers — guard Tyson Walker and forward Joey Hauser — came from other schools before last season. As did Iowa’s Filip Rebraca, second on the Hawkeyes in scoring and rebounding.

The key Spartan player, though, probably is junior point guard A.J. Hoggard.

“I thought Hoggard was good last year,” McCaffery said. “I think he’s becoming elite.”

The Hawkeyes are 4-4 in the Big Ten, and certainly wouldn’t mind getting a win at MSU to launch them into three home games next week against teams that harbor their own NCAA hope — Rutgers, Northwestern and Illinois.

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