Hawkeyes try to regain winning touch with friendly fans and rims

IOWA CITY — Basketball is a well-named sport.

You must put the ball in the basket to have any chance of winning. It isn’t an actual basket, mind you, but it was when the sport was named. So play along.

You can do a lot of things well in basketball and still lose if you can’t get the ball through the metal rim attached to the backboard. This has been a problem for the Iowa men’s basketball team this week. A severe one.

Iowa shot a combined 6-for-52 (11.5 percent) from 3-point distance over losses Sunday at Northwestern and Wednesday at Wisconsin. The only chance to win shooting like that is if the opponent is shooting 3s as poorly or worse, and how often does a club make just 11.5 percent?

So, the Hawkeyes bused home from Wisconsin Thursday morning with a 9-8 Big Ten record instead of the 9-6 mark they took to Northwestern last weekend. Bracketologists’ projections have lowered the Hawkeyes to a No. 8 seed.

That beats shooting 11.5 percent from deep, but it isn’t as good as a No. 7 seed. Or a No. 6, or 5 or …

Saturday is a chance to reverse the flow. Michigan State (9-7 in the conference) plays Iowa at 11 a.m. in Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Home is where the heart is, and it’s also where the Hawkeyes have won the last seven times they’ve played there.

The vanquished include five teams with winning Big Ten records and bracketology discussion of their own in Indiana, Michigan, Maryland, Rutgers and Illinois.

Enter the Michigan State Spartans. Enter a sellout crowd at Carver. Cue Aimee Mann.

Coming up close

Everything sounds like

Welcome home, come home

Over their last five home games, the Hawkeyes have shot 49.3 percent from the field and 39.3 percent from 3-point range. Over their last five road games, they have shot 39.3 percent total, and 27.5 percent from deep.

Iowa is 7-1 at home in the Big Ten, 2-7 on the road. Welcome home, come home.

The advantage of playing at home, Hawkeyes Coach Fran McCaffery said Friday is real. “Every league, every team, every sport.”

But it’s especially pronounced in basketball. It’s you against the world in an enclosed space, with the fans surrounding you and not enamored with you, the ball chosen by the home team, and the baskets and shooting backgrounds not the ones you’ve seen while spending hundreds of hours honing your shooting form.

The juice of a home crowd and the comfort of home often are difference-makers. Saturday, Michigan State is 5-against-15,000. And the Spartans’ Big Ten road record is just 3-5. Since Jan. 22, they lost at Indiana by 13 points, at Purdue by 16, at Rutgers by six, and at Michigan by 12.

“If you keep an opponent to 60-something points in a game,” Iowa center Filip Rebraca said, “then I feel you have a pretty good chance of winning. Even if you’re not shooting that well.

“Our rebounding has been pretty good, our defense has been good at times. Shooting will come.”

Saturday would be a good time to start.

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com