Iowa basketball’s Cooper Koch turned around his offense last week on the West Coast

IOWA CITY — Ya gotta remember his youth and inexperience.

This is the first full college basketball season for Iowa’s Cooper Koch. With a brand-new coaching staff and offensive and defensive system than what he played under a season ago.

In other words, you had to assume there would be some good and some not as good with his play. The good seems to be returning for the redshirt freshman forward and legacy Hawkeye from Peoria, Ill.

He had 11 points, all in the second half, Wednesday night in Iowa’s 84-74 win at Washington and was a team-high plus-23. That meant when Koch was on the court, Iowa scored 23 more points than the opponent.

That on the heels of a game this past Sunday at Oregon in which he had 10 points. Koch had scored a total of 11 points in his previous four Big Ten Conference outings prior to his team hitting the West Coast.

Iowa (17-4 overall, 7-4 Big Ten) returns home to Carver-Hawkeye Arena for a Sunday afternoon tilt against Northwestern (10-13, 2-10). It’s a 2 p.m. tipoff on FS1.

“He just continues to get better,” Iowa Coach Ben McCollum said. “I think he's getting more and more comfortable with the defensive side of the ball, the physicality, the competitive spirit that we want to play with. And then the intensity that I coach with. I think there are ebbs and flows for especially young guys throughout the season.

“I know he plays with a level of maturity. But he is still a freshman, so he kind of hit a little tough point. And now he's starting to make his way back up, kind of regaining his confidence and focusing on things that he control.”

Koch’s game offensively is largely about the 3-point ball, as a smidge more than 50 percent of his 115 shot attempts this season have come from beyond the arc. It was encouraging that he went 4 for 8 in his two games in the Pacific Northwest from distance.

The son of former Iowa player J.R. Koch played 10 games last season before redshirting. He was the only scholarship player to return after Coach Fran McCaffery was let go and McCollum hired.

He has started all 22 games this season.

“I knew it was going to happen eventually,” Koch said of his shooting turnaround the last two games. “Just had to break through a little. Watch some film with Coach and some of the other coaches about past games shooting-wise. It was just good to finally see some drop early in the game, and that propelled me.

“I know it's there because I work on it every day. My coaches and teammates are always telling me to just keep shooting the ball, keep shooting the ball. That they're going to go in. And finally, I saw some go in.”

Koch said he has gained roughly 20 pounds since last season, which has helped him be able to bang defensively on the interior.

And he is banging considering the large bruise he showed on his left biceps during a Friday morning media availability.

“I can definitely see it just looking at myself, but I can feel it, too, when I'm just trying to box people out or just hold my position on the block. Can definitely notice it defensively,” he said. “I knew that (defense) was something that I lacked last year, so being able to work on that for a whole summer and whole fall has been kind of fun to finally focus on defense and see what I can do on that end of the floor.”

He’ll likely draw Nick Martinelli defensively Sunday. The Northwestern senior forward leads the Big Ten in scoring at 22.8 points per game.

Tough assignment but one for which he is eager.

“It’s going to be a fun challenge,” Koch said. “He's a really good player. He's first in the Big Ten in scoring right now, so you’ve just got to try to contain him. He's going to get his points eventually. But just make him score over you and make him hit some tough twos.”

“He's a difficult matchup because he shoots unique shots, to where it's just like maybe just a pick-and-pop mid range,” McCollum said. “It's like ‘Wow.’ But he makes it every time. And so you just have to adjust a few things to be able to combat that.”

Comments: jeff.johnson@thegazette.com