This is certain about the 2023-24 Iowa men’s basketball team: The Hawkeyes will keep pushing the pace

MINNEAPOLIS — Who will increase their scoring with another Murray in the NBA? How much of an impact will the newcomers have?

Ultimately, will an Iowa men’s basketball team picked ninth in the Big Ten’s preseason poll get back to the NCAA tournament for the fifth straight time?

Answers to those questions will come in due time, but at least one thing remains certain with Fran McCaffery entering his 14th season as Iowa’s head coach.

“We're going to play fast,” McCaffery said Tuesday during Big Ten Media Days at Target Center.

This team, though, is bigger than last season’s. Among the newcomers are 6-foot-9 transfers Ben Krikke and Even Brauns, 6-10 freshman Owen Freeman and 6-8 freshman Ladji Dembele.

In particular, targeting Krikke — the Missouri Valley Conference’s leading scorer at Valparaiso last season — was not simply a matter of seeking out size to help replace the starting front line of Filip Rebraca, Kris Murray and Connor McCaffery.

“You can tell,” Fran McCaffery said. “We watch a lot of film. Ben Krikke, he really runs. ... Those two guys (Krikke and Brauns) are athletes, they just happen to be 6-9.”

Iowa fans know McCaffery’s high-scoring philosophy. The Hawkeyes have finished first or second in the Big Ten in KenPom.com’s adjusted tempo metric in six of the last eight seasons and rank in the top 100 nationally each of the last seven years.

The newcomers know what they’re signing up for; McCaffery said he has found an up-tempo system to be one players want.

“If you want to play in our system, you better run,” McCaffery said. “You better sprint every time. We don’t call it running, we call it sprinting. You’re sprinting the floor every time. And you’ve got to get back on defense. You can’t sprint to get a bucket and then jog back. If we’re in a high-possession, transition game, you’re going to be in transition on defense, too. We work on that a lot.”

Here’s what McCaffery said Tuesday about that defense: “I think we have an opportunity to be a really good defensive team because we’re a little deeper than we’ve been.

“So in theory, you can have fresh bodies on the floor all the time. We also have a team that’s built to be good defensively. We’re bigger. We can be physical. Sometimes when you’re not as deep, you can’t get in foul trouble. So you do the best you can without fouling and your level of physicality might be a little less. But we have size, not only in terms of posts, but wings. We have big wings, big guards. I think we can be a really good defensive team.”

The Hawkeyes had a chance to get on the court with those newcomers in a competitive setting during a European tour in August. Point guard Brock Harding (Illinois Mr. Basketball) and wing Pryce Sandfort (Iowa Mr. Basketball) also are key pieces in the freshman class.

“I was surprised with just how well our freshmen played right away,” Iowa junior Payton Sandfort said. “Kind of seemed like they’ve been doing it for a while. They don’t seem like freshmen anymore.”

“I think the thing that I’ve enjoyed is how many different guys play well every day,” McCaffery said. “Typically we haven’t had this many guys score, compete — and obviously these freshmen are stepping up.”

Stepping up and sprinting.

“I think the conditioning is probably the hardest part,” senior Patrick McCaffery said, “but with how much we play in practice it’s pretty easy.”

Comments: nathan.ford@thegazette.com