Continual improvement key tonight for Iowa basketball

IOWA CITY - Iowa's men's basketball team is 2-0 and averages 95.5 points a game.

Thursday night's opponent at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, Northern Illinois, is 0-2 and has totaled 91 points this season. The Huskies have never beaten Iowa in five tries and lost to Purdue 96-34 in the opener.

That's a primer to another potential blowout for the Hawkeyes, but beyond another victory, Fran McCaffery wants to see improvement - and consistency - from his team Thursday.

"We have to make sure we are consistently playing the way we are capable of playing individually so that collectively we're where we need to be," he said.

Those collective improvements come from individual improvements. Freshman Aaron White, who scored an Iowa-debut record 19 points to go along with 10 rebounds on Friday, limped to a 1-for-5 shooting performance Monday with four turnovers.

"Aaron, his opening day performance, was as good as any freshman I ever had," McCaffery said. "When he got in early, he fumbled a pass and he drove into a pack of people and turned it over. I think that got him a little bit sideways-style, but in addition to that, the style of play in that game was a little bit different. He's just got to get used to that."

Senior point guard Bryce Cartwright, who struggled in the opener, had 12 points and six assists against just one turnover on Monday against North Carolina A&T. McCaffery was pleased with senior post Devon Archie's performance against Chicago State, but Archie was inconsistent against North Carolina A&T. Archie started but missed two shots, had two turnovers and played shoddy defense in the post in his 13 minutes.

"I want (Archie) to play better; we need more energy out of him," McCaffery said. "I didn't play him in the second half because he didn't give it to me at the start of the second half.  I told him that. I said, 'Your game is energy. Your game is running the floor, being active, being up for the ball.'

"He was unbelievable in the Chicago State game with that, and he was not against A&T."