Uthoff’s low profile belies his competitive fire

CHICAGO - A night before the big lights and big stage - you know, Big Ten media day - Iowa men's basketball players Jarrod Uthoff and Adam Woodbury sat in their Marriott hotel room and played War.

It wasn't a variation of any popular video game, but the old-fashioned card game. For contrast, several basketball players hung out in the hotel lobby while Uthoff and Woodbury played cards and watched 'The Last Alaskans” on Animal Planet.

'It's the dumbest card game in the world, but we spend hours playing it,” Woodbury said.

For some that sounds subdued, even boring. But for Uthoff, a low-key night in west Chicago changes little from one at home. Uthoff, a fifth-year senior forward, spends his down time away from downtown. He's one of Iowa City's most recognizable faces and his near 6-foot-10 height is a dead giveaway. But instead of gravitating toward the club scene, Uthoff shies from it.

'I don't do all that stuff,” Uthoff said. 'I hang out with my fiancee and that's about it.”

Sure, Uthoff indulges in video games with teammates and mixes in a few trips to the bowling alley. Sometimes he's entertained with ultracompetitive card games and board games with Woodbury, other times it's fishing or archery. Regardless of the activity, it's a quaint lifestyle that suits Uthoff.

'The Last Alaskans,” Woodbury said. 'That's JU's type of show.”

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Uthoff always stood out as the youngest of five in Marengo. His four older siblings all graduated from Iowa Valley High School, and Uthoff was embedded in that community. But as Uthoff competed and succeeded in AAU basketball with the Iowa Barnstormers, his potential was too great to ignore.

As a sophomore, Uthoff transferred from Iowa Valley to Cedar Rapids Jefferson. He described the move as a jump for exposure in athletics and more academic opportunities. That doesn't mean it wasn't difficult.

'My whole life was at Iowa Valley,” he said. 'To pick up and leave was ... very hard, but the best decision of my life.”

Uthoff became an elite basketball talent at Jefferson. As a senior he led the state in scoring with 26.2 points a game. He was named Iowa's Mr. Basketball.

In the summer before his senior season, Uthoff ended his recruitment early. Despite a big push from then-new Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery, Uthoff picked Wisconsin just as he boarded an airplane for an AAU trip to Las Vegas. It was a choice he quickly regretted.

'I didn't know what I was looking for,” he said. 'You're young, you're 17, all these schools are trying to recruit me, you don't really know what's going on. You don't really know what you're looking for. If you don't have an understanding before - which none of these guys do - it's tough to make a decision. I didn't really know what my main objectives were. I didn't know where was going to get the best end result.”

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Uthoff nearly played early his freshman year at Wisconsin but elected to red-shirt. By season's end, Uthoff wanted to leave the program and struggled to figure out how.

Mistakes were made throughout the transfer process, from miscommunication to Coach Bo Ryan initially restricting Uthoff from contacting 26 different schools. Despite hundreds of basketball transfers generating little public attention every year, Uthoff's move became the biggest story in college athletics.

Local and national news outlets covered Uthoff's story almost daily, and he was bombarded with phone calls and texts. Over his final month in Madison, he became persona non grata.

'It was difficult,” Uthoff said. 'Thousands of phone calls. It was nuts. I didn't look at Twitter, I didn't look at Facebook, I didn't look at social media, so I had no idea it was that big until I had people texting me, ‘Oh, your name is trending.' This is ridiculous. I clearly did not know for a week that it was that big.”

Wisconsin officials relented on their restrictions except for Big Ten schools. Uthoff wanted to play for Iowa, but he could not engage in contact with team officials. Uthoff couldn't meet with McCaffery until he stepped on campus for fall classes. Uthoff paid his own way to college that year.

Through the ordeal, Uthoff learned one valuable lesson that he since has applied to the basketball court.

'Not to get rattled,” he said.

Wisconsin did provide Uthoff with one lifelong gift. He met Jessie Jordan, an Ohioan who also attended Wisconsin. They began dating that year and she transferred to Iowa a year after Uthoff left for Iowa City. They were engaged this August.

Uthoff made frequent visits to see Jordan when she remained in Madison. He'd drop in on his former teammates like Traevon Jackson and Frank Kaminsky, which defused the perception there was bitterness among them.

'Over the years, I had my own life and they had theirs at Wisconsin,” he said. 'We slowly got separated. It's life.”

At Big Ten media day, Uthoff and Ryan walked past one another before an hourlong media session. Publicly, they have moved past any bitterness.

'I was cordial,” Uthoff said. 'I said hello, Bo said hello.”

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On the court, Uthoff is a well-rounded force. As Iowa's primary small forward last year, Uthoff was the only player nationally with more than 50 3-pointers, 50 blocked shots and 35 steals. He averaged 12.4 points and 6.4 rebounds, both second-best on the team. He was named third-team all-Big Ten by league coaches last March.

'He's long, he can shoot it,” Nebraska forward Shavon Shields said. 'How tall he is, he has the skill set of a guard. He's a really good rebounder, and it all works in his favor. How fast Iowa plays makes him a really tough guard.

'I think he's up there near the top.”

After sitting out his transfer season. Uthoff struggled to fit in on the court. At times he appeared passive as the on-court newcomer on a veteran team. He averaged 7.6 points and 4.6 rebounds and flashed his potential but rarely seemed to get in the flow.

But last year as a junior, Uthoff became a focal point of Iowa's offense. In the Big Ten opener at Ohio State, Uthoff drilled a 3-pointer with 2:18 left to boost Iowa's lead to seven points. In the victory, Uthoff finished with 18 points, seven rebounds and five assists and was named the Big Ten player of the week.

Two weeks later at Minnesota, Uthoff drilled a jumper at the top of the key with 3.5 seconds left in a 77-75 win. He scored a career-high 25 points with five 3-pointers at Northwestern, including a late trey to force overtime.

'I want him to continue to be aggressive,” McCaffery said. 'As you remember in his first year here he wasn't aggressive enough. He was more aggressive last year. We went to him in clutch time. He won the Minnesota game for us. He hit a shot at the buzzer at Northwestern. He's got that big shot-making ability.

'Now that said, teams are going to be keying on him a lot differently than they have in the past. It's going to put more pressure on him, but I want him to be even that much more aggressive as a result.”

Uthoff transformed his game from his days at Cedar Rapids Jefferson to include more jump shots. Last year he developed a fadeaway jumper that's nearly impossible to block.

'I'm starting to shy away from it because the coaches don't like it too much,” Uthoff said. 'I don't shoot it that much. It does work. It's very successful.”

Uthoff's expression rarely changes, whether he hits or misses a shot. He accepts coaching without taking a defensive posture, something McCaffery appreciates.

'With him, if you ever critique him, he agrees with you. He just agrees with you,” McCaffery said. '‘Why don't you ...?' ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.' That's what I mean. It's never easier than that. It's not ‘Well ...' you never get that from him.”

Iowa junior forward Dale Jones competed against Uthoff as a prep when Jones attended Waterloo West. Jones said the only way to defend Uthoff's fadeaway is to obstruct his vision. Once Uthoff gets the ball over his head, it's airborne.

'I don't think there's a stretch-four as good as him in this country,” Jones said. 'His knowledge of the game, the way he understands it, how he moves without the ball and how he just picks his spot. I think he's the best in the country at his position, hands down.”

Last summer Uthoff competed at the Nike Basketball Academy in Santa Monica, Calif. He was one of 27 top collegiate players at the event and was mentored by perennial NBA all-star James Harden among others. Uthoff struggled his first day but fit in by the camp's final day.

'That first day I'm doubting myself, not really having any confidence,” he said. 'The second day, I'm like, ‘Why am I viewing myself like this? Why am I doubting myself? There's a reason why I'm here.' The third day, it's like, ‘Absolutely. I should be here. I'll thrive here.'”

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Uthoff graduated in May with an economics degree and is seeking his master's this season. He's a two-time all-Big Ten academic team selection. But with all that brilliance off the court and talent on it, he's not the easiest person to read.

'It's funny, man. One day in practice (Uthoff) said, ‘If there's one guy on the team when I came here I didn't think I would like, it would have been you,'” Woodbury said. 'I thought the same thing. So the first couple of months we didn't really speak to each other. We were feeling each other out. He probably had ill feelings toward me because I beat him in the state tournament when he was a junior and I was a sophomore (at Sioux City East).”

Woodbury and Uthoff now hang together. Their girlfriends are roommates so they connect on double dates, game nights or lounging time. Their height - Woodbury stands 7-1 - puts them together in workouts and led to a final discovery for Woodbury.

'He's like, ‘I'm going fishing today after one of our workouts,' and I said, why aren't you taking me?” Woodbury said. 'He said well, ‘I didn't know.' I said, ‘I love to fish.' Every time we got done with a workout last summer, we'd go fishing and come back and work out again. It's just a fun time to hang out with a good guy.”

They compete in fishing just like basketball, just like War. Woodbury displayed a picture of a 20-pound monster from one of their fishing trips. When asked about it, Uthoff deadpanned without inflection, 'I got one roughly the same size.”

Low-key approach, even-keel response, competitive to the core. That's Jarrod Uthoff.

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