By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – It might just be a coincidence that Fran McCaffery’s most disappointing season as the Iowa men’s basketball coach has come at a time when he has no clear-cut senior leader, or senior leaders, to rely on.

With all due respect to Iowa’s lone senior, 6-foot-9 forward Dom Uhl, he doesn’t play enough or have the kind of out-going and forceful personality that makes a good leader.

Uhl is quiet and soft-spoken and has only appeared briefly in 15 games this season, which continues on Saturday with a 1:05 p.m. game against Indiana at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

Until this season, McCaffery always had at least one senior, beginning with forward Jarryd Cole in 2010, who assumed the role of team leader.

After Cole came Matt Gatens followed by Eric May, Devyn Marble, Aaron White, Jarrod Uthoff and Peter Jok last season.

Uthoff was among four senior leaders on the 2015-16 squad, along with center Adam Woodbury and guards Anthony Clemmons and Mike Gesell. That team won 22 games and finished third in the Big Ten with a 12-6 record.

McCaffery’s current team is just 3-12 in the conference and 12-16 overall with just three games left in the regular season. Iowa is assured of finishing the regular season with a losing record for the first time since McCaffery’s first season in 2010-11.

It was widely believed that the current Iowa team would be better than last season’s team that finished 19-15 overall and barely missed making the NCAA Tournament.

Jok was the only starter that had to be replaced from last season.

But he also led the Big Ten in scoring and was clearly the team leader, whereas picking a leader on the current team is more difficult.

Sophomore forward Tyler Cook and sophomore point guard Jordan Bohannon are probably the closest Iowa has to leaders, according to McCaffery.

“Last year it was Pete's team,” McCaffery said Friday. “It was Gatens' team, Marble's team, White. It was sort of Jarrod's team, but he had a lot of help there with Woodbury, Gesell and Clemmons. That group was special.

“I think you have a lot of potential candidates. They're all young. The two guys, I mean, it's kind of like Tyler and Jordan's team. I think that's safe to say.”

It makes sense that McCaffery would single out Cook and Bohannon as the team leaders because they’re Iowa’s top two scorers and probably the two best players on the team, at least on offense.

Cook, to no surprise, downplayed the lack of senior leadership. He said there are plenty of capable leaders on the current team, which is what you would expect him to say.

“I don’t think it’s a problem that we don’t have that senior leader,” Cook said. “I think there are a lot of guys on this team that have done a good job in their own right, trying to lead in their own ways.

“I think being the vocal person that I have been for my whole life, it’s easy for me to communicate with the guys and just try to be the guy that people can lean on.”

So if we’re to believe Cook, it is just coincidence that Iowa has failed to live up to expectations during a season in which there is no senior leader on the team.

It's just hard to believe him.

It takes more than leadership to win games, but a lack of leadership can make a team more vulnerable and can be the difference perhaps in losing a game.

There are times when Iowa seems like a rudderless ship that desperately needs a vocal leader on the floor.

Center Luka Garza plays with lots of emotion and has the kind of personality that befits a leader.

But he is also just a freshman, and rarely does a freshman become a team leader.

“I think you're seeing a lot of emotion,” McCaffery’s said of Garza’s behavior on the floor. “I don't know that he's fulfilling the leadership side of it. He just is a guy that he loves the game, he loves to play. He's emotional. There's times when I'm trying to get him to — you always want him to be that way because that's what makes him great, but at the same time, sometimes you want to slow it down and have a little more pace to what you're doing. He's constant energy, motion. He's always moving. He's always banging. He's running. Sometimes you slow it down and wait and then go. He's trying to learn that aspect.

“But a lot of the talking that he's doing is not necessarily the same type of thing, say, that Adam Woodbury did, which is where we want to get him. You've got to really understand everything and how it all fits if you're going to be that guy on the floor. And right now, he's trying to figure it out for himself.”

As for the Hoosiers, they have plenty of senior leadership under first-year coach Archie Miller, including guard Robert Johnson, who is the team’s second leading scorer with a 13.4 per-game average.

Indiana will try to complete the season sweep of Iowa on Saturday. The Hoosiers used an 18-0 scoring over a six-minute span midway through the second half to pull away from Iowa in the first meeting on Dec. 4 in Bloomington, Ind.

Indiana prevailed 77-64 in the second conference game for both teams and will bring records of 8-7 in the Big Ten and 15-12 overall into Saturday’s game.

The Hoosiers have won their last three games by an average of 18.6 points per game.

“When you're playing them, you've got to be careful with your live ball turnovers and your bad shots because they're so fast at changing ends, they end up with easy baskets,” McCaffery said. “They're a really good passing team on the break. They're a good interior passing team, very unselfish group, which is rare. When you have a lot of guys who can score, you don't see that kind of unselfishness. It's a credit to them.”

Senior leaders under Fran McCaffery

2010-11 – Jarryd Cole

2011-12 – Matt Gatens

2012-13 – Eric May

2013-14 – Devyn Marble

2014-15 – Aaron White

2015-16 – Adam Woodbury, Jarrod Uthoff, Mike Gesell, Anthony Clemmons

2016-17 – Peter Jok

2017-18 – ???

Iowa vs Indiana

When: Saturday, 1:05 p.m.

Where: Carver-Hawkeye Arena

TV:  ESPN

All-time series: Indiana holds a 102-76 advantage in the series that began with an 18-12 Hoosier win in 1909. The Hoosiers have won the last two meetings: 77-64 in Bloomington on Dec. 4, 2017, and 95-75, in Washington, D.C. at the Big Ten Tournament on March 9, 2017.

Iowa leads 45-41 in games played at Iowa City, holding a 20-11 advantage in Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Iowa has won eight of the last 11 meetings in Iowa City, including last season's thrilling 96-90 overtime win.