By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – You’ve probably heard the old saying “it gets worse before it gets better” since it has been around for what seems like forever.

Heck, even Patrick Swayze’s character in the 1989 cult classic “Road House” said it when trying to motivate his bar staff at the rough-and tumble Double Deuce outside of Kansas City.

And now I’m saying it 30 years later with regard to the resurgent Iowa men’s basketball team, which defeated Rutgers 71-69 on Saturday on a buzzer-beating 3-point basket by freshman Joe Wieskamp to improve to 20-5 overall and 9-5 in the Big Ten.

Because without last season’s stunning decline, this equally as stunning resurgence probably wouldn’t have happened.

Iowa fell so far and so fast last season that it forced everybody in the program to do some self-reflection.

It forced Fran McCaffery to re-evaluate how he does things, especially on defense where Iowa was a sieve last season, allowing nearly 80 points per game.

The 59-year old McCaffery is incredibly proud and sure of himself, and has been a head coach for over two decades. And yet, he was humbled and humiliated last season to where he looked in the mirror and realized that some changes had to be made.

Instead of making excuses or blaming others for last season’s 14-19 overall record, McCaffery was accountable and took responsibility for it.

His players did the same thing.

They acknowledged that they had performed woefully on defense and then took major steps to address the problems during the offseason. Those steps probably wouldn’t have been taken without last season’s collapse.

The Iowa players all felt pretty good about themselves heading into last season because they had overachieved in the previous season when a team with three freshmen starters barely missed making the NCAA Tournament.

This isn’t to suggest that the players loafed during the 2017 offseason, or took winning for granted heading into last season.

But the players didn’t work as hard, or with the same amount of purpose, during the 2017 offseason as they did during last season. And the reason I know that to be true is the players have admitted to it.

There was a sense of urgency during this past offseason that was missing from the previous offseason.

And now we’re seeing the results of that sense of urgency in Iowa’s performance this season.

Iowa is clearly better on defense now compared to last season. The players are more connected, more involved and more concerned about playing defense.

Last season also started under awkward circumstances as reserve point guard Christian Williams quit the team the day before the first exhibition game in November.

The timing of his departure was unusual and costly in that it seemed to hurt the team’s chemistry on and off the court.

Williams was highly respected and admired by his teammates, so it’s reasonable to assume that his sudden departure created some problems.

It’s hard to know who to blame when a player transfers because there are two sides to every story.

But no matter who you blame, Iowa didn’t handle it well based on its performance last season, and that ultimately falls on Fran McCaffery.

McCaffery had a mess to clean up after last season, and though winning is the only solution for losing, so much had to happen behind the scenes before Iowa could start winning again.

Iowa is only two games out of first place in the Big Ten in the loss column heading into Tuesday’s matchup against Maryland at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. A lot can happen in six games, so it’s still too early to make any assumptions.

A cynic would say that Iowa was lucky to win its last two games on last-second shots against mediocre opponents.

And while that might be true, luck is part of winning.

Good teams usually find ways to win and to manipulate luck to their advantage, while bad teams usually find ways to lose.

Wieskamp was lucky that his shot banked in from the baseline. But it still took a near-perfect inbounds pass from Connor McCaffery underneath his own basket and a tip from Nicholas Baer to make it happen.

So it also took some skill, design and execution in addition to luck.

The Iowa program was at a crossroads heading into this season.

What happened in the previous season was unacceptable and embarrassing to the players, coaches and fans.

But it was also fuel for this season because the players were on a mission to make sure it never happened again.

And right now that mission is headed to a spectacular place, or so it seems.