Luka Garza and his Iowa teammates have more reasons to be hungry than overconfident
By Pat Harty
IOWA CITY, Iowa – It seems whenever I have a conversation about the Iowa men’s basketball team, the topic eventually shifts to how the players will handle the incredibly high expectations.
Will they get complacent and rest on their laurels?
Will they let the tremendous hype, which includes being ranked fifth in the Associated Press preseason poll, create a false sense of security and make them too confident?
My answer is always the same.
Hype is different than results, and right now, Iowa hasn’t accomplished nearly enough from a team standpoint to rest on any laurels or be over-confident.
There are some great stories from an individual standpoint, most notably Luka Garza’s rise to dominance last season and Jordan Bohannon being in position to break the Big Ten’s record for 3-point field goals.
Junior Joe Wieskamp is also one of the conference’s top players, while sophomore guard C.J. Fredrick has a tremendous upside.
You name it and Fran McCaffery has it from a personnel standpoint, including size, shooters, depth and experience.
What he doesn’t have, though, is much team success with this group of players.
The 6-foot-11 Garza now ranks among the greatest players in program history, while Bohannon is arguably the best clutch shooter in program history.
However, between them they only have one victory in the NCAA Tournament and one victory in the National Invitation Tournament, and Iowa also finished with a losing record when Garza was a freshman and Bohannon a sophomore.
So there’s your motivation and your reason not to worry about the players getting too full of themselves.
Because, really, what have they accomplished as a team that makes them special?
Many believe that Iowa was poised to make a postseason run last March, and maybe so. But that chance was taken away because of COVID-19 health concerns.
“That’s kind of one of the things that our team has talked about a lot this year and during this offseason is that we have these high expectations, but it’s just kind of zoning those out really and focusing on the group of guys that we have in the locker room and realizing that every game is going to be a battle,” Wieskamp said Monday on a zoom conference. “Every game is going to be a battle whether it’s nonconference. You see the type of teams that we’re playing in nonconference, and the Big Ten has great teams from top to bottom.
“So we have a lot to prove, really. The preseason ranking doesn’t mean anything. We have to come out and prove it night in and night out.”
Iowa is scheduled to face top-ranked Gonzaga and North Carolina in the preseason. And the Big Ten looks loaded almost from top to bottom.
So if Garza and his cohorts live up to the high expectations, they will have earned it.
As great as Garza was last season, Iowa still only finished 11-9 in the conference, and lost three of its last four games.
Iowa also finished 10-10 in the Big Ten during the 2018-19 season, and 10-8 in 2016-17 when Bohannon was a freshman.
This isn’t meant as criticism, or an attempt to rain on Iowa’s preseason hype parade.
It’s just a reminder that Iowa still has a lot to prove from a team standpoint. The players have no reason to assume anything, or take anything for granted.
Fran McCaffery took over a program that was in shambles in 2010, and has steadily turned Iowa into a Big Ten contender, at least on paper.
It’s been over 20 years, though, since Iowa has advanced beyond the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
So if anything, these players should be hungry and determined to lift the program to the next level, to go where no Iowa team has gone since 1999.
And something tells me the players will be hungry and motivated.
That something is Garza’s incredible work ethic and Fran McCaffery’s steady approach in which he never gets too high or too low regardless of the circumstances.
There also seems to be good chemistry with the players, and a willingness to put the team before individual accolades.
“I think the biggest thing is making sure that everybody has the right goals in mind,” said junior guard Connor McCaffery, who is Fran McCaffery’s son. “What are your priorities? Are your priorities winning a Big Ten championship, competing for a national championship? What are you really wanting out of this season?
“And I think we have a group that is extremely unselfish. So I think at the end of the day, I think everyone is going to understand.”
Fran McCaffery wants his players to embrace the hype because he believes they can do it without becoming too confident.
Iowa hasn’t won a Big Ten regular-season title since 1979, so there are so many motivational buttons to push.
Injuries are always a concern, and COVID-19 will be a constant threat throughout the season, which is supposed to start on Nov. 25.
But there is no reason for the players to rest on anything they’ve accomplished, or to be overconfident, because they really haven’t accomplished a lot from a team standpoint.