By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – Since watching the third-ranked Iowa men’s basketball team shred North Carolina from 3-point range, I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of an Iowa team that was more potent from behind the arc than the current team.

But I came up with nothing.

I started by identifying the top 3-point shooters in program history, players such as B.J. Armstrong, Chris Kingsbury, Kent McCausland, Brody Boyd, Luke Recker, Jeff Horner, Adam Haluska, Justin Johnson, Matt Gatens and Peter Jok, and then broke down the rosters of which they were a part to see if any compared favorable to the current team when it came have multiple 3-point shooters.

And the answer was no.

Iowa defeated No. 16 North Carolina 93-80 on Tuesday at Carver-Hawkeye Arena as guards Jordan Bohannon, Joe Wieskamp and C.J. Fredrick combined to make all 17 of Iowa’s 3-point baskets.

Bohannon led the way with seven, while Wieskamp and Fredrick made five apiece.

Iowa All-America center Luka Garza struggled to score against North Carolina’s long and athletic frontline, but his sharpshooting teammates helped to pick up the slack from long distance.

Garza was Iowa’s fourth leading scorer in Tuesday’s game with 16 points, to go along with 14 rebounds and four blocks.

It was in stark contrast to the first three games in which Garza averaged 34.0 points per contest and scored at least 30 points in the first half in two of the games.

“I think those boys were waiting for a game like this,” Adam Haluska said Wednesday on the Hawk Fanatic radio show and podcast. “The first couple games of the season, Luka was really having his was inside and they just didn’t get a lot of shots. I think they were primed and ready to get that ball and have some perimeter shots.”

Haluska knows a little something about making 3-point shots as a Hawkeye, considering he made 212 treys during his three-year career from 2004-07.

He also played for two seasons with former Iowa point guard Jeff Horner, who made 262 3-point baskets during his career.

Haluska and Horner were a potent one-two touch from 3-point range, and they were key players for Iowa’s 2005-06 team that won the Big Ten Tournament and finished second in the Big Ten regular season.

But as good as the 2005-06 team was in multiple areas, it couldn’t match the current team in regard to 3-point shooting.

And that’s not just me saying, but also Haluska.

“This team is better than our team by far,” Haluska said. “They’re so much deeper. You’ve got guys coming off the bench and all of the guys in the starting lineup can shoot threes.”

That includes the 6-foot-11 Garza, who has made the 3-point shot a big part of his arsenal.

And while junior guard Connor McCaffery is more of a distributor, he also has shown that he ca makes threes.

Iowa coach Fran McCaffery, who is Connor McCaffery’s father, has had some pretty good teams in his 10-plus seasons of coaching the Hawkeyes.

But this would appear to be his best shooting team, especially from 3-point range.

Bohannon is on course to become the Big Ten’s all-time leader in 3-point baskets, and he is also now finally healthy after having had surgery on both hips over the past two years.

“Everything I’ve lived for and worked for my entire life is just being able to play in these big-time games and wanting to play against these top schools and do well, and try to do everything I can to help my team win,” Bohannon said after Tuesday’s game.

With Bohannon, Iowa has one of the best clutch shooters in program history.

The former Linn-Mar star credits his Iowa teammates for helping him preserver through some tough times.

“The last year-and-a-half, two years have kind of been hell,” Bohannon said. “I know there’s obviously worse things than having surgery and missing basketball games. But there’s been a lot of soul-searching of myself, a lot of spiritual aspects of my life I had to kind of shift these last two years.

“I was in a really dark place, but my teammates, my close friends and my family picked me up and got me through these times. I really worked my butt off to get in the shape I am now and get back from a second hip surgery. It makes me happy, so I am going to celebrate that aspect of being able to come out and play and not worry about any pain.”

With Garza surrounded by so many top-notch shooters, defenses have to almost pick their poison, as Haluska puts it.

“I haven’t seen many Iowa teams like that,” Haluska said. “There again, it’s kind of pick your poison. If you’re going to really go heavy on Luka down low, you’ve got to take what the defense gives you and last night they were giving the three, even when we were throwing them in their face a little bit.

“We’re deadly. And if you have one guy that’s not hitting, it seems like we’ve got another four or five guys that can step in and hit that shot.”

Self-confidence is a big part of making 3-point shots, and Haluska sees plenty of that with the Iowa players, as did the television announcers who called Tuesday’s game for ESPN.

“I kind of like the terminology the announcer used last night; these aren’t just confident shooters, right, they’re cocky shooters,” Haluska said. “They kind of have that swag about them. If they miss one you don’t see guys generally put their head down. They’re going to shoot the next shot and anticipating that thing sis going in.”

Time and performance will ultimately determine how good this Iowa team is from a 3-point shooting standpoint. But all of the starters already have proven themselves as 3-point shooters at this level, so it’s just a matter of building on what already has been accomplished.

It helps that Fran McCaffery likes to play up tempo and that he gives his players the green light to shoot because he trusts them. And the reason he trusts them is because Fran McCaffery has seen Bohannon, Wieskamp, Fredrick and Garza make numerous 3-point shots.

Iowa State coach Steve Prohm will have the daunting task of trying to come up with a defensive plan to contain Garza, and to contain Iowa’s 3-point shooters, when the teams meet on Friday at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

Focus too much on Garza and risk being shredded from 3-point range, or focus on the 3-point shooters and risk being dominated by Garza in the paint.

That’s the dilemma that defenses face against this Iowa team, and the challenge proved too much for North Carolina.

“I really like this Iowa team,” said North Carolina coach Roy Williams, who has led the Tar Heels to three national titles. “They’re like some of our really good teams. They’ve got a big guy inside like we’ve had that can score, they’ve got a bunch of 3-point shooters.”