Brotherly love and toughness will continue with Iowa men’s basketball
By Pat Harty
IOWA CITY, Iowa – Teammates in sports often refer to themselves as brothers as a show of unity and togetherness.
The Iowa men’s basketball team takes it one step further by actually having brothers on the team.
This season marks the fourth consecutive season in which Iowa has had at least one set of brothers on the team with sixth-year senior guard Connor McCaffery and fourth-year forward Patrick McCaffery carrying on that tradition.
They are the sons of Iowa head coach Fran McCaffery, who kept the brother tradition going on Wednesday by signing Waukee senior Pryce Sandfort, who is the younger brother of Iowa sophomore forward Payton Sandfort.
“I think he’s going to be awesome,” Payton Sandfort said of his younger brother before practice on Thursday. “We played together for a couple years in high school and grew up fighting in the driveway, so I’m really excited for him to get here and I think we can do some special things. Carry on the brother legacy.”
Pryce Sandfort is a 6-foot-7 forward/guard and one of three high school seniors that signed national letters of intent with Iowa on Wednesday.
Moline, Illinois high school teammates Owen Freeman and Brock Harding also signed with Iowa on Wednesday.
Payton Sandfort wanted his younger brother to join him at Iowa, but Payton also gave Pryce the freedom to make his own decision.
“I really wanted him to make his own decision so I kind of stayed away,” Payton Sandfort said. “I would kind of throw in subtle jabs all the time. I would always answer any questions he had for me.
“But ultimately, I wanted it to be his decision and I wanted him to come here because he wanted to come here, and not just because I loved it here. So, I’m happy for him.”
Asked it he was ever worried that his brother might pick another school, Payton Sandfort said:
“I was pretty confident. I was always a little nervous, but I was thought that maybe he likes his brother a little bit.”
The Sandfort brothers are similar in size and they could play the same positions at Iowa.
But their games are also different as Payton Sandfort described on Thursday.
“I would say at this age he’s a little better with the ball, just making plays in the paint,” Payton Sandfort said. “He’s kind of had to. Our high school team was pretty loaded, so I was able to kind of play my college role and kind of play off the ball. But he’s a lot more all dominant and I think he’s learned from that, and I think it’s helped him with a lot of his ball skills.
“And then I made pretty tough growing up, so he’s got a little toughness in him that I don’t if I had developed at his age.”
And while Payton Sandfort is willing to say that Pryce is a better ball handler and tougher than he was at this stage, Payton draws the line at shooting.
“Me, not close,” Payton said when asked who is the better shooter.
Iowa had two sets of brothers on the team last season with the McCaffery brothers and with twins Kris and Keegan Murray.
Kris is a junior on this year’s team, while Keegan Murray is a rookie for the Sacramento Kings after having been selected in the first round of the 2022 NBA draft.
“Obviously the younger guys already know the guys on the team, and they’ve watched the program. They’ve watched the games. There’s comfortability there,” Fran McCaffery said. “I think the fact that the older brothers are telling the younger ones to come, I think that’s great. Obviously, Keegan and Kris were the same year, but you’re happy that the older brothers had a great experience.”
Connor McCaffery said that brotherly love sometimes helps to increase the intensity in practice.
“That brotherly love, that brotherly toughness, the same thing you saw with Kris and Keegan, they would get after each other a little bit and bring everybody else’s energy up,” Connor McCaffery said. “You’re going to see the same thing with Payton and Pryce.”
As for Owen Freeman and Brock Harding, they have played together on the AAU circuit for years, but this season will mark the first time they’ve played on the same high school team.
“I think part of it was he wanted to play with Brock,” Fran McCaffery said when asked why Freeman transferred to Moline High School for his senior season. “I think there were other factors involved, but I know that was one of the big ones.”
Freeman, a 6-10 forward/center, was the first player to commit to Iowa’s 2023 recruiting class, followed by Harding, who is a 6-0 point guard.
“It started with Owen and Pryce. We started recruiting them early,” Fran McCaffery said. “Obviously with Pryce, we were going after Payton hard and Pryce was a freshman, so that’s how long we’ve been recruiting him and knowing him. He kept getting better and better, and his numbers last year in the state were phenomenal, as they were in the summer on a very high-level AAU circuit.
“We went after Owen a long time ago and really zeroed in on him as being a front court guy that could really help us immediately. He got a lot of attention. We went hard at him, and we were very fortunate he committed pretty quickly.
“Then Brock is a guy that we’ve been watching, and it’s one of those things that didn’t take long, but after a while you just watched this kid play and said, he could play for anybody. I think people were looking at his size and trying to figure out reasons he couldn’t play in a Power Five, but all he ever did was outplay everybody that lined up in front of him. I think after a while it was like, that kid, he helps you win no matter who he plays for.”
Iowa will face North Carolina A&T on Friday at Carver-Hawkeye Arena in the second game of the regular season.
The Hawkeyes defeated Bethune-Cookman 89-58 in the season opener on Monday as all five starters scored in double figures, including Payton Sandfort with 13 points.