Albert Einstein once defined insanity as the act of “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Fans have called Fran McCaffery crazy before, but the way his Iowa team finished last season had to leave the Hawkeyes head man questioning his own sanity. After a 19-6 beginning to 2013-14, his team lost seven of its final eight games, and the lone win in that stretch came against Big Ten bottom-feeder Purdue. Time and time again, McCaffery sent out the same talented group that had racked up points and wins in bunches all the way through January, and time and time again they would retreat to the locker room defeated. The collapse came late enough so as not to prevent Iowa from making its first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2006, but a bitter taste lingered. What happened to the Hawkeyes?
Mike Gesell (right), Adam Woodbury and Jared Uthoff All Played Key Roles In A Potentially Season-Shaping Win For The Hawkeyes Wednesday. (Photo Credit: AP)
New seasons have a way of washing away the memories of the last one. Jubilant title runs dissolve into the tumult of the mixing and matching of a new group of players, while stinging too-soon-to-end Tournament stays are banished from memory banks by fast starts. The latter was supposed to be the case in Iowa City, where McCaffery returned another team talented enough to make some noise in the Big Ten. Unfinished business from last season was now finished; unanswered questions now irrelevant. This was a new band of Hawkeyes. And then the season started. Iowa dropped its only two games against reasonable competition in November, losing to Texas and Syracuse on back-to-back nights in New York. Sure, they handled their business elsewhere (5-0 in other games, but all against teams outside of KenPom’s top 125), but the doubts, the questioning – they were slowly creeping back. Even McCaffery and his team had to be wondering if there was just some very hidden fundamental flaw with the Iowa Hawkeyes.
Until Wednesday night, when the monkey finally hopped off the Hawkeyes’ back, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, of all places. In their opening game of the final month of 2014, Iowa won the kind of game that it hadn’t won since the first month of the year, upending the Tar Heels, 60-55. When North Carolina overcame a halftime deficit to build a five-point lead midway through the second half, it felt like more of the same for McCaffery’s bunch – another disappointing result was imminent. Except it wasn’t. Mike Gesell came up with big plays down the stretch (and a game-high 16 points); Aaron White and Jared Uthoff combined for 19 rebounds against an athletic Tar Heels front line; and the Hawkeyes held Roy Williams’ team to 33 percent shooting on their home floor. It all added up to a gritty road victory, the kind of win the Hawkeyes would have failed to seize a year ago. Last year’s team struggled defensively (ranking 120th nationally in defensive efficiency), but at least so far this season, that problem has been remedied. Iowa is currently 19th nationally in defensive efficiency, largely due to the nation’s seventh best effective field goal percentage defense. The legitimacy of that defensive improvement will be repeatedly tested in the rugged Big Ten, but for a team that only won one game when scoring fewer than 75 points a year ago, last night’s defensive effort at the Dean Dome has to qualify as very encouraging.
Now, for the first time in awhile, the Hawkeyes get to feel good about themselves. Like the shooter who needed to see just one of his attempts drop through the net, an important measure of team confidence was regained Wednesday night. They don’t cancel the season and crown a team as national champions when it wins a quality road game in early December, but breaking through with a marquee victory in advance of the Big Ten season was imperative. The stench from last season was lingering a little too close to this one. This team should be allowed to build its own identity, and Wednesday’s victory allows everybody — the Hawkeyes themselves included — to better view this year’s team as its own entity.
Home games versus UMBC and Alcorn State in the next six days don’t figure to cause a problem, but subsequent dates with intrastate rivals Iowa State and Northern Iowa will offer momentum-building opportunities as the Hawkeyes approach the new year. If all goes to plan for McCaffery, the Hawkeyes will submit proof that they are top dogs in the state this month, then reveal themselves to be among the Big Ten’s best over the course of the next three. If that type of success is achieved, a December road victory over North Carolina might begin to resemble little more than a pleasant bonus scalp on the paper resume, but that would not be doing last night’s win justice. In order to win two, three or four big games you must first win one. Few teams needed that first one worse than Iowa. They got it on Wednesday night.