The Monday Tipoff: Playing With A Purpose As The 'Bohannon Watch' Continues

Senior guard is helping teammates as he continues to return from offseason hip surgery.

Jordan Bohannon crashed to the Carver-Hawkeye Arena floor after being fouled in the second half of Iowa’s season opener against SIUE on Friday.

Bohannon didn’t get up right away. Which is always a concern, but when you’re a senior point guard whose career has been about making big shots and you’re coming off offseason hip surgery and you’re still not sure you’re going to play a full season…

He was fine, of course, knowing full well about the drama of the situation.

“I probably stayed down a little longer,” Bohannon said with a smile after the game. “People probably held their breath a little bit.”

Bohannon, of course, was fine. Just using a little trick he learned by watching guard Peter Jok when Jok was a senior and Bohannon was a freshman.

“He kind of taught me that when you’re in the middle of the game, and you get knocked down and they call a foul, stay there for a little bit,” Bohannon said. “You get a little time to catch your breath. If you’re tired, you get to stay there for a little bit. So, it’s a little thing I learned from the upperclassmen as I was growing up.”

November and December will be all about the Bohannon Watch. Everything, Bohannon said, is day-to-day.

Consider, for example, how he felt the day after playing in Monday’s exhibition game.

Not good.

“But that’s to be expected,” Bohannon said. “I’m ahead of the timetable (for return from the surgery in May), so still taking it one day at a time. Just continue to do this same mindset and mentality.

“It’s going to be tough, for sure. It’s something that’s been weighing on me since I had the surgery and coming back and deciding whether to redshirt or not. It’s something that’s been weighing on me what I want to do. I’m just going to continue to take it one day at a time. I mean, it’s nothing new, I’ve been hurt since I’ve been here, as you guys know.”

“He’s getting there,” Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said. “He had a really good week, health-wise and practice-wise. He was more like himself. He was aggressive, making shots.”

Bohannon played 19 minutes, 14 seconds in Friday’s game. He finished with nine points and four assists, and didn’t have a turnover.

Bohannon alternated between point guard and the ‘2’, another important step in his return.

“I get a lot of my rhythm just playing point guard,” Bohannon said. “I was able to move to the ‘1’ a little bit tonight, just get my feet back under me. I haven’t really been playing a lot of point. Just been playing (the ‘2’), trying to get my rhythm back. I’m trying to move slowly back into things.”

“He gives us a lot of versatility,” McCaffery said.

Bohannon gets 10 games in the first half of the season to decide if he wants to take a medical redshirt season, or just finish his final year. And one of the things he wants to do in this time is help out the younger Hawkeyes, which will mean passing up shots to get his teammates involved.

That is also something he learned from Jok.

“I know when I was a freshman coming in, Pete kind of did that with me,” Bohannon said. “He was passing up shots the first couple of games. I know that meant a lot to me as a freshman, to be able to have a guy like that to look up to, try to have that guy to feed you shots, get your rhythm going. That’s just what I’ve been doing the past two games.”

There is a new routine for Bohannon on game nights — warm up, ride the exercise bike until it’s time to go into the game, play, get ice and rest after the game.

Day-to-day, until he can make a decision.

Until then, everybody will be watching.