Men's Basketball Breakdown: Iowa vs. North Florida
Breaking down Thursday's game between Iowa and North Florida.
Game facts
Time and place — 6:01 p.m., Carver-Hawkeye Arena, Iowa City
TV — BTN (Mike Hall, play-by-play; Jess Settles, analyst)
Radio — Hawkeye Radio Network.
Records — Iowa 2-1, North Florida 4-1.
Rankings — Neither team is ranked.
Series — Iowa leads, 1-0.
Iowa lineup — Jack Nunge (F, 6-11, Soph., 5.3 ppg.), Luka Garza (C, 6-11, Jr., 21.3 ppg.), Connor McCaffery (G, 6-5, Soph., 8.7 ppg.), C.J. Fredrick (G, 8.7 ppg.), Joe Wieskamp (G, 6-3, Fr., 10.3 ppg.)
North Florida lineup — Wajid Aminu (F, 6-7, Sr., 9.6 ppg.), Carter Hendricksen (F, 6-7, Soph., 14.8 ppg.), Ivan Gandia-Rosa (G, 6-1, Sr., 12.2 ppg.), J.T. Escobar (G, 6-2, Sr., 15 ppg.), Doriam James (G, 6-7, Fr., 5 ppg.)
The analytics
KenPom rankings — Iowa 55th, North Florida 180th
Sagarin ratings — Iowa 68th, North Florida 180th.
Fast facts
• Garza leads the Big Ten in scoring. He is the only Hawkeye to be in double figures in the first three games.
• Jordan Bohannon is three assists away from tying Ronnie Lester for fifth on Iowa's all-time list.
• Iowa has won 61 of its last 66 nonconference home games.
What to watch
The Hawkeyes get this game and Sunday's game at Cal Poly at home, then don't come back until the Dec. 9 game against Minnesota.
North Florida dropped its opener to Florida, but is on a four-game winning streak. The Ospreys had 21 3-pointers in Monday's 115-39 win over Trinity Baptist. Escobar and Gandia-Rosa have combined for 34 3-pointers this season.
That will test Iowa's perimeter defense, which struggled last week in a loss to DePaul.
"It wasn't good against DePaul," Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said."It was much better against Oral Roberts (an 87-74 win). They were a very quick team. But they're also a team that was averaging 32 threes a game. They had shot 35 the previous game. So we're going to push up on those guys and might give up a little penetration so that they shoot contested twos rather than open threes."
Iowa would like to get Wieskamp going. The sophomore, a preseason All-Big Ten selection, has made four of his last 14 shots.
"I think that'll happen without too much difficulty," McCaffery said. "He's got the green light. He's never been a guy that hunts shots. We want him to shoot as many times as he wants, but he's going to shoot when he's open. Teams are covering him closely, as you can imagine. But he's a guy that gives it up easy. If somebody is open, he feeds the post. If somebody is open on a one-dribble kick, he does that. I'm OK with him shooting 15 or 20 shots if he wants to, and we'll keep going to him when we do."
