'Nice Guy' Kriener Sets An Example For Hawkeyes

Senior doesn't want to be vocal, but he'll be feisty on the court.

Ryan Kriener doesn't want to be the bad guy.

His ‘mean mug’ during games is a social-media favorite, and the Iowa senior forward is OK with that.

But with his teammates, he doesn’t want to be the one pointing out mistakes.

“I don’t like to get on guys too much,” Kriener said during Wednesday’s media availability. “I like to be the nice guy. I don’t want to be the guy who people are like, ‘Oh, God, I have to listen to this again?’ I try to lead by example.”

Is there, he was asked, anyone like that on the team?

Kriener looked around to see if coach Fran McCaffery, who had just finished speaking to the media, was anywhere close.

“I think you guys talked to him earlier,” Kriener said, smiling at the joke.

It’s McCaffery’s role, Kriener said, to get on the Hawkeyes when things aren’t going right. But there has to be leadership among the players.

Kriener remembered back to his freshman year, and the way senior guard Peter Jok was with the team.

“Pete did a lot of stuff where he was a big lead-by-example guy,” Kriener said. “Sometimes he would get on you if he really needed to.”

Kriener sometimes caught that.

“Oh yeah, he got on everybody,” Kriener said.

What Kriener wants to do is play the way he’s always played, and his teammates to follow along.

There is a feistiness to Kriener’s game.

“That’s always been a thing for a really long time,” Kriener said. “I’m not going to change that.

“Something Coach always says is that there’s only one way to play this game, and that’s full tilt. I think that’s something I’ve been doing a long time, even before I got here. It’s just kind of a habit.”

“He's a senior. He's smart. He's skilled,” McCaffery said. “He was a little heavy coming into the summer, but got himself in much better shape physically, and he looks good. He's a cerebral guy on the court, which impacts a lot of things, most importantly the defensive end, with his communication. He's telling people where to go, what to do. He sees the play develop. That's where information is really important, when the communication comes at the right time versus a second or two late.”

Kriener is coming off a season in which he averaged 5.7 points and 3 rebounds, both career highs.

Friday’s season opener against SIU-Edwardsville at Carver-Hawkeye Arena will be the last for Kriener. He said he thought about his first game four seasons ago.

“Super, super nervous. Like, disproportionately nervous,” he said about his pre-game feelings. “I didn’t, like, want to do anything wrong. Didn’t want to mess up, stuff like that. It was good to see that first bucket go in. Then I was like, ‘I made it. I’m here.’”

Asked how he wanted to look back on this season, Kriener said, “NCAA champion, Big Ten champion, all of those. Those are the easy ones. You want to win every game. But if you’re looking for something a little more sentimental, I would really like to say that I led the team to the best of my abilities, and we accomplished a lot of our goals.”