The Monday Tipoff: Hawkeyes' Roster Options Are Dwindling

Iowa’s injury/illness list is growing.

Let’s see:

• Guard Jordan Bohannon (hip) and forward Jack Nunge (knee) are out for the season.

• Guard C.J. Fredrick is questionable for Tuesday’s game at Nebraska with an undisclosed injury.

• Forward Patrick McCaffery is still out with health issues related to his 2014 treatment for thyroid cancer. His brother Connor is battling a stomach illness and missed practice on Sunday.

• Walk-on guard Austin Ash has mononucleosis.

• Forward Ryan Kriener hurt his knee in Saturday’s 89-86 loss at Penn State but came back and finished the game. Coach Fran McCaffery said on Monday that Kriener is OK even if the injury looked serious at the time.

This injury list doesn’t include the various cuts and bruises and elbows to the mouth that center Luka Garza has taken this season.

And it’s not even the first full week of January.

Iowa is 10-4 overall and 1-2 in the Big Ten heading into a week with the game against the Huskers and Friday’s home game against No. 12 Maryland.

It’s something that McCaffery said his team will just have to deal with for a while.

“It’s obviously something we’re all aware of,” he said in Monday’s teleconference. “But we’ll deal with it one day at a time, so to speak, because it’s an opportunity for someone else to step up. It will change things in how we prepare, how we play in games. Some of the walk-ons will have to stay ready.”

McCaffery said his team was limited in Sunday’s practice.

“We did a lot of video, a lot of walk-through, a lot of shooting,” he said. “We really didn’t do anything physical.”

McCaffery did not go into specifics about Fredrick’s injury. Fredrick played almost 14 minutes of the first half in Saturday’s loss, missing all four of his shots, and then didn’t play in the second half.

McCaffery expects some determination on how long Fredrick could be out in the next couple of days.

"We’re looking at a variety of things on him," McCaffery said. "We want to make sure before we run him back out there that he’s ready to go. He clearly was not ready to go in the second half (against Penn State).”

Connor McCaffery played 29 minutes in Saturday’s game despite falling ill in the morning.

“I thought he gutted it out,” Fran McCaffery said. “Yesterday he was really sick.”

Patrick McCaffery, who played in two games to start the season before going out, has practiced at times with the team, but is still working through managing his health issues related to his previous treatment.

“He can have good days, bad days, days where he can be ineffective,” Fran McCaffery said. “We’re trying to figure out how to get his body right. He plays in practice some, and meets with nutrition people and strength people. He’s seeing some doctors and so forth, to try to figure out how to stabilize his body, because that’s what has been compromised, so he can maintain strength and stamina, and feel better, essentially. So there’s no change there. We’re going to continue to work through that.”

Kriener’s injury on Saturday scared McCaffery when it happened.

“I was really concerned about him when I went out on the floor,” McCaffery said. “He was really hurting.”

McCaffery said Kriener is a likely replacement for Fredrick in the starting lineup. Forward Cordell Pemsl is likely to get more playing time, as is forward Riley Till.

McCaffery said Ash would also have been an option if he wasn’t ill.

“Here’s a guy that maybe would get some playing time,” he said.

At this point, anyone healthy has a chance to play.