Hawkeyes Head to B1G Tourney on Bubble
The goal for Iowa is to stay as long as possible at this weekend’s Big Ten Tournament in Minneapolis.
Every win is a nice addition to a postseason resumé with quite a few blemishes, and a short exit won’t look good to the NCAA tournament selection committee.
So, it starts on Thursday for the seventh seeded Hawkeyes (18-13), who play 10th seed Ohio State (19-12) in a 5:30 p.m. second-round game at the Target Center.
Now, winning four games in four days, like Iowa did in 2022, and the Hawkeyes get the Big Ten’s automatic bid into the tournament.
One win helps, two wins are better, three wins would be just fine, considering who the Hawkeyes would have to play. Second seed Illinois waits in Friday’s quarterfinal, and a possible semifinal matchup with third seed Nebraska looms on Saturday.
“Of course, we want to win the whole thing,” said guard Tony Perkins, whose move to the starting lineup in mid-February of 2022 spurred that March run. “But if we don’t, we at least want to get to the position where we can make it to the NCAA tournament.”
Perkins said the NCAA tournament talk is something he hears in the locker room.
“Once they ask, I’m like, ‘Oh, well, we’ve just got to win,’” Perkins said.
Such resumé conversation is expected, coach Fran McCaffery said.
“I think it’s inevitable, with all of the talk,” he said. “The thing that bothers me is when they’re talking that way in November. It’s understandable now, when you have a body of work to evaluate. And there’s going to be winning streaks and losing streaks for most teams. We prepare the same way, no matter what the circumstances are. That’s how we’ve always done it, that’s how we’ll do it this week.”
McCaffery recalled the 2022 tournament journey.
“We had a talented roster of veteran guys who knew and understood how to win,” he said. “So we played the game the right way. You’re going to have close games when you go into tournament play. We knew how to play close games and win close games.
“You go down there with a plan and trust your guys to do how they’ve always done.”
Ohio State, though, isn’t going to be an easy opponent. The Buckeyes, who also need some resumé-building wins, are 5-1 under interim head coach Jake Diebler, and have won four consecutive games.
“They’ve had some young guys progress,” McCaffery said. “They were a relatively young team, as you look at rosters today. And so all of those guys, whether it’s the freshman or sophomore class, have developed throughout the course of the season. When they were losing, they weren’t getting drilled. They were losing close games, and now they’re winning games, sometimes by a decent amount.”
The Hawkeyes would like to stop the Buckeyes, and then keep going.
Perkins knows how it goes.
“Just tell them the same thing I went through my sophomore year when I won it,” he said when asked what advice he would give his younger teammates. “Just try to play the best you can. At this point, we need to win as many games as possible to be in the position we want to be in.”
