Wieskamp Knows He'll Have To Fight Back
There was a point behind Fran McCaffery’s wry diplomacy.
The Iowa men’s basketball coach was asked on Tuesday about how Big Ten teams have been defending guards Joe Wieskamp and CJ Fredrick.
McCaffery cracked a smile.
“Is that what you want to call it?” McCaffery said. “Maybe you're better than me at phrasing what it is. I'll let you come up with the proper terminology.”
The Big Ten is a physical conference, McCaffery acknowledged, and the clutching and grabbing that Wieskamp and Fredrick have been experiencing isn’t unique to just them.
“It's across the board,” McCaffery said. “And it has to stop.”
Wieskamp is just 14-of-53 from the field in his last six games (26.4 percent), 3-of-21 in three-pointers (14.3 percent). Fredrick, who missed three games with a sprained ankle, is 7 of his last 19 from the field, 5-of-12 in three-pointers, but only got four shots in Sunday’s 78-76 to Illinois.
“It’s tough sometimes, for sure,” Wieskamp said. “You’ve just got to keep grinding through it. I think we can even do a better job of creating that separation ourselves, whether it be setting up cuts, different things like that. That can create some open looks for us.
“You obviously can see it — they’re up in our spaces. That’s just the way the Big Ten is, that’s the way teams are playing us. We’re going to have to deal with that.”
Wieskamp called his recent struggles “frustrating.”
“But it’s just kind of like I said, it’s how the Big Ten has been playing us,” Wieskamp said. “They really focus on CJ and I on our cuts. They’re up in our space.
“When a guy’s up in your space, you physically have to get him off you. For the most part, we’ve played against that all season long. I think that throughout the year we’ve been learning about how we can combat that and how we can attack them over-pressuring us.”
“It's just not like it was when I was playing, there was an easy way to counter it in those days,” McCaffery joked. “Now they'll be talking about it for three weeks on TV, so there's other ways.”
Asked his best advice to his guards, McCaffery said, “Tell them to keep grinding, keep moving. You got to tell the guys that are delivering the ball to be a little more patient, because it's easy to look and say, OK, he's not open. Well he might be open later, a second later, two seconds later. We might rescreen for him, screen, rescreen, because they're attached to him. There are ways to handle that. You got to go one way and then go another way, and at some point, if their hands are on you, you got to get their hands off you. We have so many guys that are particularly good at that.”
Wieskamp knows he might have to get a little physical to get separation.
“It’s definitely been something I’ve been working at throughout this whole year,” he said. “It happened last year, but not nearly to the extent that it is this year, especially with me being more of a priority in our offense. I think it’s just something I’ve had to deal with.
“I think I’m a pretty relaxed guy out there. I think I can be more physical out there. For the most part, if they’re holding you, and you’re pushing back, they’re not going to call that.”
The Hawkeyes get the Big Ten tournament this week in Indianapolis, starting with Thursday’s second-round game against either Minnesota or Northwestern.
Then it’s the NCAA tournament the following week, when officials from different conferences will be working games.
Wieskamp said it will be nice to play against teams that haven’t scouted the Hawkeyes as much as Big Ten teams have, but there is a blueprint out there that teams are following.
“I'm not saying it's easy, it's a very difficult job and our league is incredibly physical, tremendously big, strong athletic guys,” McCaffery said. “And there's a fine line between letting guys play and calling what needs to be called. It isn't easy and we have some of the best (officials) in the business. So you just got to ... you’ve got to plow forward.”
