Iowa Basketball: 2021-22 season preview and outlook for Hawkeyes

A new era filled with multiple questions awaits Iowa Basketball, a program coming off a 2020-21 campaign that began with high anticipations – and ended in disappointing fashion.  With the consensus National Player of the Year in Luka Garza gone to the NBA, the Hawkeyes will now enter 2021-22 with potential postseason aspirations.

Few squads were as highly touted last year as the Hawkeyes, who, just the season prior, had slipped into the national ranks by the final months of 2020 – and then, heading into the following campaign, returned one of the deadliest offensive cores in all of college basketball, headlined by a trio of three-point specialists in Jordan Bohannon, CJ Fredrick, and Joe Wieskamp – all the while also having Garza, the then-reigning Big Ten Player of the Year, anchoring the team’s inside play.

Ranked fifth nationally in the AP preseason poll and boasting the Big Ten’s Preseason Player of the Year in Garza, Iowa appeared like a team on a mission, coasting past their first six opponents by an average of 32 points – including a 13-point win over North Carolina.  Despite a pair of offensive duels against Gonzaga and Minnesota not ending in Iowa’s favor, the Hawkeyes still emerged as a force in the Big Ten, winning five straight and heading into late January with a 12-2 overall mark and a 6-1 record in conference play.

Arguably, the biggest question facing the Hawkeyes ahead of 2020-21 was their lack of defensive prowess; Iowa finished second from last in 2019-20 in scoring defense (giving up 72.3 points per game) and field goal percentage defensive (43.0%).  Those woes reared their ugly head again in late January, where the Hawkeyes would drop four of their ensuing five Big Ten games, allowing Illinois, Ohio State, and Indiana (in two games against the Hoosiers) to shoot a combined 45.4% against them and average a combined 0.99 points per possession across all four games.

Despite those issues, Iowa rebounded nicely to end the regular season, winning seven of their final eight Big Ten games – which included a sweep of Wisconsin and a dismantling of Ohio State – before topping the Badgers in the opening round of the conference tournament.  But the Hawkeyes’ defensive problems would ultimately serve as their Achilles’ heel, with Iowa surrendering a combined 59.6% shooting clip in losses to Illinois (in the Big Ten Tournament) and to Oregon (in the NCAA Tournament).

Now, Iowa will enter the 2021-22 campaign with a virtually new core with a few remaining pieces.  Garza, Fredrick, and Wieskamp – in addition to Jack Nunge, a key role player – are all gone.  Head Coach Fran McCaffery‘s sons Connor and Patrick are both back, while Bohannon has utilized his extra year of eligibility to return for a sixth season as a Hawkeye – and, with Garza gone, he should inherit much of the offensive burden for Iowa.

With the substantial hits to the roster, the Hawkeyes are not the clear-cut NCAA Tournament team that they were last season, but there is still enough talent available to fight for an at-large bid and float around the middle-of-the-pack in the Big Ten.  Iowa’s 99-47 exhibition win over Slippery Rock offered much to be optimistic about ahead of the Hawkeyes’ Nov. 9th season-opener against Longwood.