IOWA CITY – As Iowa prepares to take on the Northern Iowa Panthers Saturday in Des Moines in the Big Four Classic, Iowa head basketball coach Fran McCaffery talks about his team and the match up at Wells Fargo Arena.
Q. Talk about Mike Gesell shifting to the off guard position.
COACH McCAFFERY: Number one, he defends pretty well there, and that is obviously a concern you have sometimes when you play a guy there. He can get his own shot. He can shoot off screens. He shoots the three, he can shoot in transition and make plays in transition, and it gives you another driver at that position that can make a play for somebody else.
Q. How did that conversation about moving Mike to the two go?
COACH McCAFFERY: I never had a conversation with him. I just started Clemmons is in the starting lineup and that was that.
Q. Is that partly because you know what he’s like?
COACH McCAFFERY: Yeah, I didn’t think much of it. He’s going to play a lot at the one anyway. I think he knows he can play the position. He wants to help our team win. He’s accepting of his role regardless of what that is.
He’s been really good there. He’ll be good at either spot. He’s going to be on the floor a lot late at both positions.
Q. Do you think some of that is testimony to his improvement of getting the ball on the floor?
COACH McCAFFERY: Yeah, he’s really worked on that, putting it on the floor. He’s working on his pull up game. It’s not there yet where it’s going to eventually end up. That’s when I think he’ll be really difficult to guard.
More on video.
Watch the entire interview in the following video:
httpv://youtu.be/-04N925nxcw