IOWA CITY – The Iowa Hawkeyes men’s basketball team (4-0) will host Penn (1-2) on Friday, November 22nd. Tipoff is slated for 6:01 p.m. (CT) on Mediacom Court at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
Iowa’s Fran McCaffery said at a press conference Thursday that Penn is not to be taken lightly.
“They played Penn State at home. They have shown a tremendous amount of resilience in the first three games. They were down 15 against Temple in the second half, came back and took the lead. They were down 10 on the road at Monmouth, came back and won, and they were down 26 in the second half against Penn State and came back. I forget what they cut it to, but they erased about 18 or 20 points, maybe more. So they’ve shown that they can score and they have composure to come back.
“They have size,” McCafffery continued. “They have two really good post players, Dougherty and Nelson Henry, really good players. Nelson Henry is 6’11”, 265, Dougherty is 6’8″, 230. Both of them have a game. They can score in a variety of ways. And then they’ve got tremendous quickness on the perimeter across the board. Cartwright and Hicks are very good players, but it just doesn’t stop with those four guys. They have a lot of depth, and they’ve got upperclassmen to come in on the bench, and when that happens, typically those guys don’t make mistakes.”
Iowa is still waiting on one of its sharpshooters, Josh Oglesby, to return from a severely sprained ankle.
“We fully expect him to recover,” McCafffery said. “He’s on pace. But it’s just one of those things, you insert a pin in somebody’s foot, you’re going to have to wait pretty much the full six weeks. But he’s working out diligently in the pool and on the bike and things like that.”
Iowa next hits the road on November 28th to play Xavier in the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament in Nassau, Bahamas.
Watch video interview with Players and Coach McCaffery:
httpv://youtu.be/xBNSXtrmqkM
