IOWA CITY – The Iowa men’s basketball team is preparing this week for a Minnesota team fresh off a victory over their own last opponent, highly-ranked Ohio State.
Iowa went into Columbus last weekend and dealt the Buckeyes their second consecutive loss. Thursday night, Minnesota – at home – handed them their third in a row. Both teams are pointing to the victories as signs their teams are on the rise. Iowa’s Fran McCaffery was hired in 2010 to turn around the struggling Hawkeyes, and Richard Pitino is coaching his first season in Minneapolis, hoping to bolster a Minnesota team with higher goals than it could achieve under former coach Tubby Smith.
“I really like their team,” Coach McCaffery said of the Gophers. “When you’re not playing them you’ll see them hit somebody else or see a box score or read an article or something like that and you get a sense of what you think they’re doing. You couple that with what you remember from last year, obviously, they have a new coach and they play completely differently. Their style is completely different.
“They’re going to press more zone, more chain defenses, more trap more, they’re going to shoot a ton of threes,” McCaffery continued. “But I think what they’ve done is they’ll take the players they had. They added some guys, and they’ve got a real solid core unit of talented personnel. They’re quick and they have a good blend of experience and some new guys, so they’ll be a major factor in this league.”
Iowa is now 14-3 overall and 3-1 in Big Ten play.
Minnesota is now 14-4 overall and 3-2 in Big Ten play.