Five takeaways from Iowa men’s basketball overseas trip

With six new faces potentially contributing to the Iowa men’s basketball team this winter, the trip to France and Spain to play three games in the last two weeks was important to the program. The good news for the Hawkeyes is they played well and seemed to develop a solid chemistry on the court.

Also, the Hawkeyes went 3-0 with wins in Paris, Valencia, and Barcelona.

The Hawkeyes easily cracked the century mark in each game, ending up averaging 116 points per game. They also did a fairly solid job on defense, allowing just 79.6 points per game.

What did we learn about this Iowa team on the trip?

Let’s dive into five takeaways from the overseas contests.

IOWA SHOT IT WELL FROM THE FLOOR

While Fran McCaffery mentioned twice on the trip about the Hawkeyes committing too many fouls in the first half of two of the games, he was also pleased with the way his squad shared the basketball and shot it from the floor.

One stat that you always look at with an Iowa box score is assists and turnovers. In this case, Iowa dished out 72 assists and had just 42 turnovers. Iowa had a spike of 21 turnovers in the first game of the trip, which is probably understandable, but in the final two contests they turned it over 10 and 11 times.

Meanwhile they handed out over 20 assists in two contests and got to 19 in the other one. With younger guards, coaches worry about taking care of the basketball. They passed this test pretty comfortably.

From a shooting perspective, Iowa shot 48.4% from the floor as a team, which is an excellent total. From three point range, Iowa shot 38.9% from deep, which they would gladly take this winter. They Hawkeyes averaged making 14.6 triples a contest.

Again, competition was not Big Ten level or close to it, but seeing shots go in is a positive.

FREEMAN WILL BE A FACTOR

If you were wondering about which true freshman would have the biggest impact on the trip, it was clearly Owen Freeman. I jokingly called him Iowa’s “Chairman of the Boards” after 31 rebounds in two games. He cooled off in the final game with only six rebounds, but he ended up averaging a double-double of 10.3 points and 12.3 rebounds.

He was active, engaged, and made a huge impact on the game on a regular basis. His arrow is pointing up in a big way after this three game performance.

PAYTON SANDFORT AT THE FOUR

If you listened to Fran McCaffery’s post game comments after the win over the Barcelona All Stars it was clear that the Iowa head coach is looking to have Payton Sandfort play at the four this season.

Sandfort is not a natural four. But, he could be a really interesting stretch four this season. The key would be can he rebound at a high level. Ben Krikke did a nice job, averaging 8.3 boards over the course of three games, but rebounding is a huge concern this winter.

Sandfort led the Hawkeyes in scoring, averaging 19 points per game and he pulled down 11 rebounds a contest. That included 11 and 14 in two of the games.

JOSH DIX AT THE POINT

Something to keep an eye on moving forward is I think Fran McCaffery wants to play Josh Dix at the point. He was playing point quite a bit on this trip and while he’s not what you would call explosive, he takes great care of the basketball.

On this trip, he had 16 assists and 5 turnovers. In fact, in two of the games, he didn’t have a turnover. Overall, he ended up averaging 10.6 points and 5.3 assists per game.

Along with Sandfort playing at the four, I think Dix at the point is going to be something to watch once the season gets underway.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

I thought Tony Perkins did exactly what you would hope he would do on the trip. He averaged 16.3 points per game and showed he can go get a bucket when he needed to. I think the same can be said for graduate transfer Ben Krikke. We mentioned his work on the glass, but he can score too. He also averaged 16.3 points per game.

One other player who I thought really elevated himself on this trip was Dasonte Bowen. He seemed to be off the ball a bit more in the three games, which is fine because he is finding ways to score. Bowen averaged 12.3 points per game on the trip.

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