2024-25 ITH Season Preview: Iowa Hawkeyes

  • 09/13/2024 8:37 am in

With the start of college basketball season in early November, we’ll examine the conference as a whole and Indiana’s roster over the coming weeks.

Today, our team previews continue with Iowa.

Previously: Penn State, Washington, Minnesota, USC, Northwestern, Nebraska

After missing the NCAA tournament last spring, Iowa is optimistic it can return to March Madness this season, which will be Fran McCaffery’s 15th in Iowa City.

For the seventh straight season, the Hawkeyes’ offense was among the nation’s top 20 and they return three starters following an NIT appearance.

Senior wing Payton Sandfort is back after testing the NBA draft waters and is one of the Big Ten’s top players. Sandfort made 94 triples last season and shot 37.9 percent from distance. He averaged a team-high 16.4 points and pulled down 6.6 rebounds while dishing out 2.7 assists in 30.5 minutes per game.

Brock Harding and Josh Dix, two productive guards, are also back and Morehead State transfer Drew Thelwell will join them in the Iowa backcourt.

The 6-foot-5 Dix is an elite shooter. He shot 62.5 percent as a sophomore on 2s and 42.1 on 3s while averaging 8.9 points in 24.4 minutes per game. Dix joined the starting lineup early in conference play and averaged 10.6 points in Big Ten games.

Thelwell is a 6-foot-3 grad transfer who should help fill some of the void from the transfer of Tony Perkins to Missouri. He averaged 6.2 assists last season and is a career 34.8 percent 3-point shooter. Thelwell should also be Iowa’s best backcourt defender because of his ability to pressure the ball.

The 6-foot Harding played just 10.8 minutes per game last season and should share the ball-handling duties with Thelwell in the Hawkeye backcourt. Harding had an assist-to-turnover ratio of 3.42-to-1 as a freshman last season and shot 37.5 percent on 3s.

In the frontcourt, Iowa returns co-Big Ten freshman of the year, Owen Freeman. A high school teammate of Harding, Freeman exceeded expectations in his first year. Freeman earned Big Ten freshman of the week honors nine times and played in all 34 games. He averaged 10.6 points, 6.6 rebounds, 1.8 blocked shots and 1.2 assists in 22.9 minutes per game. The Hawkeyes will need Freeman to play more minutes in his second season. He averaged just 22.9 minutes per game as a freshman.

While the rest of the rotation is largely unproven, Iowa dipped into the transfer portal for Seydou Traore, who arrives from Manhattan. The 6-foot-7 sophomore earned All-MAAC rookie team honors last season and averaged 11.9 points and 8.1 rebounds while shooting 80 percent from the free-throw line. Traore had impressive performances against some of the nation’s best teams. He had 16 points and eight rebounds against Kansas and 13 points and eight rebounds against UConn.

Payton Sandfort’s younger brother, Pryce, is also back and will look to expand his role in his second season. Billed as an elite shooter out of high school, the younger Sandfort shot 17-for-49 (34.7 percent) in his first season.

Another sophomore, Ladji Dembele, will provide frontcourt depth behind Freeman. The 6-foot-8, 255-pound forward played 32 games last season but shot just 37.8 percent overall from the field. Dembele will have to up his production offensively and continue to grow his presence defensively in the paint. Dembele was a co-recipient of Iowa’s best defensive player award in his first season.

Riley Mulvey, a 6-foot-10 junior, and Even Brauns, a 6-foot-9 fifth-year senior, will provide additional frontcourt depth. Mulvey redshirted last season, while Brauns played sparingly after transferring from Belmont.

The Hawkeyes also welcome a pair of freshmen in 6-foot-8 forwards Cooper Koch and Chris Tadjo. Koch was the No. 86 player nationally in the final 247Composite rankings for the 2024 class. The Illinois native is the son of former Iowa player J.R. Koch and was fifth in the voting last season for Illinois Mr. Basketball.

Tadjo, a Montreal native, played last season at the NBA Academy Latin America. Tadjo has size, athleticism and has improved rapidly after moving from Africa to Montreal.

At No. 45 in Bart Torvik’s projections for the 2024-25 season, most of the early projections have Iowa as a fringe NCAA tournament team entering the season. The Hawkeyes will again have one of the Big Ten’s best offenses but will need to be much better defensively to return to March Madness. Last season, Iowa finished 13th in the conference in points per possession allowed, last in defensive rebounding percentage and 12th in opponent free throw rate.

Bottom line: Getting Sandfort back gives Iowa a chance to finish in the top half of the Big Ten and earn an NCAA tournament berth. Thelwell was a solid addition from the portal to help soften the blow from the loss of Perkins and Freeman will be one of the Big Ten’s best frontcourt players. Dix is a clear breakout candidate and one of the league’s best shooters. If Iowa can develop reliable depth, the Hawkeyes could outperform expectations.

Quotable: “We always wanted to be good defensively. We’ve made some changes on some things in terms of how we’re going to guard stuff, but also feel like the guys we brought in are capable of doing that. Athletically sometimes when you don’t have a lot of depth, the defense might struggle a little bit. You think about two years ago, we played three guys a thousand minutes each. We just didn’t have a lot of depth there, but now we do. Hopefully, that intensity level will be able to ramp up with guys that are some fresh legs and some fresh bodies out there.” – McCaffery in July on his plan to improve Iowa’s defense.

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