Finals week always means a break for the Iowa men’s basketball team.
This season, as it has in a few others, it means getting players healthy.
Coach Fran McCaffery has given his team some time off this week, but the Hawkeyes were practicing on Thursday to prepare for Saturday’s home game against Southeast Missouri State.
“Well, obviously we’re a little banged up, so that helps in that regard,” McCaffery said. “I want the guys focusing on finals. When we do practice, we make sure everybody is here and we have a regular practice, so it’s not like, ‘Come in and try to get some shots up.’ We’re locking in for the next game.
“The guys are in a good mindset, preparing for I think what is a really good team, and the guys that need to be rehabbing or getting treatment are doing that.”
The Hawkeyes will be without forward Kris Murray, their leading scorer and rebounder, for Saturday’s game and likely a few more. Murray has a lower left leg injury — he was wearing a boot and was on crutches during last Sunday’s home game against Wisconsin — and there’s no timetable for his return.
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“He just needs to be off it for a while, and then heal up and he’ll come back,” McCaffery said.
Guard Ahron Ulis, who missed Sunday’s game with a hip contusion, is “making progress,” McCaffery said.
“We’ll see what he can do today,” McCaffery said.
The Hawkeyes (7-3) went 3-3 in a stretch of games that were all against power-conference opponents, including two nationally-ranked teams.
“it was, I think, what we all expected it to be,” McCaffery said. “It wasn’t easy. We did some really good things and we did some things we need to work on. That’s what the early part of the season is. You want to learn and get better. We have some guys stepping up, and some guys have had some opportunities because of injury. So you don’t want guys to be hurt, but it’s an opportunity for guys to grow and we’ll need everybody as we go through the rest of the season.”
The Hawkeyes have just two nonconference games remaining. They’ll play Southeast Missouri State (5-6, 275 KenPom, 217 NET) on Saturday, followed by Eastern Illinois (2-9, 357 KenPom, 359 NET) on Wednesday. They’re off after that until getting back into Big Ten play on December 29 at Nebraska.
“I think the only thing you want to do is see consistent play out of each and every player in terms of effort and execution,” McCaffery said. “You don’t want to see sloppy play. We play fast, so we always say we don’t want to just run up and down and turn it into a run game. We want to push the ball, make good decisions, defensively be connected and compete, compete on the glass, move and share the ball. These are things that every coach says, but that’s going to be critical moving forward to continue to do that.”
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