Iowa moves forward without the hype

IOWA CITY - A stylistic tweak brings out the gold in Iowa's new men's basketball uniforms. Consider it an element of brightness to end an off-season of second-guessing and re-evaluation.

Iowa returns to the court this week after posting a 20-13 record and its first NCAA tournament berth in eight years. But a dizzying collapse the final four weeks lingered with the program and its supporters. The confusion was evident in real time, when the team fell from 19-6 to 20-13. The hurt remained throughout the summer.

But borne from the pain were three themes the team takes into this season: defense, leadership and mental toughness. Players and coaches believe the three are tied together.

'We didn't defend,” Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery said. 'If you look at our performances down the stretch, and we're sitting there at 19-6 and lost a bunch late.

'Every one was in the balance. But we give up 95 in Minnesota. We scored 89. But you gotta stop people especially on the road. And you could say, well, ‘OK, was the leadership a factor in it?' You could argue it, I guess. But the reality is we didn't defend the way we need to defend to consistently win. That's why we were 9-9 and not better than that. And I think that's gotta be the challenge for this team.

'Now, will leadership play a part in that? Absolutely.”

Last season's talented squad lacked the strong voice it once enjoyed under previous captains Jarryd Cole, Matt Gatens and Eric May. When the team gave up an average of 91.3 points in three consecutive road losses, the locker room went silent, at least figuratively.

'I think obviously toward the end of the season when we were going through that slump, we didn't have really have someone come out like Matt would and been like, ‘Yo, listen. What's going on?' Stuff like that,” Iowa senior guard Josh Oglesby said. 'Obviously we had meetings and stuff and talked about it, but we didn't have someone to crack down on us and hold us culpable of doing what we shouldn't have been doing.”

The past is never dead, as William Faulkner once wrote, but it is history. Iowa enters this season cognizant of what went wrong last year and vowing to change it.

That's where mental toughness comes in. Oglesby defined it as doing his job regardless of the obstacle and shutting people down when it's required. Iowa spent its summer workouts on conditioning and defense. Senior forward Aaron White, a two-time third-team all-Big Ten selection, is the designated team leader. His voice carries weight, and the team has chosen to follow him.

The players also have shrugged off the external hype, which engulfed the program for most of the season. It has dissipated. The expectations remain high; they're just internal.

'I think we're just more confident,” junior point guard Mike Gesell said. 'We have very high expectations for ourselves, and we know what we went through last year. We've improved from it, and we're much more confident because of it. We know how good this team can be, and we've put in the work in the off-season. There really is nothing to be pressured about.”

'There were a lot of expectations on us, but there's a lot of expectations on ourselves,” junior center Adam Woodbury said. 'I'm not going to give any excuses for last year, it just didn't work out. We took our lumps and we've grown from it.”

So through the rise to a No. 10 national ranking and the fall of losing seven of their final eight games, Iowa men's basketball stands at a crossroads. The highs and lows give the players the experience of dealing with hype and pressure. To Gesell, that's an asset.

'The coaches always told us once you get to be ranked, once you're in the national spotlight, you're held to a little bit of a higher standard,” Gesell said. 'Teams put a target on your back, and they're coming at you. They can tell us all about that, but until you truly experience it, it's hard to get the real taste of it. We went through that last year, we know what it's like and we're definitely prepared for it this year.”

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