UCLA up first, as Iowa men’s basketball team begins the grind of Big Ten play

CEDAR RAPIDS — Eighteen games left in the regular season.

Substitute Purdue for Bucknell, Michigan for UMass-Lowell, Illinois for Chicago State.

There are no more gimme games for the Iowa men’s basketball team. Quad 3 and Quad 4 opponents are a thing of the past.

Beginning Saturday afternoon at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, it’s big-time Big Ten the rest of the way. UCLA (10-3) is first up, a 5 p.m. game on Peacock.

“That’s what you do. You want to play against the best,” said Iowa Coach Ben McCollum. “You want to see what it does to you. It can bring the best out of you, it can bring the worst out of you. So hopefully it brings the best out of us on Saturday.”

Iowa (11-2) split its two early conference games, losing big at Michigan State and winning big at home against Maryland. The Hawkeyes’ other loss this season was at Iowa State by four points.

A brand-new team with a brand-new head coach has shown it can compete. A bunch of transfers from Drake joined McCollum, as did a recruit. They generally have made the adjustment from mid-major to high-major basketball.

So far.

“There were some good games we played,” said Iowa’s Bennett Stirtz. “I think it was good scheduling and stuff like that, good timing and everything. Just excited to get to Big Ten play ... You’ve just got to maintain your habits. We were talking about that in the media timeouts (during Monday’s game against UMass-Lowell) about how you can’t practice or play with bad habits in the big-time games, because they’ll show out.”

"Every game is going to be a fight,“ said Iowa’s Cam Manyawu. ”There are no easy games. That's what you look forward to as a player, and you want to play the best of the best every single day."

Iowa takes a NET ranking of 12 into Saturday’s game, which would put you it the NCAA tournament if the regular season ended Saturday. But obviously it doesn’t.

This will be a grind, a very difficult grind. Iowa drew Maryland, Purdue and Nebraska for two games in Big Ten play this season, with the home game against Maryland already burned.

Other than Michigan State, the Hawkeyes travel to Wisconsin, Oregon, Washington, Penn State, Indiana and Minnesota. At home, they get UCLA, USC, Illinois, Rutgers, Northwestern, Michigan and Ohio State.

Michigan (number one), Purdue and Illinois are in the NET’s top 10 right now, with Michigan State 14th and Nebraska 15th. McCollum was asked if he has any idea where his team stacks up in the Big Ten.

“That’s really a tricky question simply because you really don’t think like that as a coach, because you think you can win every game,” he said. “I’d like to replay the two games that we lost, would like to play those right away. I think that’s the mentality you have to have if you’re a coach. You have to feel like you can win every game. Regardless of whether you do or not, you’ve got to believe that ... So you need to make sure we believe in ourselves and believe that we can do some good things.”

“It’s an important time, so we’ve got to be ready for it,” said Iowa’s Alvaro Folgueiras. “It’s an intense week of practice preparing for UCLA. I think we’re in a good spot. We’ve been confident the last games, the ball is rolling, and I think we’re all excited to start playing games like (this).”

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