Hawkeyes Healthy for Holidays

By John Bohnenkamp

Iowa’s men’s basketball team closes its nonconference portion of the schedule with Monday’s home game against New Hampshire, and as of Friday, the Hawkeyes don’t have any health issues.

That’s big news for a team that’s been struggling with injuries all season. Only five players have been in all 12 games.

Seydou Traore, who has been battling an ankle injury since late November, is going to be back for the game, as is center Riley Mulvey. Both missed Iowa’s last game, a 95-88 win over Utah on December 21.

“Everybody’s ready to go,” Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said.

Getting Traore healthy is important considering the way the sophomore forward has played this season. Traore averages 6.7 points and 3.3 rebounds and seemed poised to move into the starting lineup when he hurt his ankle in the November 26 game against USC Upstate.

The Hawkeyes have played with a full roster a couple of times so far this season, but even then somebody was dealing with something.

Now, after some time off for Christmas and the rest of the Big Ten schedule looming, injuries don’t seem to be a worry.

“Fortunately, we have some depth on this team,” McCaffery said. “We've talked about that from the beginning, and you just absolutely have to have it in this league with how long the season is, how tough every game is. So fortunately, guys have stepped up for others who have been out.”

But injuries, McCaffery said, aren’t uncommon in a long season.

“You just understand that’s what part of a season is,” McCaffery said. “You're ready to go when somebody gets hurt. I mean, a guy like Carter Kingsbury has been terrific when we've needed him. Mulvey has been really good, but he's also been out. He's been out a lot. He missed two games. I mean, he wasn't even there (for the Utah game). Even Brauns is ready. Chris Tdajo was really good in the Michigan game. So we have people that will step up when we need them.”

Iowa is 9-3 overall and split its two early Big Ten games.

“You always want to be a little bit better,” McCaffery said. “I felt like we would be really competitive in those games. I thought we played well. I thought we played really well at times. There's times where we have to work on things, but that's what this part of the season is. I thought we performed fairly well in both Big Ten games. We've had some really good teams on our schedule that we played fairly well in those games.

“We could have won the three we lost. Could have lost, probably, a couple that we won, but we played well. And the goal is just to continue to improve and get this group playing together, be able to play through some adversity with the injuries that we've had, and stay positive. And that's what we've done.”