Foreign Trip Bonding Time for Hawkeye Hoops

Iowa Heading to France, Spain Next Month

Iowa's mascot, Herky, points to the crowd during a game against  Purdue in the Big Ten Tournament Championship game on March 13, 2022 at Gainbridge Field House in Indianapolis. (Rob Howe/HawkeyeNation.com)

Iowa City, Iowa - Don’t dissect the box scores.

Don’t worry about who got playing time, and who didn’t.

Don’t worry about the final scores.

Iowa’s August men’s basketball trip through Europe has deeper meaning, which is what coach Fran McCaffery wants.

The Hawkeyes will leave August 5 and return 11 days later. They’ll spend four days in Paris, three days in Valencia, Spain, and three days in Barcelona.

Yes, they’ll play three games. The emphasis, McCaffery said, will be on much more than basketball.

“It’s a cultural, educational, team-bonding opportunity,” McCaffery said Thursday. “I’ve been fortunate to do this more than a few times, and the impact is so much more impressive when it comes to the big picture than it is specifically related to basketball. The games themselves are moderately important, to be honest with you. And that’s been a shift.

“In the past, when we would go, we would play it like it’s the Final Four. The last time we went, it was much more relaxed. Get guys playing time, get them confidence, get young guys opportunity. I don’t really need to see what Tony Perkins can do, I know what Tony Perkins can do. I want to find out what other guys can do, and that’s more important.”

McCaffery plans on splitting the Hawkeyes into three teams of seven players for the games, with each assistant coach — Matt Gatens, Sherman Dillard, and Courtney Eldridge — working as the head coach for a game.

“I’m not going to approach every game like, ‘This is my starting lineup,’” McCaffery said. “We don’t have a starting lineup now. So we’ll put three different teams together — seven guys, they’ll play the whole time. We’ll have different combinations — young guys, old guys. I want everybody to go over there and feel like they’ll have an opportunity to play. So if they don’t play today, that means tomorrow they’ll play 30, 35 minutes.”

Iowa gets 10 additional practices to go along with the usual summer workout schedule, and that can be beneficial for a team with six newcomers, including four freshmen.

“We’re fortunate, as freshmen, to have that overseas trip,” said freshman guard Brock Harding. “We get 10 practices, so we can put everything in now, get that put in our heads, so when practice comes in the fall we’ve already got everything put in and then it will be easier for the transition.

“Normally, we wouldn’t put in now what we’ve been putting in,” McCaffery said. “So we’re throwing a lot of stuff at them. And they’ve picked it up really quickly. We’ve got six new players, (including) four freshmen. And they’ve picked everything up amazingly quickly. That’s impressive for me, because a lot of times that takes a while.

“We’re throwing it all at them. It’s pretty involved. Normally we don’t play into November, so we’re not worried about that. But we’re playing in August.”

Harding said the trip will break up a long summer of workouts, especially for the freshmen.

“Coming in here, it’s the first time we haven’t had AAU basketball,” Harding said. “So having games to look forward to in August, that makes the summer grind that much more fun, knowing that we have something to look forward to with the games coming up pretty soon.”

It’s the first trip for the program since the 2017-18 team took a summer trip to Germany, Switzerland, and Italy.

McCaffery has taken veteran teams overseas as well as teams with inexperience, so he knows the value of the opportunities the trip presents.

“We’ve got some pretty veteran guys,” he said. “But this is a young team, a new team. A lot of those six new players are going to play a lot. It has more impact when it’s a young team.”