Iowa Basketball Team Is Winning With Some Real Longshots

After the practice -- two hours of fast-break and shooting drills, defensive fundamentals and situation play, scrappy tow-headed point guards and seven-footers diving on the floor after loose balls -- the Iowa basketball team prepared to leave the Smith Center at the University of North Carolina.

One thing remained undone, a ritual that has become a part of each of the team’s road games. Hovering around the sidelines, players and coaches watched as diminutive assistant coach Gary Close attempted a hook shot from half court. As he has on every other occasion this season, Close sank it within three tries.

“Great,” marveled head coach Tom Davis amid the cheers and hand slapping, “now we’ve got a chance to win.”

Chances are the Hawkeyes’ No. 5 ranking and 13-1 record after last Saturday’s 98-97 victory over the Tar Heels have more to do with the Iowa’s work ethic than trick shots by assistant coaches, but who knows? Besides, the almost-hokey touch seems perfectly proper on a team that is achieving far more than it probably has any right to expect.

The gifted senior trio of Roy Marble, Ed Horton and B.J. Armstrong can compete with anyone in the country and comprises the main reason the Hawkeyes were in the top 10 of most pre-season polls. But Iowa lost seven players from last year’s 24-10 team, and a month ago Matt Bullard and Michael Ingram, juniors who were expected to complement the senior trio, were lost to knee injuries.

All that remained was one other upperclassman, Les Jepsen, a 7-foot junior who never had scored more than six points or collected eight rebounds in a game, two redshirt freshmen and five first-year players. Even so, Iowa has thrived, slipping only against Cal-Riverside on Christmas in the Chaminade Classic.

“I like to teach, but this is a little too much; we’ve got the three very good seniors, then no one who has played,” said Davis, who has a doctorate from Maryland. “Last year I could say one word and the team could adjust. Now, I have to stop and explain myself and walk through a lot of the stuff we want to do.

“Everything is new for them: life on the road, how to eat, what equipment to bring. We’re not as good as we were a month ago, but you can’t worry about it too much or else the young guys start to think that they can’t win.”

One of the freshmen, Ray Thompson, is averaging 12 points a game and scored 19 in the win over North Carolina. Another, Wade Lookingbill, was supposed to be redshirted this season but was forced to play because of the injuries to Bullard and Ingram. He averages five points a game and is willing to stick his elbows into anyone’s sides.

That’s easy to do with the burly Horton there to back him up, but it’s also typical of the way Iowa plays. Compared to such laser-quick squads as Illinois and Michigan, the Hawkeyes may be overmatched in talent but make up for it in diligence. Each practice drill is preceded by a huddle in which the coaches specify what they want to accomplish.

After Davis and his assistants are through, the young players stick around for some pointers from the upperclassmen. The process continues off the court, where each senior changes roommates for each away game.

“Really we’re just being ourselves and I guess it rubs off,” Marble, a flashy 6-6 guard and the school’s second all-time leading scorer, said of the seniors. “We get there early, stay late and the young guys just hang with us. They don’t even know they’re doing extra work, they’re just doing whatever it is we do.”

The expectations that the trio plays under makes Davis’ job of developing the younger players even more impressive. It seems like the three seniors are never off the floor, but none of them averages 30 minutes a game.

Davis has become adroit at spotting them, using two while one sits during the early portions of games. Against North Carolina, the Hawkeyes made 28 substitutions in the first half, 19 involving Horton, Marble or Armstrong. After intermission, however, there were only 18 substitutions; the three seniors were never seated for more than a minute at a time and on the floor together for the last six minutes.

Iowa trailed, 80-79, with 8:43 remaining last Saturday, but rallied with the seniors scoring all but four of the last 18 points. The winning point came on a free throw by Marble, who smartly stepped to the line although it was actually Horton (who had missed two foul shots in the final minute) who was fouled.

“We all know that this is our last chance, if we’re gonna do something we have to do it now,” said Marble. “That hit me at the end of my junior year; I’ve never worked as hard in my life as I did to get ready for this season. I lost 10 or 15 pounds, I lifted weights, I worked on my shooting. Everything I was able to do in the past, I can do 10 times better now.”

An only child, Armstrong left Detroit for Iowa City because “I knew I could grow there,” he said. “And even if I had problems, I wouldn’t be able to run back home -- I’d have to stay and stick it out.”

The sense of being challenged hasn’t left. That’s one reason why, when Davis hesitated to schedule North Carolina after the start of the Big Ten season, Armstrong was the leader in persuading the coach to change his mind.

“Anytime you can play a big game, why back away?” Armstrong reasoned. “It’s a good test, good competition, and if we have any weaknesses let ‘em be exposed so we know what to work on.”

And the Iowa Hawkeyes would be the first to tell you that hard work -- and a little bit of luck -- can take you a long, long way.