Iowa gave up 103 points in its loss to Indiana on Sunday and coach Fran McCaffery says they continue to try and find a way to shore up the defense.
“I’m not happy at all with how we’re playing, we’ve got to get better at the defensive end of the floor. We shuffled the lineup a little bit to see if that would help. I think it helped in some areas, maybe not so much in others, so I think we have a couple of important days of practice coming up,” McCaffery says.
McCaffery says you can only do so much work in practice on defense, working on all kinds of drills and trying different combinations. “But ultimately it comes down to a matter of toughness, and we lack that right now, I don’t mind saying it, we don’t have the toughness that’s necessary to defend in this league,” McCaffery says.
Iowa did score score 89 points in the game. McCaffery was asked if he’d thought about giving up the fast-paced offense.
“No, nothing’s changed my mind. I don’t mind being in a 103-89 game, I just don’t want to have 89,” McCaffery said.
Iowa is now 11-11 overall on the season, and 3-6 in the Big Ten conference. Iowa hosts Minnesota on Wednesday.