This year's Iowa team similar to '12-'13 IU

Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery’s third-place Hawkeye squad doesn’t have the ranking, résumé or hype of the 2012-13 Hoosiers, but the Hawkeyes have a similar makeup to IU’s Sweet 16 team from a year ago.

IU Coach Tom Crean said McCaffery has recruited a versatile team that is as experienced as any in the country.

“It reminds me when we watch them — and it has been this way all year — of what we had last year with our team with the experience, shooting, scoring and guys that have been there in a lot of hard games,” Crean said. “And also some young fire power that brought some energy to the table.”

The Hawkeyes returned virtually every player from last year’s team, which won 25 games before losing in the National Invitation Tournament Championship to Baylor.

Eleven players average at least 10 minutes per game and as a team, Iowa has the nation’s fourth-tallest average player height, which creates matchup problems for opposing teams.

“They are extremely unselfish with one another and cause so many issues with their versatility,” Crean said.

Iowa has an NBA prospect in senior guard Roy Devyn Marble, who averages 16.4 points per game, but the balanced Hawkeyes lack the surefire NBA lottery picks that IU had in Cody Zeller and Victor Oladipo last season. However, Iowa is statistically similar to the Hoosier team that lost in the Sweet 16 to Syracuse last March.

No. 15 Iowa (19-6, 8-4) is fourth in the country in adjusted offensive efficiency and 30th defensive efficiency, according to kenpom.com. In 2012-13, IU finished third in offensive efficiency and 28th in defensive efficiency.

McCaffery said sophomore point guard Kevin “Yogi” Ferrell, IU’s only returning starter from last season, has been impressive in his expanded role for the new-look Hoosiers.

“His role was different with Zeller, Oladipo, Watford etc.,” McCaffery said. “They had so many weapons. Now this year, he is ‘the guy.’”

Ferrell and senior forward Will Sheehey start alongside three freshmen, a lineup that is virtually the opposite of last year’s Hoosiers and McCaffery’s current Iowa team.

The Hoosiers had four 1,000-point scorers on last year’s team, and their starting lineup featured a player from every academic year.

“Little by little, you are seeing these young guys that Indiana has to develop,” McCaffery said. “They are able to do that because they know they have one of the best players in the country with the ball.”

Crean acknowledged IU is as young as any team in the Big Ten and said his team occasionally shows its youth. With the exception of Sheehey, graduate student guard Evan Gordon and senior forward Jeff Howard, IU’s “older” rotation players are sophomores.

“What happens is, when you are young and you don’t have the experience, you don’t have the consistency,” Crean said. “What we have is a consistency in work habits and work ethic, which is good and part of the process. But we don’t have that consistency of what it takes, physically and mentally, to win the games.”

While the versatility and depth of the Hawkeyes could overwhelm the young, inconsistent Hoosiers, anything can happen at Assembly Hall, where IU has already defeated a pair of top 10 opponents in Wisconsin and Michigan.

Follow reporter Andy Wittry on Twitter @AndyWittry.