Iowa City, Iowa — The 16th ranked Iowa Hawkeyes look to continue a late season run Thursday afternoon by taking on Richmond in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament.
The Hawkeyes are the fifth seed in the Midwest Regional after winning the Big Ten Tournament and coach Fran McCaffery’s team has been a trendy pick to make a deep tournament run.
After playing Big Ten teams for the past two and a half months the challenge now is to get ready for an unfamiliar opponent.
Richmond senior guard Jacob Gilyard is the all-time NCAA leader in steals and triggered a Richmond defense that stepped up last week in winning the Atlantic-10 Tournament.
McCaffery says Richmond’s experience is a concern. The Spiders have six players who used an extra year provided by COVID and four of them have topped more than a thousand points in their career.
After winning a Big Ten title senior guard Jordan Bohannon would like to cap his career with a deep tournament run.
Bohannon on Iowa being tabbed as a team that could make a deep tournament run.
The Hawkeyes have won nine of their last 10 games, including four straight last week in Indianapolis to win the Big Ten Tournament.
The Spiders are the 11 seed and are riding the momentum of a run to the Atlantic-10 Tournament championship. Hawkeye All-American forward Keegan Murray.
Tipoff Thursday is 2:10p.m., Iowa time
