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The quest to make five straight NCAA Tournament appearances for the Iowa Hawkeyes begins at home on Tuesday against North Dakota as they turn the page on the Murray era.
North Dakota Fighting Hawks vs. Iowa Hawkeyes (-19, 153)
The past two seasons brothers Keegan and Kris Murray have been the team’s scoring leaders but with both having gone professional, and will have to look at the returning backcourt to pick up the slack.
The trio of Tony Perkins, Payton Sandfort, and Patrick McCaffery combined for 32.4 points per game last season as members of an Iowa squad that has some of the largest home and road splits of any Division I college basketball team last season.
Iowa scored at least 75 points in every home game a season ago with their 3-point shooting percentage being 351st away from home at 28.1% compared to 38.6% at home, and scored 21.1 more points per 100 possessions at home than away from home.
While North Dakota brings back two of their top three scorers from last season, but had a waiver for Tyree Ihenacho denied, who spent his redshirt freshman season at North Dakota with 8.7 points and 5.7 rebounds per game before spending the past two seasons at James Madison.
This leaves North Dakota with just one returning player that pulled in more than 3.8 rebounds per game from a core that was 348th in the country in points allowed per possession away from home.
Since the start of the 2019-20 season, Iowa is 16-4 against the spread as a favorite of at least 18 points and will further that trend on Tuesday.
The Play: Iowa -19