Kyle Hankins

Real shooter knows exactly why he’s doing this

Ben McCollum scoffed at any in-game adjustments that Iowa made against Nebraska to come back multiple times from 10-point deficits and win, 77-71. "Man, I would like to say that, like I just made this huge adjustment and it was like, 'Man, I did that.' It was, 'Do what we were supposed to do when we started the game. Box 'em out, please.' And that was about it. That was the adjustment. I don't know, people always talk about these earth-shattering adjustments. Once you're in the game there's a few things that you can adjust to, but if you haven't worked on 'em it's not going to work anyway. So those are things we work on daily in practice is boxing out. "Even in the second half, they got a few O-boards and we just were soft on our box-outs. We weren't physical. Any time it was like, 'Hey, I felt like that was over the back.' And the official is like, 'You've got to box out a little bit stronger.' That means you're playing soft. We just weren't as physical as we needed to be boxing out. And then I thought we did a better job, after we gave up all those points (after not) boxing out. Then we actually stopped fouling shooters, too. That was really nice as well."

The Fernando Mendoza arc is beyond storybook. Heartbreak at Cal, glory in Indiana.