Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Iowa loses out on 4-star TE plus we make the argument for why Joe Wieskamp will have a successful NBA Career

Episode Date: July 8, 2021

The Iowa football team missed out on a top TE target in Micah Riley-Ducker which has sparked a significant amount of concern in Hawkeye nation. Not all hope is lost though and we talk about what this class needs and what expectations should be moving forward. We also hit on some Iowa basketball talk first with the NBA Draft followed by a preview of Iowa's non-conference schedule.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Built BarBuilt Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKED15,” and you’ll get 15% off your next order.BetOnline AGThere is only 1 place that has you covered and 1 place we trust. Betonline.ag! Sign up today for a free account at betonline.ag and use that promocode: LOCKEDON for your 50% welcome bonus.Rock AutoAmazing selection. Reliably low prices. All the parts your car will ever need. Visit RockAuto.com and tell them Locked On sent you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You are Locked On Hawkeyes, your daily podcast on the Iowa Hawkeyes. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Welcome back, Hawkeye Nation, to a Thursday morning episode of the Locked On Hawkeyes Podcast, your daily podcast covering your Iowa Hawkeyes on the Locked On Sports Network. As always, I am your host, Andrew Wade, and we've got a lot to cover today. We also had shows on Monday and Tuesday, and we have a show tomorrow. That's right, four episodes this week, despite being in the offseason. We did get a confirmation that a recruit in the Class of 2022 is not going to the University of Iowa.

Micah Riley-Ducker did commit to Auburn. We're going to talk about that and what it means for the 2022 class. I know I've seen a lot of concerns on Twitter about this class. I want to talk about that a little bit more. We also want to talk about Joe Wieskamp today. He's having some tryouts and some workouts with some NBA teams. I want to talk about what his ceiling is, what his floor is, and why his stock is currently going up. We're going to give you two big, and why his stock is currently going up.

We're going to give you two big-time comparisons. One is another Iowa kid. Not a University of Iowa kid, but an Iowa in the regards to the state of Iowa kid. And then finally, we're going to talk about some Iowa basketball schedule updates. That does not mean we're going to totally slip over Hall of Fame classes. We're going to talk about that on tomorrow's show, along with some ranking news and kind of what our thoughts are on that and an analysis of returning production. Let's get into the class, though, because that is the big topic of the day.

And again, we talked a little bit about this on Monday and Tuesday. Iowa is not a team that typically is going to land five stars or even a lot of four star recruits. I think what is struggling with a lot of Iowa fans right now, and please be in my DMs if I'm wrong here. It's the fact that at this point, Iowa has the least amount of recruits or commits in the class of 2022 in the Big Ten. I'm assuming that's kind of the biggest issue here. It's also the fact that the University of Iowa has missed out on two big-time tight end recruits in the last week. Two guys who were on campus for official visits

that were trending Iowa almost the entire time and didn't commit to the University of Iowa. Now, I get it. I'd be a little bit concerned, too. When you look at the Big Ten standings, right, Iowa is 14th in total in terms of overall points. That is simply because they don't have a lot of commitments at this time. They have seven total, one four-star, five three-stars, and one technically a no-star by the rankings of 24-7.

Thirteenth is Nebraska. They have seven commits. At twelfth, we have Illinois with 13, Purdue with 13, Maryland with 12, Michigan State with 13, Northwestern with 13, Wisconsin with 11, Minnesota with 13, Indiana with 10. So you can see Penn State has 18, including 10 four-stars. So when you compare to other schools, yes, it is a little bit concerning. Again, we talked about this on Tuesday.

I just want to reiterate this. Just because the class is small does not mean the class we currently have is good. I didn't talk about that on Tuesday, but the piece I did want to talk about that I did talk about on Tuesday is the fact that we knew this class was going to be smaller for several reasons. Iowa has had some of its best recruiting classes the last couple classes. They have a lot of guys waiting in the wings to play. There's several guys who returned with their COVID year. We have to factor in the fact that there is a COVID year for anyone who played

last year as well. So the numbers are going to be a little bit interesting. If you were to bring in 25 guys, there might be a chance that we see more transfers. And then also you factor in the COVID piece where Iowa hasn't had an opportunity to see a lot of these guys in person. They haven't had a lot of opportunities to see these guys play varsity football that much as they have developed. So this upcoming fall is going to be really important for Iowa to hit the recruiting trail and look at some of those underrated guys, some of those unranked guys,

find some of those hidden gems. Okay some of those unranked guys. Find some of those hidden gems. That's going to be huge. Iowa has done that in the past. I've referenced this several times, but George Kittle is a great example of that. Now, the last piece, and this is not my own idea. This is from Sean Bach of 24-7 Sports. But I should have honestly just realized it and kind of talked about that as a point.

But this was definitely something he had brought up as well. And so I want to make sure I give him the credit there. Look at Iowa's team. Look at the stars on Iowa's team. It is not made up of a bunch of four stars and five stars. Heck, it's not even made up of a bunch of scholarship players or original scholarship players. Kyler Schott was a walk-on. Charlie Jones was a walk-on, right? I mean, these are guys who

people didn't think much of when they joined the Iowa Hawkeyes. People probably saw Kyler Schott as a walk-on and thought, who cares, right? This doesn't matter. Well, it does, and it did, cares, right? This doesn't matter. Well, it does. And it did. And Kyler shot a big time player on this team. You look at some of the other guys that I was brought in. Why a black ranked 580th in the nation. Okay. He's going to have a big time role this upcoming season. Look at some of the other guys from the previous classes. I'm going to try to pull up the linebacker rankings even just to show you there. But you look down this list, Jack Campbell was the 662nd ranked player. He's going to be a stud. Tyler Goodson, 671.

Don't understand that at all, but Dane Belton, 791. Sam Laporta, unranked. That's how big of a – I mean, these are guys who were not highly touted coming out of high school and they are big time productive players. I believe Amir Seth-Marset might have even been a two star recruit and he started playing his very first year. 21st year again you keep going down this list tyler linderbaum is one of the best players in nation 409th when he came out of high school davian nixon was a three-star recruit out of community college mckay sergeant barely ended up landing on iowa and i'm going through some guys who you know are gone from the team now but jack plum 856 he might be our starting tackle cody inks or ints i gosh if someone could tell me how to say his name, that'd be awesome. Because I keep always getting confused on the last name,

and I've heard it a couple times, but I apologize there. Cody at 934th. Nico Reganey, unranked. Kava Merriweather, unranked. I mean, Seth Benton, unranked. Again, these are guys who, gosh, Riley Moss is a two-star Grasher who started his freshman year. Again, my point of who, and gosh, Riley Moss is a two-star Gratier who started his freshman year. Again, my point of this is Iowa does not typically have those star-studded classes

and they don't typically fill out their team with those kinds of guys either. So from that aspect, we should not be concerned. Now it is a little bit concerning. We don't have a lot of commits. I've talked about this before. I think in the next two weeks, we're going to have four or five guys commit. There are several guys that have Iowa in their top two. I do expect at this point for Iowa to land those guys. They will find a tight end. We talked about this on Tuesday. They have not traditionally landed big-time recruits in the tight end position.

I don't understand why the tight end U mantra is not resonating with recruits. However, it hasn't been a problem in developing tight ends in the past. George Kittle, honestly, outside of CJ Fedorowicz, pretty much any tight end down the list was not an overly highly touted recruit. Sam Laporta was unranked by 24-7 sports as well. Or at least, sorry, when I say unranked, again, not in that top 1,000 range. So it is concerning. It is concerning that Iowa is at seven commits at this point,

but it's not the end of the world. I do expect Iowa to eventually fill out its class, get to 17 or 18, is kind of my guess at this point, given the numbers with the free year, given how well Iowa has done in the past couple years recruiting, and given the fact they haven't had an opportunity to really look at these guys as much as they would have liked to, that is something Iowa does care about. They're not just going to willy-nilly offer a scholarship

and hope they get some guys in that could be the wrong guys. They want to continue to go through their entire vetting process. So if you're concerned about it, I understand. I think we need to wait and see. And I think also when we're on Twitter talking about or Facebook talking about this class sucks or whatever it might be that you say, be cognizant of the kids who are in that class already, who are awesome athletes and young men. I've talked to Caden Crawford. He's an amazing young man. He's going to be a stud player. Aaron Graves has been committed to this Iowa team for several years.

Be cognizant. When you say this class isn't good, be very careful what you're saying in the sense of this class isn't as big. Right? And we have concerns about the lack of people in the class. But the people that are in this class already, we should be incredibly excited about all of these guys. Jaden Montgomery, Cale Crow, Jack Dotsler, Jacob Bostic, Caden Crawford, Aaron Graves, and Carson May. These are all guys we should be very excited about as a class. That is my soapbox.

We're going to get into some basketball talk here on segment two of the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. Before we do that, though, you know I have to tell you about a couple of our sponsors of the show today, starting with betonline.ag, the fastest and the easiest way to bet on all of your sports action. Baseball season is in full swing, but you can also get all the lines on pretty much any sport or thing you want to, including MLB, NBA, NHL, and UFC, MMA. We also have the basketball tournament coming up as well, a great time to make some money on some basketball teams. So before the next pitch or the next basket,

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on your first deposit when you use the promo code LOCKEDON. So free account, 50% welcome bonus at betonline.ag, your online sportsbook experts. All right, y'all, we are back for segment two of the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast, your daily podcast covering your Iowa Hawkeyes on the Locked On Sports Network. As I mentioned before the break, we want to talk a little bit about some basketball. And I want to talk about Joe Wieskamp. His stock is undoubtedly going up. You know, prior or coming into the draft season, Joe Wieskamp was not often rated or sorry,

ranked in the top 60, was not on a lot of mock drafts. or sorry, ranked in the top 60, was not on a lot of mock drafts. He had a truly superb combine performance, shot out of the gym, had great athletic testing. And I think what people are starting to realize is what a lot of, I would say the majority of Iowa fans have realized. There's still some people who are clearly not watching basketball that have some opinions as well. But Joe Wieskamp is a guy who can play in the NBA. And I want to talk a little bit more about this. First,

I want to give you the latest mock draft that I saw from Bleacher Report. They had Joe Weiskamp landing at 40. They had Luka Garza landing at 48. So again, the draft stock is improving for both of these guys. For Luka Garza, they had him going to the Atlanta Hawks via a pick from the Heat. And here's what they had to say. Garza's transformed body and shooting stood out during drills at the Combine, though a groin injury prevented him from scrimmaging. He may have improved his stock slightly, but he's still regarded as a mid-to-late second round pick. Again, whoever gets Luka Garza is going to be in for a treat. I think he's a guy who's going to really surprise people at the next level, despite concerns about his athleticism.

Now, at 40, they had the New Orleans Pelicans via the Bulls taking Joe Wieskamp, and here's what they had to say about that. After the combine, Wieskamp made scouts go back and re-watch film of his spectacular shooting season that many overlooked. Some believe he's now an early second-round option and value pick, given his 6'7 size and shoes, 6'11 wingspan, 42-inch max vertical, and 46.2% three ball. Again, had a phenomenal combine.

Joe Wieskamp is a guy who is going to have a good NBA career, in my opinion. A couple reasons why. First, he can shoot. The game is moving towards the three ball. Ever since the Warriors won the couple titles with the three-point shot, Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, it has been something that teams covet. They want people who can make three-point shots. Now, when people talk about Joey's camp,

the biggest concern is typically the playmaking from a distribution standpoint and the athleticism. Now at athleticism, I think he put a lot of those concerns to rest and athleticism typically translates to either breaking guys down off the dribble or being able to play defense. However, if anyone has watched any NBA games,

you realize that defense doesn't freaking matter. No one gives a crap about defense except for a select few guys. So if anyone just comes out there and actually tries on defense, that is going to be at least average in the NBA. All right. Imagine a Rockets team with Joe Wieskamp. James Harden is not playing crap for defense. Joe Wieskamp, even in a bad day,

is going to be a better defender than James Harden. So again, defense is not going to be as big of a concern. Shooting-wise, Joe Wieskamp brings it there. And distribution-wise, Joe Wieskamp is not going to be the guy bringing the ball down the court. He's never been asked to do that. I don't doubt, though, that Joe Wieskamp could be that guy. He just didn't need to be that guy at Iowa, and he won't need to be that guy in the NBA. So why do I think he can also succeed? Biggest thing, NBA. So why do I think he can also succeed? Biggest thing, the NBA is a lot looser in terms of freedom of movement, right? The big 10 is a very physical conference and teams are very physical on Joe as the undoubtedly number two option in the Iowa offense and the NBA Joe on any, on a court, any given time might be the number four option, number five option. He's not going to be the go-to guy on an NBA team.

Teams are not going to be focusing on Joe Wieskamp. And NBA defenses are not going to be able to get their hands on him as much. So it's not going to be as big of a concern there. He's going to be a great spot-up shooter. And there's two guys I want to quickly touch on. Kyle Korver and Duncan Robinson. Kyle Korver is a guy who carved out an amazing and impressive NBA career

despite only being able to shoot the ball. In college, though, he hit 45.3% of his threes as a senior, or sorry, in his career. As a senior, he averaged 17.8 points per game and 6.4 rebounds per game. Kyle Korver is one of the best three-point shooters in the history of the NBA. All right, Duncan Robinson is a guy who a lot of people want to compare Joe Wieskamp to,

and I think that's a very apt comparison. Duncan Robinson, 6'7", 210 pounds, played in the Big Ten. He is doing great in the NBA. As a senior, he shot 42% in Michigan, averaged 9.2 points per game and 2.4 rebounds per game. He is doing well in the NBA. Joe Wieskamp, as a junior, hit 46% of his threes, while averaging 14.8 points per game and 6.6 rebounds per game

at a similar length and height, and he can jump out of the gym. Teams want that, especially in that back end of that first round. Teams are going to want a guy who can come in and shoot the ball. Now, sometimes teams are going to take, you know, take a shot on someone who has a higher upside than Joey's camp has a potential to be a star, right? But smart teams are going to look at Joey's camp and say, you know what, this guy can come in. He can knock down three to four threes. He can play above average defense and he'll get to the rim. If he needs to, he can rebound the ball. If he'll get to the rim if he needs to he can rebound

the ball if he needs to he's going to put himself in position to be successful and he's going to work his butt off at that next level they're going to look at Joey's camp and think we need this guy especially the late first round early second round so expect Joey's camp to go probably the highest since any for about 20 years for an Iowa basketball player so really exciting stuff for Joey's camp and obviously Luka Garza as well will be drafted. I have no doubt about that. That is my talk, though. That is my soapbox on Joe Weiskamp.

If you're not on board the Joe Weiskamp train, you need to be. Joe Weiskamp is going to be a good player in the NBA. And we're starting to see that hype really build up for the Muscatine, Iowa native. Coming up on segment three, we're going to get into two basketball updates, Portland State and Virginia, talk about what those teams bring to the table and what that means from an Iowa basketball schedule perspective. Before we get into that, though, you know I've got to tell you about rockauto.com because with the ever-increasing numbers of makes and models,

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And obviously, once these things, especially the Portland State, you heard all these UNI fans and Drake fans coming out of the woodwork saying, why isn't Iowa scheduling Drake and UNI? I'm not going to get into it too much today other than why do they need to? What does that game bring to Iowa? I am a Drake fan. I am a Drake grad. I went to undergrad at Drake. I'm going to grad school at Iowa. I don't think scheduling Drake is a good idea for Iowa. It just doesn't offer a lot of value. It's just not a win-win opportunity. It's a

lose-lose opportunity for the Hawks, in my personal opinion. However, they scheduled Portland State. Last year, Portland State was ranked the 245th team, according to Kempom. They were 9-13 and had one of the worst offenses in the nation. And they only beat one team with a higher ranking than 189th, and that was 122nd Weber State on back-to-back home games. So they had a favorable advantage there. They do return four of their five starters, but did lose three seniors, including their number one guy, James Scott. And they had two transfers as part of those four of five starters, one from Washington and one from Arizona State.

So this is not a bad team per se. To me, it's team Iowa should beat by 25, but I do believe that first half is going to be a bit difficult. This is going to be a team that comes out motivated. This is not a standard cupcake team in my opinion. They do have some talent on this squad. Iowa should beat them by 20 or 30, but initially it might be a little bit closer than what we all feel comfortable with unless Iowa can come out shooting real hot. The team I'm more interested in, though, is Virginia. Virginia is the team that Iowa gets to face in the Big Ten ACC Challenge.

What a great opportunity for Iowa to add a great non-conference game in Virginia. And when I look at Virginia, I'm not really sure what to expect, to be honest. I know what kind of game they play. Obviously, it's an incredibly slow game. Their tempo is 357th in the nation. They're always a very strong defensive team, and again, their pace of play is so slow. It's going to be such a contradictory style to what Iowa typically runs,

which is moving up the court, getting up there quick, shooting the ball early in the shot clock, etc. Virginia last year, though, was a 4th seed in the the tournament and they were ranked 19th according to Ken Palm, but they did lose three starters, Sam Houser, Jay Huff, and Trey Murphy. However, they received a couple transfers including Amon Franklin, a guy we should all be familiar with, a big-time recruit that joined Indiana. He struggled, he transferred, he's now at Virginia. And they also received a transfer, Jaden Gardner, who was an AAC first team all-conference player with 18 points per game and 8.7 rebounds per game. This is going to be a tough team. Virginia is a fringe top 25 team. I think given the amount of losses from a starter's perspective, this is going to be a team that's

in transition early on in the season, giving Iowa an opportunity to take one from a good team on Monday, November 29th. So to me, this is a really cool chance. Unlike Drake, unlike a UNI, this is a win-win opportunity, right? You play this team. You obviously don't want to lose, but losing is not the end of the world because you're losing to a quality opponent. Now winning is a big-time deal.

That's a quality win that looks good for the rankings. It looks good for the tournament committee. And it looks good because when you only play tough Big Ten teams, you don't know how you match up against some of those non-conference opponents. It gives Iowa a little bit of an opportunity to show where they actually belong in the landscape of college basketball. And I think this Iowa basketball team is going to be a lot better than what people think.

Looking at the rest of this non-conference schedule so far that has been filled out, we have Iowa state, which as we all know is full of transfers with a new head coach. This is going to be very interesting to see how the Iowa state team gels in this upcoming season. I think, I think Iowa state fans are not going to be overly happy. They probably believe, in my personal opinion, that this team is going to be ready to go right away.

I am not at that point yet with this Iowa State team, although they could be good in a couple years. They do have a lot of good transfers. Again, they do need to gel. Early on in the season, though, gelling is not the easiest thing to do, and it typically takes several weeks, even a couple months, to get teams like that ready to go utah state is going to be an interesting team they lost three starters from their 11th seed team last year they do have a

new head coach who brought over two good players from umbc so i mean iowa's non-conference schedule is not such a cupcake as people would expect. However, we haven't seen what their tournament teams are going to be when they host a couple people at Carver over Thanksgiving more than likely. We haven't seen what those teams are going to be yet, so that will obviously probably reduce the strength of that non-conference schedule, but it's good to see them get some big-time teams like Virginia in there. If Utah State can get back that level of notoriety, that could be a solid win all around. And Iowa State, if they can get good again, it won't happen this year, but in the couple years, that'll be a really good non-conference game once again.

Although last year, it didn't mean crap for the Hawks because they didn't play them. And Iowa State was a bad team in general. So it's interesting seeing all this kind of play out. But as we get more scheduling news, we'll make sure to cover all that on the lockdown Hawkeyes podcast. And tomorrow we'll be breaking down some of the rankings from Phil steel, a fantastic college outlet for everything. College football.

We're going to talk about what he had to say or what that, you know, the magazine had to say. We're also going to talk about the hall of fame classes and returning production. And if we get any more commits between now and tomorrow morning, we'll make sure to break that down as well. Hawkeye Nation, I appreciate you tuning in.

If you do want more Locked On content, you can check out the Locked On Today podcast. You get all the sports news you need in under 20 minutes with the Locked On Today podcast. Host Peter Bukowski updates you on the latest news in every major sport with the help of our local experts. Follow the Locked On Today podcast on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcast app. Again, thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next time.