Hawkeye Aaron White says he got his feet back under him this past weekend as Iowa cruised to a 30-point win over Coppin State. White had struggled a bit offensively in the previous two outings, but White wound up scoring 20 on Saturday, including six dunks. “It was good to get a game in like this right before we start Big Ten,” White says. Three freshmen are consistently part of the Hawkeye’s rotation this season and White – a sophomore — says the team “learned a lot” in their 13-game non-conference schedule.

“We beat some good teams. Iowa State’s a good team. UNI’s a good team and then, again, beat these teams that were on our schedule that you look at and we were supposed to be them,” White says. “…We weren’t perfect, but we had some slips that we came back from.” Iowa opens Big Ten play against Indiana. “You’ve got the previously number one ranked team in the country in Indiana and then you turn right around and a couple of days later you’ve got the number two team in the country,” White says. “…You’re just going to have to amp it up. You’re going to have to stay locked in and really buy into the game plan that our coaches are putting together for us you know. The whole staff has done great getting us prepared for every game this season and I think we’ve done a good job staying locked in, no matter what our opponent is, but it’s just going to be a little different challenge because we’re going again, you know, basically future NBA players…big, strong, experienced guys in the Big Ten.”

The Indiana game tips off at 3 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. They’ll play at Michigan on January 6th. White is from Strongville, Ohio. He played in all 35 of Iowa’s games last year, pulling down 199 rebounds and was named to the Big Ten’s All-Freshman Team.

(Radio Iowa)

The snowstorm at the end of last week wiped out most of the high school contests on Thursday and Friday, but overall the first half of the winter sports season hasn’t had many weather-related interruptions. Bud Legg is the spokesman for the Iowa High School Athletic Association which oversees boys’ sports. “Through Friday we’ll probably have maybe about 120 cancellations of boys’ games and probably for every boys’ game there’s probably a girls’ game that’s been cancelled, and a comparable number of wrestling events,” Legg says. He says it’s the most cancellations they’ve had in the last two years.

“You know last year we had a really, really great year. But three years ago we had over 900 cancellations for the winter, and we’re just talking just boys’ sports at that time,” Legg says. “And of those 900, we had all but about 75 or 80 of them were made up.” The cancellations lead to a lot of calendar checking by the athletic directors at each school. Legg says they have to match schedules for open dates and see if the officials are available, all while checking to be sure there are no conflicts with other school events such as music concerts and plays. The sports teams do not practice on Christmas Eve or Christmas, and then it is up to the coaches how long a break they give before starting up practice again. Legg says the association does not allow any regular games during a school’s Christmas break.

“They’ll have scrimmages…at maybe two or three schools at the same site and get in some scrimmage time. Because the school staff is on vacation, the athletic association for probably going on 30-35 years now, has determined that is not a good time to try and play games,” Legg says. The teams will return from break and begin playing games again in January.

(Radio Iowa)

(Released Mon., Dec. 24th 2012)