Person to Watch in 2019: Joe Wieskamp, Hawkeye men's basketball star freshman

IOWA CITY, Ia. — Joe Wieskamp has been a resident of Iowa City for just six months. He’s been viewed as the hopeful leader of an Iowa men’s basketball renaissance for 42.

There were three long years between the time the gifted small forward from Muscatine pledged his allegiance to the Hawkeyes and the time he finally arrived. When he did get here, Wieskamp tried to blend in, just another freshman going through orientation.

“I just kind of zone that stuff out,” Wieskamp told the Press-Citizen in June, speaking of basketball fans eager to watch him elevate a team that hasn’t reached the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament since 1999, five months before he was born. “Just focus on myself and just know that if I continue to work like I have been, those expectations won’t really matter.”

If Wieskamp was hoping to temper expectations, he probably shouldn’t have been the Hawkeyes’ leading scorer in the very first game he played, a 15-point effort in a victory over Missouri-Kansas City on Nov. 8. He has scored at least 10 points in six of Iowa’s first 11 games. The Hawkeyes are ranked 21st with a 9-2 record.

The Rivals website called Wieskamp the 40th best high school senior basketball player in the nation for 2018. That’s the highest-regarded recruit Iowa coach Fran McCaffery has had in his nine seasons here. That, plus the fact that he was a local product, fueled the Wieskamp hype.

But hype is not his thing. Wieskamp is remarkably self-contained, both on the court, where his skills are evident but not flashy, and in dealings with the fans and media, where he is polite but not gregarious.

It helps Wieskamp that he doesn’t need to be the undisputed star of this year’s Hawkeye team. That would be junior Tyler Cook. But Iowa won’t get far without Wieskamp’s help, either. And after a 14-19 season that fueled some fan discontent, this year’s team would love to go far in the NCAA Tournament. It has been left out entirely the past two springs.

Wieskamp’s teammates love him. Cook said they see a different side of the 6-foot-6 freshman, calling him “a goofy dude.”

“Whenever you’ve got a guy that is not only smart but can actually hoop as well as he can, it makes your team that much better. It opens up lanes for myself, the rest of the guys and all of the sudden he’s getting a lot of open shots as well,” Cook said of Wieskamp’s impact.

Reach Mark Emmert at 319-339-7367, MEmmert@dmreg.com or follow him on Twitter at @MarkEmmert.