UI Athletics release (edit)
07/30/21
University of Iowa men’s basketball players Joe Wieskamp and Luka Garza were chosen in the 2021 NBA Draft held Thursday evening in Brooklyn, New York. Wieskamp was selected by the San Antonio Spurs with the 41st overall selection, while Garza was the 52nd overall pick by the Detroit Pistons.
Wieskamp and Garza become the 54th and 55th Iowa men’s basketball players to be selected in an NBA Draft, and the 20th and 21st Hawkeyes to be selected in the top two rounds. The Wieskamp and Garza selections mark the third NBA Draft that multiple Hawkeyes were drafted in the first two rounds; the other years were 1989 and 1998.
Wieskamp and Garza are the third and fourth Hawkeyes to be drafted under head coach Fran McCaffery. Garza will be reunited with former Hawkeye Tyler Cook an undrafted free agent who played a majority of the 2021 NBA season with the Pistons.
Wieskamp is the highest NBA Draft selection by a Hawkeye since Ricky Davis in 1998 (No. 21 overall). The second-team All-Big Ten honoree was the only Division I player in the country with 400 points, 200 rebounds, 70 3-pointers, and 25 steals in 2021. Wieskamp finished his three-year Hawkeye career ranked ninth in Iowa career 3-pointers (184) and 24th in scoring (1,283).
Garza was the 2021 consensus national player of the year sweeping the major postseason awards, including the Wooden, Naismith, Associated Press, Oscar Robertson, NABC, Lute Olson, and Sporting News. Last week, Garza was recognized as the Big Ten Jesse Owens Male Athlete of the Year. The Washington DC native owns Iowa’s single-season and all-time scoring records. Garza, who graduated in May with a degree in economics, is the only men’s basketball player in Big Ten history to accumulate 2,250 points and 900 rebounds.
Iowa and Michigan were the only Big Ten programs to have multiple players selected in the draft.
