By JOHN BOHNENKAMP

It’s been a while since Owen Freeman has experienced a three-game losing streak.

“Not since freshman year of high school,” the Iowa freshman said on Thursday.

Freeman and the Hawkeyes are coming off a three-loss week and are at 5-5 heading into the final three nonconference games of the season, starting with Saturday’s game against Florida A&M at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines.

Freeman and the rest of Iowa’s freshmen probably aren’t used to such losing, but junior Payton Sandfort gave them a history lesson this week, mentioning how in the 2021-22 season, in the exact same time period, the Hawkeyes lost to Purdue, Illinois and Iowa State, and went on to win the Big Ten Tournament and qualify for the NCAA tournament.

“I think it’s kind of important to emphasize that to some of the guys, that we’ve been through this before and we can’t lose our confidence,” Sandfort said.

The Hawkeyes have a week without any games because of finals, but they’re still practicing and they went over the video clips from Sunday’s 90-80 home loss to Michigan. They’ve also met as a team to emphasize that the losing has to end.

We had a pretty rough film session just because of how we played, so we addressed it,” Freeman said. “Then we kind of, as a team, just decided that we have some things to change. That was in each one of us, and it needed to happen.

“We basically had to have a ‘come to Jesus’ moment after last week and address what we were doing wrong on the court. I feel like we’ve addressed it, and moved on.”

“When people start getting about egos and thinking about themselves, that’s kind of when it can spiral out of control,” Sandfort said. “Ultimately, it was one bad week and I think we’re going to be just fine.”

Sandfort said the time off was a good reset for the Hawkeyes.

“It came at the right time, when we’re figuring out what we’re doing, figuring out our identity again,” he said. “I think it’s been good for everybody to be away a little bit.”

Iowa coach Fran McCaffery appreciated his team’s response this week.

“The first thing is they have to stay positive and believe in themselves,” he said. “If they don’t think we do, then they won’t. So we stay positive with them, and we stay business-like in the sense of it’s our job pointing out things they aren’t doing as well as they should be, as well as they’re capable of. It’s a diligent group in that sense, so they’ll put the time in. They want to be good.

“I’ve been impressed since Sunday with the professionalism in their approach.”

Freeman said the key has been to stay even emotionally.

“You just kind of ride the roller coaster,” he said.

Still, Freeman said, losing is “not fun at all. It’s not something you want to come in and do, or expect to happen. Obviously it was a rough week, but we’ve worked past it and moved forward.”

McCaffery said he plans on keeping the same lineup of Tony Perkins and Sandfort in the backcourt, and Patrick McCaffery, Ben Krikke and Freeman in the frontcourt.

And while Perkins is at the ‘1’ to start the game, McCaffery plans on continuing to use sophomores Dasonte Bowen and Josh Dix along with Brock Harding as point guards.

“In all honesty, all of those guys are going to play,” he said. “It’s not like I’m going to pick one and bench the other two guys, or whatever. They’re all going to play, and they all can play. And they’re not strictly one-position guys, and we need depth.”

Iowa faces Florida A&M (322 KenPom), UMBC (327) and Northern Illinois (185) to close the nonconference schedule, but no one is taking the final slate for granted, especially in the wake of Northwestern’s loss to Chicago State earlier this week.

“It’s not like, ‘Wow, that’s really rare.’ It happens every night,” McCaffery said. “I don’t know Chicago State’s roster, but I know a kid got 30 (points). I mean, he was cooking. And every team has guys like that, especially now with complete free agency. You don’t show up with young 18-year-old freshmen. Everybody’s old, everybody wants to hoop.”

“At this level, you can’t take anybody lightly, because everybody has really good players,” Sandfort said. “You can’t take anybody lightly at this level, because it will bite you.”

For now, Freeman said, the goal is to win the first one, because he doesn’t like the feeling of defeat.

“It’s a little different,” Freeman said. “But we have plans to change it.”

“We’re going to figure it out,” Sandfort said.

Photo: Iowa’s Ben Krikke (center), Owen Freeman (right) and Tony Perkins react during Sunday’s loss to Michigan. (Stephen Mally/hawkeyesports.com)