Fran McCaffery and Iowa will take on Michigan State on Thursday night, and the coach previewed the game, and updates about his team ahead of the 7 p.m. ET tipoff.

Iowa saw its four-game winning streak snapped on Saturday at Ohio State, and Michigan State lost 3 of their last 4, with the most recent coming Sunday at Indiana.

Asked about Patrick McCaffrey’s status, the coach said it’s a game-time decision. Patrick McCaffery left the team in the beginning of the month to take a mental pause and has missed the last 5 games.

“He’s still practicing, doing better,” the coach said, per Hawkeye Insider, and added that Patrick’s return will be “at some point, without a doubt. … He’s doing everything that everybody else is doing right now. He’s running, he’s lifting, shooting, practicing. I think his conditioning should be OK — whenever he decides to play.”

About Michigan State, McCaffery has noticed Tyson Walker’s improvement, and said it’s coincided with the development of AJ Hoggard.

“I think he’s played about as well as anybody I’ve seen on tape,” the Iowa coach said. “Great deal of confidence, scoring the ball at a high clip. … I thought Hoggard was good last year. I think he’s becoming elite. There’s two different things there — he was good, now he’s elite. So now, Walker — he can play off the ball and sometimes he hasn’t, but he can go get buckets. He can score the ball in a number of different levels and get to the rim. He’s got a serious pull-up game. He can make 3s, and he’s a late-game shot maker. Those 2 guys together — I think — have been really good for that team, but they’ve also been really good together.”