The Iowa men’s basketball team dropped an exhibition game, 76-74, to Augustana on Nov. 6.
By Ian Murphy
With the buzzer set to sound and the game tied at 74, Augustana forward Daniel Jansen took a fade-away shot over Iowa’s Adam Woodbury.
And with his fade-away over the 7-1 Iowa center, Jansen sunk the Hawkeyes, who struggled all night with the Division-II opponent, 76-74.
The Hawkeyes were overrun by the Vikings, who took the lead at the 10:30 mark of the first half and didn’t give it back despite several Iowa rally attempts.
“No comfort; anytime you step on the court and lose, there’s no comfort in that,” Woodbury said. “It’s a good team, well-coached, veteran group, made more shots than we did.”
Jansen isolated Woodbury on the left wing for the game winner to cap off a 19-point, 4-rebound night. Viking forward Casey Schilling added 20 points and 11 boards.
Augustana's Dan Jansen isos on Adam Woodbury and hits the step back for a 76-74 shocker of an upset. https://t.co/ar8dw62vKN
— regular bears fan (@KyleFMann) November 7, 2015
In all, the Hawkeyes were outrebounded 42-35 by a team whose tallest player, Jansen, is listed at 6-9.
Head coach Fran McCaffery said the Hawkeyes knew what they were getting into with Augustana, a team that finished 31-3 a year ago.
He said he’d rather play this game than one against a team that won eight games last season.
“I think they were about what we thought they’d be,” McCaffery said.
The Hawkeyes jumped out to an 8-0 lead in the first half but saw that quickly diminish when Augustana started making shots.
The Iowa lead stretched to 10 points at the 13:42 mark of the first half, but again, the Vikings rallied. In total, Iowa led for slightly more than nine minutes of the game.
“ I felt like we needed a game like this right here,” McCaffery said, citing upcoming bouts with Marquette, Iowa State, and Florida State as a reason to schedule a tough exhibition.
It might be that the Hawkeyes did. The game will not count toward the Hawkeyes’ RPI and other ranking metrics that go into an NCAA Tournament decision and will not count for their record, either. It does however, mean film for the Hawkeyes and an opportunity to learn.
Especially for the Hawkeye bench, which will have to pay a big role this season but did not see much court time.
Woodbury (6 points, 14 boards) and fellow starters Mike Gesell (14 points), Peter Jok (21 points), Jarrod Uthoff (10 points, 3 rebounds), and Anthony Clemmons (9 points, 3 assists)played a combined 154 minutes to just 46 total minutes for the seven bench players who saw the floor.
McCaffery was high on the bench post game, but the Hawkeye starters, Gesell leading the way with 35 minutes, each played almost the entire 40 minutes.
The Hawkeyes struggled defensively, especially in the second half, and that coupled with the weakness on the glass takes a large portion of the blame for the loss.
“We let them score, I think nine out of the first 13 possessions in the second half,” Gesell said. “When you’re down at the half, you can’t come out like that.”
Ultimately, Iowa tied the game just twice after Augustana took the lead, at 15-15 and 74.
And although the result did not go the way the Hawkeyes would have liked, McCaffery said the game will provide a useful tool.
”We better play somebody good who is going to expose some of our weaknesses,” McCaffery said. “As opposed to you win by 25, but you don’t really know where your weaknesses are yet.”
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