The two halves the Hawkeyes played on Dec. 10 describe two different teams, both called the Hawkeyes.
By Ian Murphy
AMES — The Iowa men’s basketball team appeared totally in control of the annual Cy-Hawk series game at halftime on Dec. 10 against Iowa State.
Aside from a handful of turnovers, the Hawkeyes played a nearly flawless first half. The Hawkeyes entered the locker room with a 49-35 advantage, and senior Jarrod Uthoff was almost beating the Cyclones by himself. He scored a career-high 30 points in the first half.
Iowa shot almost 60 percent from the floor in the first half, and a stunned Hilton Coliseum crowd watched as the No. 4 Cyclones could only wave their hands toward their bench as if suggesting they didn’t know how to stop the Hawkeyes.
Uthoff couldn’t miss, shooting 11-of-13 in the half, and the Hawkeyes out-rebounded the Cyclones 18-13.
The Hawkeyes entered the locker room confident after dominating the Cyclones on both ends of the court.
Then, as happens so often in basketball, the second half told a different story.
“Doesn’t matter in the first half; we lost the game,” Uthoff said.
Iowa opened the second half by stretching its lead to 20, its largest lead of the game, and things seemed to be following a Hawkeye script
But the success Iowa had on both ends of the floor in the first half disappeared suddenly, without warning.
The Hawkeyes ultimately lost, 83-82, and Uthoff tallied just 2 points after the break.
“They were into him, but they were into him in the first half, too,” head coach Fran McCaffery said. “For whatever reason, he just wasn’t as aggressive.”
The rest of the team looked out of sync, too.
Junior Peter Jok opened the second half scoring 14 of the Hawkeyes’ first 16 and seemed to pick up where Uthoff left off.
Then, however, Jok couldn’t put the ball in the basket until Iowa State was In the midst of a 15-2 run to cut the Hawkeye lead to just 1 point.
In the midst of the Hawks’ cold shooting spell, the Cyclones were able to capitalize on the Hawkeyes’ 9 turnovers in the second half to the tune of 18 points.
While both teams had problems with giving the ball away, Iowa State scored 32 points on Iowa’s turnovers, compared with Iowa’s 19 the other way.
The biggest difference-maker, however, were the 18 points the Cyclones scored on Iowa’s turnovers in the second half. Iowa had just 3 on 12 Cyclone giveaways.
“Way, way too many turnovers,” senior Mike Gesell said. “You can’t beat the No. 4 team in the country at their place giving the ball away that many times.”
Cold shooting and turnovers played a big factor in the Iowa State comeback and Iowa’s loss, but what remains is, as high as the Hawkeyes flew in the first half, they crashed like Icarus in the second.
“It hurts because we were leading the whole game,” Jok said. “They’re a great team; they know no matter how much they trail, they’re going to come back, and we knew that at halftime.
“I do feel like we kind of gave this one away.”
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