Peter Jok and Jarrod Uthoff bounced back from a loss to Maryland in a big way.
By Kyle Mann
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After suffering their first loss in more than a month on Jan. 28 in Maryland, the Hawkeyes returned to their winning ways on Sunday with a 85-71 win over Northwestern.
First, however, they had to find their shooting stroke.
Iowa is shooting 40-percent from beyond the arc this season — fourth in the Big Ten — but posted a dreadful 5-of-24 mark from the outside in the 74-68 loss to the Terrapins.
Questions about the type of ball used in Maryland were quickly dismissed by Iowa head coach Fran McCaffery, leaving only one explanation for Iowa’s performance: the Maryland defense.
Take, for example, the defensive plan Terp coach Mark Turgeon designed for Jarrod Uthoff. Man assignments for both Jake Layman and Robert Carter had Uthoff dealing with length and strength all night long, leading to a 9-point performance on 2-of-13 from the floor and 0-of-3 from 3.
So when the Hawkeyes hit the floor against Northwestern on Sunday, fans wanted to see their team regain form. Unsurprisingly, so did the Hawkeyes.
“That was probably the most aggressive I’ve seen [Uthoff] come out,” Anthony Clemmons said. “I was telling him on the bench he came out really aggressive, he said he couldn’t get his shot down, so he just kept shooting. That’s what we expect out of him. Nobody’s ever mad at him for taking shots. If he’s rolling, our team is rolling.”
It was a classic example of a player shooting himself out of a slump, and it worked out exactly as it’s supposed to. Uthoff came out firing and missed his first three 3-pointers, briefly making it seem like maybe the slump was real.
Then he sank his first 3 to tie the game at 7 and made another less than a minute later to take a 10-7 advantage. The Hawkeyes didn’t quite shoot the lights out in the first half, but once they got started, they showed no signs of a hangover post-Maryland.
“I shot terribly in Maryland; sometimes that happens, it happens to the best players in the world,” Uthoff said. “You’ve just got to look forward to the next game.”
After trailing 18-14, Iowa launched a 14-0 run and held the Wildcats to 2 points over a nearly 10-minute span to take a 28-18 lead, which turned into a 42-26 advantage at halftime.
Peter Jok had only 4 points in the first half but exploded to begin the second half and single-handedly squashed any hopes of a Wildcat comeback. Iowa’s lead had been reduced to 9 points — but 14 points in a row for Jok, including three consecutive 3s — had Carver-Hawkeye fans on their feet and Iowa’s lead extended to 20.
Jok is ascending quickly and making a name for himself as one of the best players in the Big Ten, and after a muted performance in Maryland led the Hawkeyes with 26 points in the victory on Sunday. With his 22 points in the second half, the junior guard showed once again that he can get as hot as anybody in the conference.
“Jarrod was cooking in the first half, so we tried to find him,” Jok said. “Then the second half I had to pick it up and get aggressive.”
The Hawkeyes are now 16-4 overall, 8-1 in the Big Ten, and despite their loss on the big stage, are back to form.
“We just had to come back and do what we had to do,” Jok said. “We knew we were going to bounce back, we knew Jarrod was going to bounce back, too, so it was a good game.”