The Hawkeyes outscored Penn State 73-49 to earn its 15th-straight home win.
By Courtney Baumann
Defense wins games, and it helped the Iowa men’s basketball team earn its 15th-straight home victory Wednesday night, when it topped Penn State, 73-49, in Carver-Hawkeye.
The Nittany Lions never had much of a chance; it took fewer than seven minutes for the No. 5 Hawkeyes to go up by double digits.
Penn State cut the lead back down to single digits a few times after that, with the last time coming at 5:44 left in the first half, when Davis Zemgulis hit a 3 to make the lead 9. That was not something Jarrod Uthoff wanted to see. The senior scored from beyond the arc just 12 seconds later to put Iowa back up by 12.
The Hawks extended that lead to 19 by halftime.
Iowa head coach Fran McCaffery said it is very encouraging to get off to such a fast start.
“Right from the outset, our defense set the tone. We got stops. We got run-outs and kind of established how we want to play,” he said. “We were really locked in to throwing it ahead and attacking in transition,”
All those defensive stops led to the fewest number of points Iowa has allowed in a game so far this season.
Penn State went just 1-of-20 in 3-point field goals. With no luck beyond the arc, its offense was forced to try to attack the basket. The Nittany Lions thrived there, scoring 36 of their points in the paint.
All the effort down low came to no avail. Penn State’s missed lay-ups and shots right under the basket were often recovered by the Hawkeyes, who had 23 defensive rebounds.
Even with the loss, Penn State head coach Patrick Chambers had nothing but good words to say about McCaffery and the Hawkeyes.
“I look at Iowa as a team that is hopefully one day us,” he said. “I love Franny, and I love what they’re doing. I think it’s awesome and that it’s awesome for this league.”
The stretched lead gave McCaffery the chance to rest his starters and let some bench players show what they can do.
Nearly every Hawkeye had the opportunity to see game timeWednesday night. Fourteen of the 17 on the roster were on the court at one point or another.
The bench added 28 points and 15 rebounds to the stat line, largely because of the contributions of Ahmad Wagner, Dom Uhl, and Nicholas Baer.
Baer, a redshirt freshman who walked on to the team last year, said the role of those coming off the bench is important.
“It’s always great to have production off the bench and that spurt of energy,” he said. “You definitely need [it] to be successful in this league.
Even as the bench put up a solid performance, the starting five once again gave Iowa a huge advantage.
Anthony Clemmons, Peter Jok, and Uthoff scored in double digits, even though they played fewer than 30 minutes of the game. Senior Adam Woodbury used his height to grab 15 rebounds, a career high.
Iowa’s next challenge will be when it heads to Champaign to take on Illinois on Feb. 7.
“[Illinois is] a tough place to play,” McCaffery said. “The last couple times we have played them, they have been really good, really close, really hard-fought games, so we have to be ready for that one.”
