The Iowa men’s basketball team fell on the road to Indiana, 85-78, in a game that never seemed to go the Hawkeyes’ way.
A combination of factors could have beaten the Hawkeyes single-handedly. One of the biggest was bench points. Iowa got zero points from its subs, Indiana got 28.
Iowa also made just 13-of-23 attempts from the free-throw line.
“You can’t beat a team of this caliber on the road and execute in certain situations the way we did,” head coach Fran McCaffery said. “Because they’re going to make you pay.”
The Hawkeyes faced a 45-38 halftime deficit, but to say the Iowa men’s basketball team got off to a rocky start in Bloomington would be an understatement.
Iowa was crushed on the glass for most of the first half, failing to box out the Hoosiers. Rebounding recently has been key in Hawkeye victories, but Iowa was outrebounded 21-11 in the first half.
“When you give up 9 offensive rebounds, 12, it seemed like it was 9 early, it’s harder to run,” McCaffery said.
The rebounding deficit, coupled with Iowa’s inability to stop Indiana on defense despite throwing every defense — man, zone, press — at the Hoosiers.
Indiana erupted to leads of 18-10, 30-15 and eventually, 36-20, the Hoosiers’ largest lead of the half.
At halftime, the Hawkeyes only trailed by 7 points, and they’re no strangers to coming back in the state of Indiana. After coming back from 19 points at Purdue, a 7-point gap was no matter.
Iowa opened the second half on a 7-0 run to tie the game at 45, punctuated with a Jarrod Uthoff dunk.
Indiana head coach Tom Crean called a time-out with just over 17 minutes to go, and it was essentially a new game.
Iowa scored, Indiana answered, and the game progressed round-by-round for much of the second half.
The biggest swing might have been Iowa’s Peter Jok hitting the floor then hobbling off with just under 10 minutes to go, but Iowa stretched its lead to 60-56.
“This is a terrific team we just played,” McCaffery said. “I thought we executed much better in that stretch than we did the rest of the game.
“You can’t beat a team like that unless you’re executing.”
When Indiana freshman center Thomas Bryant picked up his fourth personal foul (9:35), Iowa appeared to be in a position to use Adam Woodbury to exploit as mismatch in the post, but Indiana responded with 4 quick points to tie the score at 60.
At the under-eight time-out, Iowa trailed 64-61.
The Hawkeyes went cold for a stretch in the second half, making just one field goal between the 10:47 mark and the under-four media time-out. Iowa rushed some shots and forced others badly.
The final two minutes saw the Hawkeyes cut the lead to as close as 3 with 22 seconds left, but the Hoosiers proved to be too much. In doing its best to avoid fouling Indiana’s Yogi Ferrell and instead force a turnover, Iowa lost Collin Hartman, who threw down a dunk that proved to be the dagger in the Hawkeye’s day.