By Adam Hensley
In a closely contested game, the Hawkeyes were unable to sink the Pirates’ ship.
Seton Hall defeated Iowa, 91-83, in what proved to be a highly competitive early season matchup.
“This was a great offensive team,” Iowa’s head coach Fran McCaffery said. “They run good stuff, have a really good coach. I would have liked to have seen us play better defense over the duration, especially in the second half. We tried defenses, we changed defenses; press, we went to zone. We just didn’t perform to the level that’s necessary.”
Iowa’s Peter Jok led the Hawkeyes with 30 points and 11 rebounds — the highest totals for either team.
In addition from accumulating a double-double and his best scoring output this season, Jok dished out 4 assists, tying for a team high.
“Coach has been talking to us all year pretty much about defense,” he said. “We just got to button down on defense. Offense, I think we’re good.”
Myles Powell, Desi Rodriguez, and Khadeen Carrington each scored more than 20 points for Seton Hall.
Powell led the Pirate’s charge with 26.
“The truth of the matter is that we had a pretty experienced team out there,” McCaffery said. “Everybody wants to talk about youth — that’s a pretty experienced team out there.”
It seemed at times that Iowa did not have an answer for Seton Hall, especially in the second half, in which the Pirates outscored Iowa 49-39 and shot 65 percent from the field.
Freshman Tyler Cook excelled in his first big-game action for the Hawkeyes. The St. Louis native scored 24 points, including a slam dunk in which he spun away from his defender and rose up to throw down the 2 points.
“I liked a lot of the things he did,” McCaffery said. “As he figures it out, he’ll get even better at it. He ran the floor, he fronted the post like we asked him to. And we went to him. He got to the free-throw line. Unfortunately, he missed 7 free throws, but he got there 12 times.”
Going into the game, one of the key matchups was Cook going head-to-head with Seton Hall’s Angel Delgado, who entered the game averaging 18 points and 15 boards.
He only managed to score 9 points and collect 11 rebounds. The majority of his productivity came in the second half.
“That’s a great team, a tournament team,” Cook said. “A lot of good veterans and a lot of good young guys, too. That was a great matchup for us.”
Iowa managed to out-rebound Seton Hall 46-38, but failed to lead in any of the other major statistical categories.
Despite Cook’s dominance down low, Seton Hall clobbered Iowa when it came to points in the paint. The Pirates scored 50, 24 more than the Hawkeyes.
Questions remain about which player will aid Jok and Cook in the scoring load. Aside from those two, no other player scored more than 8 points for the Hawkeyes (Christian Williams and Nicholas Baer each scored 6 points, Dominic Uhl scored 8).
Iowa’s next game is on Nov. 20, when Texas-Pan American heads to Carver-Hawkeye for a 4:30 p.m. game.
