Luka Garza was crushed after Iowa’s heartbreaking 66-65 loss against Maryland on Tuesday.

He just wanted to help his team win, he said, but only scored 5 points on 1-of-7 shooting. His performance was just a continuation of a cold stretch in which Garza scored less than 8 points in four consecutive games.

But Garza bounced back in Iowa’s thrilling 76-70 overtime win Indiana on Friday, dropping 16 points shooting to go along with 9 rebounds.

“It was more of a mental thing than a physical thing,” Garza said. “I just kind of got into a mental funk, just a little bit frustrated. My whole focus was to let it go and just be not worried and not play thinking about stuff and worry about stuff. I was taking myself out of games mentally.”

Trailing 62-60 with 1:05 to go, Garza did more than add to his box score, taking an important charge to give Iowa possession when the Hawkeyes needed everything to go right. He impacted the game again in overtime, grabbing an important offensive rebound and dishing it to Jordan Bohannon, who hit a 3 to give Iowa a 68-65 lead.

Bohannon would end up draining a shot from deep with under 30 seconds in regulation before hitting three more in overtime.

“I just tried to help the team in any way I can,” Garza said. “Jordan was taking over on the offensive end, so I was just trying to help us on the defensive end… When J-Bo is shooting like that, if he misses and you get a rebound, you try to find him again because he’s not going to miss two in a row.”

Before Garza’s cold streak, however, he played some of the best basketball of his Hawkeye career. Prior to his 4-point performance against Indiana of all teams on Feb. 7, Garza posted 22, 20, 20, 25, and 19 points in consecutive games, becoming the first Hawkeye to score at least 20 points in four straight Big Ten contests since Aaron White accomplished the feat in 2015.

The Washington D.C. native started the game with 9 of Iowa’s first 15 points before picking up his second foul and heading to the bench with 9:44 left in the first half.

He then continued his hot start in the second, dropping 7 more and making crucial plays down the stretch to keep the Hawkeyes in the game.

“Luka was a machine tonight,” forward Ryan Kriener said. “He really got it going in the second half.”

Garza’s play in the paint proved to be especially important when it took Iowa more than a 20-minute half to hit its first 3-pointer. The Hawkeyes didn’t score from beyond the arc until Isaiah Moss hit a 3 from the corner with 17:09 in the second half.

Iowa finished the game 7-of-25 from 3-point land, making Garza’s 17-point performance and Tyler Cook’s 18-point outing even more important.

Whether it was Bohannon’s late-game 3s, Garza returning to center stage, or Cook’s scoring, one thing is clear: Iowa has a special team, especially when a game gets to crunch time.

“I think what we have this year’s is a mature team, we’ve got size, we’ve got depth, and we’ve got a team that’s together and shares the ball,” Iowa head coach Fran McCaffery said. “You just got to keep grinding and recognize that we have a chance to do something special.”