Ohio State topples No. 22 Iowa, 90-70, in Columbus
A dominant 54-point second half helped Ohio State pull away.
Tyler Cook dribbles in the post during Ohio State’s 90-70 win over No. 22 Iowa on Feb. 26 (Cori Wade/The Lantern).
February 26, 2019
Iowa’s string of last-minute contests has come to an end.
On Thursday, Ohio State toppled No. 22 Iowa, 90-70, using a runaway second half to hand the Hawkeyes their seventh loss in conference play.
“In particular, at the end of the first half, start of the second half, we weren’t good,” Iowa head coach Fran McCaffery said after the loss.
Ohio State had only scored more points once this season (107 against Purdue –Fort Wayne on Nov. 11, 2018).
For Iowa, Joe Wieskamp led the way with 17 points. Tyler Cook scored 12, but aside from those two, no other Hawkeyes scored in double figures.
Jordan Bohannon scored 8 (2-for-8 shooting), Garza scored 6 (3-for-6), and Moss scored 3 (0-for-4).
Iowa didn’t have a poor game shooting by any means, as its 47.3 percent for the game was nearly a percent more than its season average.
Ohio State, though, provided the hot hand offensively.
Justin Ahrens scored 29 points and his six of his 10 3-pointers. Kaleb Wessen scored 18 and grabbed 11 rebounds as well. In total, five Buckeyes scored at least 10 points.
“[Ahrens] has been playing well. He played well against us last time,” McCaffery said. “The guy is a shooter. He was open too much. Give him credit, he made six.”
Ohio State had not reached the 70-point mark since its 74-70 win against Penn State on Feb. 7 until Tuesday.
“Our man-to-man [defense] wasn’t good at the start, it was good at the end. Our zone was good in the first half, not in the second half,” McCaffery said. “Our press was good in the second half, not the first half. That’s not a recipe for success.”
In the second half, Ohio State not only shot 57.7 percent from the floor, but it also outscored Iowa, 54-37.
Meanwhile, the Buckeyes won the battle of the boards handily; Ohio State outrebounded Iowa by 10.
“We didn’t rebound,” McCaffery said. “Give credit to them for that. We missed 29 shots and only got four back. I think it’s hard to go on the road and have that happen.”
Wessen’s 10 boards led the way for a Buckeye team that won the battle, 36-26.
Cook led the way for Iowa, grabbing 10 of his own, but the Hawkeyes managed to gran just 4 offensive rebounds – five fewer than the Buckeyes.
Ryan Kriener finished second on the Hawkeye team in rebounding, though, putting together another strong performance coming off the bench.
After scoring 8 points and grabbing 3 rebounds in Iowa’s 76-70 win over Indiana on Feb. 22, Kriener put together a 9-point, 5-rebound outing against Ohio State.
Tuesday marked the 10th time this season that Kriener has scored at least 8 points in a game.
He finished with a -13 in the box score – a batter mark than Nicholas Baer (-14), Moss (-14), and Bohannon (-21).
Now, with three games remaining in the regular season, Iowa still has some leeway between its sixth-place standing in the Big Ten and Ohio State, which has two fewer wins in conference play.
The three games on Iowa’s schedule are winnable, and finishing out the regular season with three-straight wins would do wonders to potentially push the Hawkeyes to fifth in the Big Ten.
That race starts on Saturday, when Iowa hosts Rutgers at 4 p.m. in Carver-Hawkeye.
