Depth pushes Hawkeyes past Spartans
Hawkeye head coach Fran McCaffery turned to his bench for production Tuesday night, and it didn’t let him down.
Iowa Guard Tony Perkins shoots the ball during the Iowa Men’s Basketball game against Michigan on Feb. 2, 2021 at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Iowa defeated Michigan 84-78. (Casey Stone/The Daily Iowan)
February 2, 2021
Excluding center Luka Garza’s 27 points, Iowa men’s basketball’s starters scored a combined 18 points Tuesday night against Michigan State.
Typically, that kind of lackluster production from the starting lineup will doom Iowa. That was not the case on Tuesday.
Iowa’s bench provided the Hawkeyes with a 39-point boost and helped manufacture an 84-78 win over the Spartans.
“The bench was huge tonight,” Garza said postgame. “I’m so proud of those guys. They came in, and throughout the whole game, they were making plays. First half, second half, they definitely came in and gave us a lift off the bench and gave us some energy. Really, they were just hitting a lot of shots and [the starters] weren’t making any.”
“So proud of Jack Nunge,” Garza said. “He was awesome in the first half. He really did a great job and helped carry the load offensively, and he was great defensively and rebounded the ball really, really well. Tony Perkins, Ahron Ulis drew a huge foul in the first half. Keegan [Murray] has been doing what Keegan’s been doing all year, providing energy off the bench, making the right plays, getting offensive rebounds . . . I’m proud of all those guys. They did a tremendous job.”
When Nunge entered the game in the first half, Iowa trailed, 20-13. When the horn sounded and the Hawkeyes headed to the locker room for halftime, Nunge had 11 points and Iowa held a 48-43 lead.
Sophomore point guard Joe Toussaint also made some key contributions Tuesday night as he registered a season-high 21 minutes – well past his 12.7 minutes per game average so far in 2020-21. The New York native produced 10 points and six assists on the evening.
“Me and Jack, we don’t really view ourselves as bench players, to be honest,” Toussaint said. “We started last year, and he started before I got here. We don’t really view ourselves as bench players. Nobody on the bench, to be honest, views themself as a bench player. We’re just another player that comes in. Just having that confidence, that’s just a thing that we always hold to each other.”
Like Toussaint, Perkins also registered a season-high in minutes. The freshman guard has slowly worked his way into a more prominent role in Iowa’s lineup all season leading up to Tuesday night.
Early in 2020-21, Perkins was playing as few as one to three minutes a night. Now, the Indianapolis, Indiana, native is consistently seeing six or more minutes per night – a change he believes was, in part, instigated by his ability to quickly transition from the pace of high school basketball to that of college basketball.
“In high school it wasn’t as physical,” Perkins said. “It was still a physical game. There were a lot of good players. As I’ve been coming in games, game after game, I’ve just started getting comfortable and started feeding off my teammates.”
With players like Perkins, Toussaint, and Nunge playing more minutes than normal Tuesday night, some starters played less than they’re accustomed to.
Guards Connor McCaffery, C.J. Fredrick, and Jordan Bohannon all played less minutes Tuesday night than they have on average this season. In fact, Toussaint and Nunge each played more minutes than Bohannon, Fredrick, or McCaffery did.
“It’s always a sort of interesting, slippery slope, I guess,” Hawkeye head coach Fran McCaffery said. “You want your starters to be comfortable and confident that they’re going to consistently play a certain number of minutes and get a certain number of shots. But, every game is different. . . The bench was fabulous in the first half. Jack Nunge was awesome. In the second half, same thing. When we went to the bench, I thought we got solid play from our starters, but the bench came in and really provided energy and aggressiveness.”
“We had that one lineup on the floor that just clicked,” Fran McCaffery said. “That’s happened before. We’ve talked about that before. It’s not like I went into the game saying, ‘OK, Joe [Toussaint], Tony Perkins, Patrick [McCaffery], Luka and Jack or Luka and Keegan.’ It wasn’t like, ‘OK, I’m going to go with that lineup. But, that lineup was on the floor. That lineup played well together.”
Eleven of Iowa’s 15 rostered players saw the court Tuesday. Among them was Fredrick, who played 12 minutes after he missed the Hawkeyes’ matchup with the Fighting Illini last Friday with a lower leg injury.
“I feel terrible for C.J.,” Fran McCaffery said. “He’s clearly not himself. I love him. We’re trying to help him work through this [injury]. We’ll get him right.”
Iowa now faces a quick turnaround with limited time to prepare for No. 7 Ohio State on Thursday.
Getting a head start on preparation for the Buckeyes is Tony Perkins, who hit the harwood to practice his free-throw shooting after his postgame meeting with reporters.
Tipoff between the No. 8 Hawkeyes and Buckeyes is scheduled for 6 p.m. Thursday night. The game will air on ESPN.
