After a heartbreaking 89-85 loss to No. 7 Ohio State Thursday night, No. 8 Iowa now faces what will likely be its largest hurdle of the 2020-21 season – snapping out of a funk that has seen them drop three of their last four games.

In all three of their most recent losses, the Hawkeyes have held a lead at one point or another in the second half, making the pain even worse after the final buzzer sounds.

“It’s a really long season,” junior forward Joe Wieskamp said postgame. “Obviously these losses are very tough. It’s not stuff that we expect to go through because we expect to win every game we step on the floor. It’s definitely tough, but at the end of the day, there’s a lot of season left and a lot of games left to be played. We got to make adjustments and we really got to fix things up, especially defensively. If we make those adjustments, I think we’ll be just fine going forward.”

Following Thursday night’s loss, the Hawkeyes have an uphill climb to a Big Ten regular season title ahead of them. Currently, Iowa sits at 7-4 in conference play, putting them three games back of Michigan’s league-leading 8-1 record. Three other teams sit between Iowa and the top of the standings: 8-3 Illinois, 9-4 Ohio State, and 8-4 Wisconsin.

“There’s a lot of season left,” senior guard Jordan Bohannon said. “To say that, coming into this year, a team was going to go undefeated and run the table in the Big Ten and win the title, I think that’s ludicrous knowing how good this conference is this year.”

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Kate Heston-Daily Iowan via Imagn Content Services LLC

The University of Iowa men’s basketball team took a knee preceding the national anthem in solidarity with those impacted by systemic racism. The team knelt before a men’s basketball game between the Iowa Hawkeyes and the Ohio State Buckeyes at Carver-Hawkeye Arena on Thursday, Feb. 4, 2021. The Buckeyes defeated the Hawkeyes in a close game, 89-85.

With Thursday’s game officially behind them, Iowa enters the second half of the Big Ten season. Eight games remain on the Hawkeyes’ schedule – most of them on the road. While some may see a difficult path ahead for the Hawkeyes, Bohannon sees a plethora of opportunities for Iowa to regain its footing and build its résumé before the postseason.

“We got to keep moving forward,” Bohannon said. “We’ve got a long stretch ahead of us still. I mean, we have a lot of away games coming up and a lot of chances for us to get our footing back. I think the character in this locker room says that we can do that. We’ve done that on numerous occasions already, throughout my career, to able to respond and to continue to respond after adversity. Luka [Garza] and I, [Wieskamp], all the upperclassmen know that it’s what matters at the end in March to decipher between a really good team and a great team. I think we still have a really great team here. We still have a lot of chances to continue to build our résumé.”

The Hawkeyes’ next opponent is Indiana – the team that sent Iowa into its recent tailspin on Jan. 21. That night, the Hawkeyes failed to put the ball through the iron for about 11 minutes, leading to an 81-69 loss. Perhaps Iowa can break out of its slump with a win against the team that started it. 

Tipoff between the Hawkeyes and Hoosiers is set for 11 a.m. in Bloomington, Indiana, Sunday. The game will air on FOX.