INDIANAPOLIS — The No. 24 Iowa men’s basketball team opened the Big Ten Tournament with an emphatic 112-76 win over Northwestern and broke several conference tournament records in the process.

The Hawkeyes made 19 3-pointers against the Wildcats, enough to break the Big Ten Tournament 3-point shooting team record. Iowa also managed to make the most field goals of any team in Big Ten Tournament history (43) and recorded the largest margin of victory (36 points) and most points scored (112) in a single game.

The Hawkeyes set the tone early in the contest and never looked back. Iowa opened the game on a 17-4 run off the back of two Jordan Bohannon 3s and a pair of buckets from Keegan Murray, who finished with 26 points and eight rebounds.

“Early on we are moving the ball really well and that led to different guys getting easy looks,” Murray said.

After the quick start, Iowa was full of confidence and managed to pull away from Northwestern early in the contest for a 33-point halftime lead. In the first half, the black and gold scored 64 points off 67.6 percent shooting. Iowa did not relent in the second half with reserves seeing significant minutes, shooting 54.5 percent as a team. 

Ten different Hawkeyes scored from beyond the arc in Iowa’s win over Northwestern. 

Jordan Bohannon led the way by making five of his eight 3-pointers on his way to 17 points. He also buried the three to clinch the tournament 3-point shooting record eight minutes into the second half. Tony Perkins delivered another great performance by making both of his 3-point attempts and finding his teammates six different times for assists. Murray was perfect with all three of his attempts from deep.

Payton Sandfort came in off the bench and made three of his five shots for a 13-point performance and was one of six bench players to make a shot from beyond the arc.

With so many different players getting hot shooting at the right time, Bohannon can feel the confidence within the group continuing to grow.

“It builds a lot of team morale, especially the fact that we were able to get a lot of these guys that had not played much this season,” Bohannon said. “It continues to help our team going forward, especially as we are trying to make a run at the end of the season.”

Iowa ranked sixth in the Big Ten during the regular season in 3-point percentage with a 35.8 percent average during conference play, but have shown signs of improvement in recent weeks as guards Jordan Bohannon and Tony Perkins came alive. Iowa will look to continue its strong shooting form against Rutgers tomorrow in the quarterfinals of the Big Ten Tournament. Iowa scored a season-low 46 points in the only meeting between the two teams this season and shot just 6-of-27 from deep. 

Off the back of its best shooting performance of the season, Murray wants to keep that momentum headed into tomorrow’s game against the Scarlet Knights.

“They are a physical team and held us to our lowest scoring total of the season but if we implement our pace it will be a good game,” Murray said.

Iowa’s game against Rutgers will tip-off at approximately 1:15 p.m. CT and can be viewed on BTN.