The Iowa men’s basketball team dropped its second straight home game with a 69-67 loss to Maryland on Wednesday at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
Hawkeye guard Tony Perkins piled up 20 points and was perfect from the free-throw line, but his performance was outweighed by his Terrapin counterpart, Jahmir Young, who led his squad with 22 on the evening, including the last eight points of the contest.
The 67 points scored came on 42 percent from the field and 21 percent from three – all within the bottom five for game totals this season for the Hawkeyes.
“We were not in sync, I think most of the game,” head coach Fran McCaffery said in his postgame press conference. “I think that was obvious.”
The Terrapins put the first points on the board, but the Hawkeyes fired right back with three straight buckets at the cup – one from Owen Freeman and two from Perkins – while also forcing three straight Maryland turnovers.
Dunk O’Clock ⏰@Saucy___T x #Hawkeyes
— Iowa Men’s Basketball (@IowaHoops) January 25, 2024
Despite Iowa’s hot start, it struggled just as much as Maryland did to start the game, shooting 4-of-12 as a team compared to the Terrapins’ 3-of-10 start through the first eight minutes of play. Perkins continued to be aggressive on offense, converting an and-one layup to break to push the Hawkeye lead to 11-7.
Iowa’s top-ranked Big Ten offense began to turn it up a notch against the top-ranked defense in the conference in Maryland. Patrick McCaffery hit a pull-up jumper from the elbow for his first points back from the ankle injury, followed up with back-to-back buckets in the paint by Freeman and Ben Krikke.
The Terrapins responded nicely with a mini 5-0 run of their own, but it was the standout freshman in Freeman who took over the next two minutes with seven straight points of his own to help the Hawkeyes enter the break with a 34-28 lead.
FRESHMAN FREEMAN SLAM! 🔥 @_OwenFreeman X @IowaHoops pic.twitter.com/J7I5BViyTT
— FOX College Hoops (@CBBonFOX) January 25, 2024
Iowa failed to convert any of its seven three-point attempts through the first 20 minutes of play. But the Hawkeyes put their dominance within the arc on full display, shooting 15-of-23 inside and knocking down four of its six free throw attempts to hold the six-point halftime lead.
Iowa got off to a rough start to start the second half, making its first two shots but missing its next four and going scoreless for three minutes. But the Hawkeye defense put in work as Maryland put up just three shots through the first five minutes.
The next two minutes saw the Terrapins get hot and the Hawkeyes stay cold, and what was once a 41-35 point Iowa lead quickly turned into a 46-45 Maryland lead with 13 minutes to go in the contest.
Both teams went back and forth over the next seven minutes before a Freeman putback at the rim and a Payton Sandfort pull-up elbow jumper gave the Hawkeyes a sizable six-point lead.
Iowa went cold on offense once again, going another three-minute period without putting any points on the board. The Terrapins couldn’t get past the hounding Hawkeye defense until a late 7-0 run cut the Iowa lead to 64-63 with just over a minute to go.
After a crucial Terrapin three-pointer off a screen and a pair of Perkins’ made free throws, the score sat at 67 apiece with 20 seconds to go. In the most crucial defensive possession of the game, the Hawkeyes gave up a Young layup at the rim, falling behind by two points with 1.5 left on the clock.
YOUNG! 🙌 To the hoop for the lead! @Flyymir_ x @TerrapinHoops pic.twitter.com/EPpW7Ebia7
— FOX College Hoops (@CBBonFOX) January 25, 2024
Sandfort missed the shot at the buzzer as Iowa fell to Maryland, dropping its second straight home game and falling to 11-8 on the season.
“You have to be honest with them. You got to understand, I mean, we did some things that are just unacceptable,” McCaffery said on what he told his team after the game. “I’ll take the blame for that.”
Iowa went on a field goal drought in the last 5:44 of the game, with free throws being the only way of putting points on the board during that stretch.
“We ran a play for Ben [Krikke], we ran a play for Payton [Sandfort]. Didn’t happen,” McCaffery kept it blunt.
“We started getting stagnant,” Perkins said of Iowa’s late-game struggles. “Beginning of the game, we got moving, ball reversals, just everything. When we get down to crunch time we kind of just get stagnant.”
“[The Terrapins] take a lot away,” Sandfort added. “We need to do a better job of moving the ball, especially down the stretch … [We were] too stagnant.”
