CHICAGO – The No. 9 Iowa men’s basketball team nearly completed a 16-point comeback before No. 8 Ohio State squeaked by with the 72-69 finish on Thursday.
Bennett Stirtz led the Hawkeyes with 17 points, the lone player on the squad to finish with double-digit scoring. Tavion Banks and Cam Manyawu had nine points apiece, followed by Cooper Koch, Tate Sage, and Alvaro Folgueiras’ eight points each.
With the loss, Iowa was eliminated from the Big Ten Tournament.
“We had a good game plan,” Iowa head coach Ben McCollum said. “I didn’t think we executed it to that level… Keep fighting, and hopefully do well in the NCAA Tournament.”
Ohio State’s Bruce Thornton finished with a game-high 24 points – 17 of which came in the second half. Most of those second half buckets came during a flurry where the Buckeyes extended its lead from 34-30 out of halftime to 51-36 with 13:55 to go – a 17-6 run.
“He’s a great player,” Stirtz said. “I think we played a really good defense at [Carver-Hawkeye Arena], at home, and he just was feeling today… I thought it started with us and our coverage wasn’t that great.”
Iowa refused to quit, beginning with Cam Manyawu’s six points in two minutes to help shrink the Buckeye lead to nine with nine minutes left. The deficit reached as low as six a couple times before a Banks dunk and pair of Stirtz free throws cut it to a 70-69 Ohio State lead – the lowest since the first half
John Mobley Jr. was fouled and knocked down a pair of free throws for the three-point advantage. Out of the timeout, Brendan Hausen received the ball in the corner and threw up a turnaround three that hit the top of the backboard, to which he thought he was fouled.
Isaia Howard stole the ball with two seconds left, ran to the wing in front of his bench, and threw up a prayer. The shot hit back iron, and Ohio State walked away victorious.
Banks and Mnayawu being in foul trouble in the first half, two calls apiece, gave the Hawkeyes major trouble. Ohio State had its way within the arc, hitting 11-of-13 first half inside shots. Iowa had eight fouls through the first 20 minutes that led to the Buckeyes going 9-for-11 from the line.
And to put Banks’ impact in perspective, Ohio State hit seven-straight shots over a five-and-a-half minute stretch after picking up his second foul and being subbed out at the 11:23 mark, turning the Hawkeyes’ 12-6 lead other a 24-22 lead by the time he checked back in with three minutes left in the half.
Buckeye Andre Bynum hit four of those seven shots during that time frame, three of them coming from dunks after cutting baseline. He and Christoph Tilly combined for 20 of the team’s 34 first half points and the four-point halftime lead.
“I think we’ve got a good team,” McCollum said. “I think sometimes we get ourselves to accept second place, accept good, you know. And I think that’s a that’s a scary deal. But we’re gonna get there.”
