The Hawkeyes turned in their best performance of the season just in time for Iowa.
By Ian Murphy
It’d be hard for men’s basketball head coach Fran McCaffery to want more from his players than he got in Monday’s 90-56 win over Western Illinois.
Aside from four minutes of sloppy play to open the second half, in which the Leathernecks couldn’t make a run despite several Iowa turnovers, the Hawkeyes dominated almost every facet of the game.
Jarrod Uthoff scored a career high with 27 points, and Adam Woodbury tallied 10 points, punctuated with a breakaway steal and slam dunk, at which point his night ended.
“I kind of cheated the play a little bit, knowing he was going to throw it there,” Woodbury said. “I got a good look at it and was able to finish it off.”
There was no exercise in moderation for McCaffrey, as every available Hawkeye saw action in the rout.
On the defensive end, the Hawkeyes held the Leathernecks to just a 34.8 field-goal percentage on 23-66 shooting.
The Leathernecks were far from the same team that beat Wisconsin in Madison on opening night.
“I mean, this team, they’re 6-1. The Wisconsin win, if you watched the game, which I did twice, you know how hard it is to win there,” McCaffrey said. “We had a couple defensive breakdowns on ball screen action. Other than that, we were really consistent defensively.”
The consistency shows on the box score, as the Leathernecks never led and faced a 53-32 deficit at the half.
Offensively, the Hawkeyes over ran the Leathernecks from the get-go. Iowa jumped out to a 15-3 lead and forced a timeout, and the game effectively ended there.
Uthoff put the game to bed early, tallying three 3-pointers in 80 seconds, taking a 34-19 game still barely in reach for Western Illinois and effectively ending it at 43-24.
“He’s one of the best shooters in the country, one of the best players in the country,” senior Mike Gesell said.
Uthoff was assisted on all three of the successive 3s, a theme constant throughout the night. Twenty of the Hawkeyes 33 baskets came with assists to just 11 turnovers, 4 by Gesell.
“I thought we made great decisions. Mike had a couple goofy plays. He got caught between go, don’t go, throw it, don’t throw it,” McCaffery said. “Other than that, we made good decisions when to push it, when to grind it, and when to throw it in.”
McCaffery credited the 3-pointers as stretching the defense, allowing the Hawkeyes to penetrate and create space on the corners.
While Woodbury’s dunk provided a highlight to be shared all season, the Hawkeyes played inarguably their best game up and down the floor, and that’s the real takeaway as a date with the country’s No. 4 team, Iowa State, looms in Ames on Thursday.
“It’s easy to look past a game like that to Iowa State,” Gesell said. “But we did a great job of staying focused and executing our game plan.”
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