By Blake Dowson
In the opening for the ESPN telecast of the Iowa-Maryland basketball game, the announcers lauded the XFINITY Center (where Maryland plays its home games) as being a great home court advantage and a place that gets extremely loud when the Terrapins play well.
Halfway through the second half of Iowa’s 83-69 win over No. 24 Maryland, you could have heard the proverbial pin proverbially drop in the tomb-like quiet arena.
“We have a lot of good shooters,” Iowa head coach Fran McCaffery said postgame. “Teams have been really locking in on Pete [Jok]. If you do that, others have an opportunity to make shots and step up. I thought we were really connected offensively in terms of sharing the ball. Moving it, moving it, moving it. They were really working hard on Pete. They were trying to be physical in the post; sometimes we had some long possessions where we just swung it and swung it.”
The Hawkeyes did it in a multitude of ways. In the first half, Tyler Cook dominated in the low post against Damonte Dodd, who’s built more like a defensive lineman than basketball player. Cook ended the game with 21 points and 10 rebounds, the first double-double of his career.
Jordan Bohannon, who also had a career game, outdid Cook, however. It started and ended the same way for the freshman, knocking down 3-pointer after 3-pointer, finishing 8-of-10 from behind the line for 24 points.
“First shot, [I] got a nice look,” Bohannon said. “… [I was] able to get a good first shot to go down, which was huge.”
Jok had a quiet game, finishing with 11 points on 3-of-10 shooting.
The Hawkeyes now have some substantial momentum heading into a March 2 matchup against No. 16 Wisconsin in Madison. With two regular-season games remaining, the Hawkeyes are alone in eighth place in the Big Ten, a game behind Michigan for seventh and a game and a half behind Michigan State and Northwestern in a tie for fifth.
“I don’t look at [seeding in the Big Ten Tournament] at all,” McCaffery said. “Right now, I’m just thinking about Wisconsin. And if you take care of your business, that will take care of itself.”
