Hawkeyes Down OSU for Much-Needed Victory

The opportunities, Patrick McCaffery, are still there for Iowa’s men’s basketball team.

But for the Hawkeyes to make a postseason tournament in a Big Ten schedule jammed with parity, they will have to win close games that have escaped them in recent weeks.

The 79-77 win over Ohio State on Friday night at Carver-Hawkeye Arena was a good start.

The calendar for the Hawkeyes (13-9 overall, 5-6 Big Ten) and everyone else in the conference has dwindled to just weeks, but to get through the traffic jam around them in the standings they have to survive.

“We still have a ton of opportunities to compete and grow as a team and stay in the hunt,” said McCaffery, who made four free throws in the final 21 seconds to help the Hawkeyes hang on to a lead they built late. “Our goal is to make the NCAA tournament, and we know that there’s enough games on the table that if we keep playing better and winning these games, that’s going to be the outcome.”

A 69-67 home loss to Maryland and a 74-68 road loss to Indiana sandwiched around a road win at Michigan took a big chunk out of Iowa’s margin for error to the point that this game felt like a must-win.

“It’s been a long, and a really tough, stretch,” said guard Payton Sandfort. “​​We haven’t had an off-day for … it seems like three or four weeks. We’ve been back-to-back, we’ve been on the road and you know, we’ve really stuck together.”

Beating Ohio State (13-9, 3-8), which had lost three consecutive games coming into this one, was important.

“I have the feeling that a lot of games in this league this year are going to be like that,” Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said. “You have some teams that have lost a lot of games in a row. That’s a really good team we just beat.

“Indiana, that game was in the balance. Maryland was in the balance. And it always hurts when you lose. But that’s what you face. I mean, there’s no easy game in this league.”

“I was saying in the locker room, they don’t ask how, they ask how many,” Patrick McCaffery said. “Doesn’t matter how you get the wins, it just matters that you get them. There’s stuff we need to work on, absolutely. Every team is still working on things. So there’s stuff we need to get corrected. But, you know, it’s a lot easier to correct things when you win than if you lose, so, just stay gritty. stay locked in, and keep trying to buckle down and win some of these games.”

It comes down, then, to making plays, and the Hawkeyes did that. They didn’t have a field goal over the final 3 minutes, 10 seconds, but made eight of their 10 free throws in that stretch.

And sometimes it’s about little things. Ohio State’s Dale Bonner made the first of two free throws with four seconds left, but intentionally missed the second. Iowa’s Ladji Dembele, though, got just enough of a hand on the rebound to keep it away from the Buckeyes, and no one could corral the loose ball before time ran out.

You could point in any direction to find someone on the Hawkeyes who made similar plays.

Tony Perkins led Iowa with 20 points, even while going almost 14 minutes without a point in a stretch from midway through the first half to early in the second half. Josh Dix had 15 points, hitting three mid-range jumpers late in the game to keep the Hawkeyes in the lead and keep the offensive pressure on the Buckeyes. Sandfort, who had 15 points, hit the second of two free throws with seven seconds left to push the lead to 79-76.

Four of the final free throws came from Patrick McCaffery, whose minutes have been limited lately as he recovered from a severely sprained ankle suffered in the January 12 game against Nebraska.

Patrick, who finished the game with 10 points, was put into the game in the final seconds, and he wanted the chance to shoot the free throws he knew were coming.

“I’ve shot so many free throws in my life, whether that’s here or in practice,” Patrick said. “I’ve shot so many free throws, and I consider myself to be a pretty good free-throw shooter. I don’t know what my numbers are. But I make a lot of my free throws.”

Asked if he knew he would make those at the end, Patrick smiled and said, “Yeah.”

“I felt pretty confident,” Fran McCaffery said.

Then he smiled.

“I’m glad he knew,” he said.