Nebraska edges Iowa in double overtime, 93-90

LINCOLN, Neb. — Finishing games is a tough proposition no matter how much experience a team has. Finishing games on the road is an even tougher one.

The Iowa men's basketball team found that out on Thursday night at Pinnacle Bank Arena against Nebraska in a 93-90 loss in double overtime. Just days after the Hawkeyes (9-7, 1-2 Big Ten) were able to finish one in overtime against Michigan, Iowa saw multiple chances at closing out a victory slip through their fingers.

There was the final play at the end of regulation, where Peter Jok went up for a shot on the baseline and it resulted in a turnover. There was the stretch at the end of the first overtime, where the Hawkeyes had the ball up four with less than a minute to go and took an empty possession. Then there was the Iowa possession with 18 seconds to go, down one, in the second overtime, where Isaiah Moss drove the lane and turned the ball over.

No one play decided the game, but the series of events that led to Thursday's loss left Iowa's players frustrated, to say the least.

Finishing is tough in the Big Ten, but the Hawkeyes expected more from themselves.

'We've got to finish. Even in the first half, there were things we have to clean up. … We can't do that and expect to win,' Cook said. 'We should have won. It hurts. We had a lot of opportunities to close it out and we didn't.

'You've got to learn from it, grow and get better tomorrow.'

Cook wasn't the only one to lament Iowa's inability to finish. Jok said the same, once again taking a lion's share of the blame for a few turnovers he had late in the game.

McCaffery acknowledged there were multiple things his team would have liked to have done differently, but didn't go into specifics on many. He did talk a bit about Moss' drive in the second overtime that ended up a turnover, though. Moss said after the game he wanted that possession back, adding, 'We've got to be smarter with the ball. I was just being aggressive. If I could take it back I would — I should've just held the ball.'

From McCaffery's perspective, he said it's hard to be too hard on Moss for that play because it's what the staff has asked Moss to do. Moss had 15 points in the first half playing that aggressive style, after all.

'That's a tough situation for that kid,' McCaffery said. 'We've been trying to get him to be aggressive and if he's not aggressive in the first half, we're probably down 15 to 17 points. He bails us out in the first half so you got to be careful in how much you go after the kid on the play. It wasn't the play we wanted; he knows that now.'

If Moss was the first half MVP for Iowa, Jok was it in the second half by a long shot. The senior finished with 34 points on 12 of 24 shooting, and at one point had 16 straight points for the Hawkeyes in the second half. Cook added 14 points and seven rebounds, while Cordell Pemsl had 10 points and six rebounds.

Iowa found itself down nine two different times, the last of which was with 15:38 to go in the second half, and slowly worked its way back into the game before eventually forcing overtime.

Working their way back into a game on the road — where they didn't come close to that in the first road trip at Purdue — was a silver lining Iowa wasn't super interested in taking, but it was one nonetheless. McCaffery said 'it was a lot better than that, yeah,' in reference to how his team played on a road venue, and that Thursday's loss wasn't about any one thing.

'There's a lot of things to talk about and you don't want to accentuate one thing. You have to talk about all the things that were good and all the things that were not so good and try to get better,' McCaffery said. 'The message is 'to always stay positive'. You win an overtime game on Sunday, you're sort of ecstatic. It doesn't mean you played a perfect game. You lose in overtime, it doesn't mean that everything is a disaster. You have to respect your opponent in both situations and recognize 'OK, if there's some things we could do over we'd do it differently. Make sure when we are in that situation again, we do it better, execute it a bit better at both ends.' I think that's the message.'

You can find moral victories in Thursday's loss if you want to, but the Iowa players weren't interested in that.

From their perspective, based on what they said after the game, the Hawkeyes' view of the Nebraska loss is binary — you either get the job done or you don't. Whether or not they agreed with some foul calls — both Jok and Cook said they thought they got raw deals on more than one call — becomes irrelevant when the game is in your hands and it slips away.

Finishing games is tough. That's the lesson, they said.

'We had chances to end the game, but we didn't execute down the stretch and gave them chances to come back and win it,' Jok said. 'It comes down to executing. When he calls plays, we have to execute. Down the stretch, I don't think we did that. Part of it is guys being young and not being in this position before, but we're going to learn from it.

'It's the Big Ten, man. It's a grind. We have to move on. … We had a lot of chances to win it, but at the end of the day (Nebraska) came down and won. It's going to hurt for us, but we've got to get back in film and get ready for Sunday.'

Iowa returns home Sunday to play Rutgers. The game tips off at 3:30 p.m. at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.