Hlas: Hawkeyes fought like champs, but didn't shoot like them

IOWA CITY — These basketball games, they really aren't the end of the world.

Iowa guard Mike Gesell was on the Carver-Hawkeye Arena court in front of 15,400 empty seats late Tuesday night, surrounded by little nephews and nieces. A baby, a few slightly older toddlers, and the college senior sat on the arena's floor, every one of them laughing it up and loving each other up.

Gesell tasted sour defeat an hour earlier, another in a recent series of public disappointments, an 81-78 gut-wrenching Senior Night loss to Indiana that ended the Hawkeyes' slim hope of somehow sharing first-place in the Big Ten by late Sunday afternoon.

Turn out the lights on that party. It's over. But the end the world? Why, no. There's still basketball left to play, after all.

Fellow senior Jarrod Uthoff met the media after this one. He isn't happy. He's anything but happy. But he is defiant and insistent.

Uthoff said his team hasn't reset any goals after being eliminated from conference-title contention. How is that possible?

'The ultimate goal is always to win a national championship,' he said with eyes wide open. 'That's not out of our reach. That's still within our grasp.'

But how?

'If you've watched us play, you'll know,' Uthoff said. 'When we're clicking, we're one of the toughest teams in the country. I've said that from Day One. That hasn't changed just because we've lost a couple in a row.'

It's four in a row, actually. Two, four, whatever. The Big Ten title has bounced away from Iowa in the last two weeks just like Peter Jok's last-second 3-pointer that hit the rim and caromed into oblivion here Tuesday.

P. Jok missed Three Point Jumper. - ESPN Video

2H (0:01) IOWA Peter Jok missed Three Point Jumper.

For the Hawkeyes and their fans — who were as loud and involved as any Carver crowd in what seems like eons — this was a wildly entertaining, maddening, entertaining, and ultimately, maddening game. Just when it seemed Iowa was on the verge of surrender in the second half, it mounted a charge that almost made its way into the Iowa program's list of all-time favorite wins.

Almost. How Iowa had a chance to send this thing to overtime after being behind 81-75 with 13 seconds left requires a lot of details. But the ones that will stick are the two 3-pointers the Hawkeyes took in the last :06 that would have tied the game.

Anthony Clemmons missed. Adam Woodbury rebounded with 2.1 seconds left and immediately called a timeout. Jok caught the subsequent inbounds pass, launched a 3 from the right corner, and ...

Some fans who had already begun their exit from the arena may have missed it. But those who stayed surely believed Jok's shot was going in the basket. It did not. Indiana had become the Big Ten's deserving outright champion, and the story of the Hawkeyes' late-season collapse added another bitter chapter.

Iowa got outshot, not outworked or outplayed. But shooting is kind of important. Indiana made 50.8 percent of its shots, and was 11-of-22 in 3-pointers. It survived terrible foul trouble because it shot well and didn't fold when many a team would have done just that against the Hawkeyes' big surge.

The Hawkeyes were a mere 38.8 percent from the field. Uthoff had a team-high 18 points, but was 5 of 17 from the field. He has made 36.8 percent of his shots over the last eight games. He isn't happy about that, but the only thing he would use a white flag for right now is a foot wipe.

'I had some good looks,' he said. 'They just didn't go down. That's been the story my last seven or eight games. ... That happens. The best players in the world go through stretches like that. I've just got to keep shooting, keep taking those open looks, and they are going to go down.'

That's Iowa's best chance to have a good March situation. Uthoff has to keep shooting, keep driving. Iowa can't count on freshmen Christian Williams, Nicholas Baer and Ahmad Wagner to carry them through the Big Ten and NCAA tourneys, though the trio were wonderful in a combined 42 minutes Tuesday.

Sports usually don't follow scripts, not even the most-predictable ones. A predictable script would have had Uthoff and his three fellow senior starters tear it up on Senior Night and leave Carver with an unforgettable win over a superb foe.

However, Indiana showed no sense of decorum after the pregame ceremony for Iowa's seniors. The Hoosiers rolled into Carver like they were the Bosses of the Big Ten. They rolled out as the gleeful, undisputed, outright bosses.

Yes, Iowa traded punches to the very end. But to beat the best, you can't turn it on and off. So the winner by decision was an Indiana program that has umpteen Big Ten titles since Iowa's last one, way back in 1979.

Now the Hawkeyes play at Michigan Saturday on someone else's Senior Night. They need to win to avoid tumbling out of the top five spots of the conference and facing the ignominious task of playing on Thursday in the conference tourney after looking like the potential No. 1 seed for so long.

More than dwelling on the potential implications of falling further, Uthoff said he wants to 'just go out there and win. I'm tired of losing.'

What a letdown after being the best story in the league for so much of this season. Just not the part that mattered most. Much like this game.

But the season isn't over. There's still a national championship up for grabs. You be the one who tells Uthoff his team can't win it. Have some salve ready for the burns you get from the glare he gives you.