Hlas: For a change, winning wasn't pretty for Hawkeyes

IOWA CITY — "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." 

— William Shakespeare.

"Don't be buggin'."

 — Attributed to many.

Iowa flirted with the embarrassment of being the fall guys in what would have been college basketball's upset of the season Sunday night in Carver-Hawkeye Arena. But the Big Ten's first-place team staved off the league's last-place club, 75-71.

A fear of losing to a Minnesota team that is now 0-13 in the conference never paralyzed the 11-2 Hawkeyes.

Though it didn't make Iowa's fans feel all that warm and fuzzy, the Gophers represented themselves admirably. They came here as 19 1/2-point underdogs, though they had losses of just five points at Michigan and six at Indiana.

Look, it's not a good Minnesota team. You can spin it harder than any of the tripe you'll ever hear after a presidential debate, but you aren't good when you're 0-13 in your conference and 6-19 overall.

But on this night, a team that gets the bulk of its production from sophomores and freshmen ran its offense very well, out-rebounded Iowa, and never buckled when buckling was the expected response.

'I thought we played really well,' Gophers Coach Richard Pitino said. 'I thought we really battled.'

He thought right. So tip your hat to Minnesota. It played with pride and purpose.

There isn't a team in any of the Power Five conferences and probably isn't one anywhere that hasn't had a flat night in conference play. It took Iowa 13 games into the Big Ten schedule to give a performance you could call so-so. The Hawkeyes lost at Maryland and Indiana, yes, but battled at both places.

We've gotten used to seeing Iowa jump on opponents at home and stay atop them. So when that didn't happen in this game, it was sort of jarring.

But Hawkeyes Coach Fran McCaffery and his players correctly said afterward that any win in this league is a good win, and second-ranked Maryland would surely agree after getting its ears boxed at home by Wisconsin Saturday.

Hey, Carver's atmosphere was blah before the game even started. A Sunday night game? Yecch. You sell a piece of your soul for your share of the Big Ten Network's Iargesse, and playing on a Sunday night is part of that bargain.

Anyway, for all the sighs and murmurs this game induced, the Hawkeyes still had a slew of eye-popping individual statistics. Like Jarrod Uthoff scoring 24 points, collaring a career-high 15 rebounds, and matching his personal best in blocked shots with six.

Peter Jok had 27 points, including 11 in the first five minutes of the second half when Iowa built a 10-point lead that seemed destined to grow much larger instead of being the high-water mark.

Mike Gesell tied his career high with 12 assists, and had zero turnovers.

That's not just good stuff, it's great. But the game itself? You couldn't dance to it. However, the best teams find ways to win games like this, and Iowa did just that.

You can have all the 'played really well' and 'we really battled' you want. Iowa is still in first place, Minnesota is still in last.

The Hawkeyes' final five Big Ten games will be stern challenges. Uneasy lies the head that's in first-place, but you be buggin' if you think it's not the place to be.

Comments: mike.hlas@thegazette.com