Hawkeyes hope for different story second time against Boilermakers

IOWA CITY — You can't win a basketball game in the first five minutes. You can, however, let a game get out of reach in the first five minutes.

The Iowa men's basketball team found out the latter in the Hawkeyes' Big Ten opener at Purdue on Dec. 28. Eight straight points to start from Carsen Edwards, three 3-pointers overall and two turnovers before the first media timeout had the game at 13-4 Boilermakers. Out of that timeout, Purdue scored on their next four possessions, and by that point, a 21-6 deficit was enough for the writing to be on the wall.

The Hawkeyes have a group of players whose play is aided greatly by early confidence in games, so avoiding a repeat of that start when the No. 19 Boilermakers come to Carver-Hawkeye Arena at 8 p.m. on Thursday will go a long way.

'When you do have control (in the first five minutes), it's a lot easier to play your game and play loose instead of pressing over a big deficit like we had that last game,' forward Cordell Pemsl said. 'We were never able to get a rhythm, we were never able to get more than one stop in a row. By that time, we got down and it was hard for us to come back. Our main concern this game is to get out to a good start, to understand what the game plan is and not only know it, but execute it.'

Coach Fran McCaffery has said after that game that sometimes young teams have to experience something to fully understand, rather than just hearing and knowing about how tough things are. He repeated that again Wednesday at his weekly media availability.

The first five minutes or so of a game go a long way toward the tone and flow of a game, but McCaffery threw in the last five minutes of the first half of the game as well.

Iowa (10-7, 2-2 Big Ten) had trouble against both Nebraska and Rutgers at the ends of halves, and it almost bit them both times.

'You never want to fall down. We were down 11-2 down there. You certainly don't want to do it on the road. We never really got it back together after that,' McCaffery said. 'So, obviously, we want to try to come out and be better at the start of the first five minutes of each half.

'Last five minutes of each half, we didn't do a good job of that on Sunday. We had a six-point lead and then tied. Those kinds of things are game changers, so hopefully we'll avoid that too.'

Avoiding rough patches in those two points of the game come, in many ways, from another of McCaffery's mantras this season: anticipate, don't react.

Thursday will be the first time this Iowa team has seen an opponent for the second time in a season, and while Purdue (14-3, 3-1) is no easy test regardless of whether or not the Hawkeyes have seen them, players said Wednesday anticipating things might be easier with one game under their belts. Forward Tyler Cook said 'It's about doing what we did then a lot better. We just didn't come out and fight. We didn't give ourselves a chance to win that game. We've got to fight for 40 minutes.'

'We just weren't executing. We were reacting. We were always a second late for closeouts and getting hands in passing lanes,' Pemsl said. 'This game we're really going to focus on knowing when the ball is going to be swung and trying to inch out more and be prepared for — if the ball does get swung — that we're there on the catch. It's more anticipation than anything. I think we're ready for that challenge.'

How the game starts, and how the halves finish are important, especially for confidence and the flow of the game.

But like Cook said, 'the first five minutes don't dictate the whole game,' and Iowa lost to Purdue because of more than a 21-6 start. McCaffery said both teams have grown a bit since that opener, so it's not going to be the same exact game with varying differences in execution.

The Hawkeyes will try to do some of what was in the game plan last time, just better, and hope the additions equal an upset.

'There's going to be a lot of similarities in terms of we thought we needed to do this, we still have to do that. But, both teams, even though it's not been that long, we're both different teams than we were that night,' McCaffery said. 'So you just try to reemphasize some of the things you think were necessary that maybe we didn't do or we did sporadically, and then you make a few adjustments that we think might be better this time.'

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