Hlas: Hawkeyes go full-throttle for full game

IOWA CITY - The Iowa men's basketball team directed a demon to the curb Tuesday in Minneapolis. Saturday, it shoved that beast in front of a bus.

Those second-half blues are melting away for the Hawkeyes. They beat Ohio State 76-67 Saturday in Carver-Hawkeye Arena after leading 37-26 at halftime. Before the game, it might have been more believable had you said they would have trailed by 11 at the half and rallied to win rather than led by 11 and brought home a triumph.

The halftime numbers have been ridiculously similar lately. Iowa led Michigan State 39-28 at halftime in Carver on Jan. 8 and lost by 14 points. They were up on Minnesota 38-27 at the half Tuesday night, but needed late-game heroics to win by a whisker, 77-75.

Saturday, the Hawkeyes typically controlled the first half and led 37-26 at intermission. But lo and behold, they didn't break after that. Unlike the Minnesota game, they didn't buckle. Other than a batch of bad turnovers early in the second half, they barely even bent.

What does this mean? First and foremost, Iowa is 4-1 and tied for the lead in the Big Ten's (fewest) loss column. The Hawkeyes' game at 4-1 Wisconsin Tuesday night has extra spice sprinkled on it.

More vitally, though, Iowa took the second-half gorilla that was on its back and made an monkey out of it for a change. The Hawkeyes played first-half basketball in the second half, something vividly lacking against Texas, Iowa State, Northern Iowa, Michigan State, and so forth.

But I've buried the lead, as we say in what used to be known as the newspaper world. OK, Iowa clung to a lead for a change. However, the bigger story is the way they did it and who they did it against.

'We beat Ohio State twice,” Hawkeyes Coach Fran McCaffery said. 'Pretty good.”

'Pretty good” doesn't adequately describe what Ohioan Aaron White was for McCaffery's team Saturday. The senior forward scored on six straight Iowa possessions as Iowa doubled an 8-point second-half lead in a game it led for all but the first 10 seconds.

White tormented his home state team in all sorts of ways. There were times in the second half when he had the ball 25 feet from the basket and everyone in the arena knew he was headed straight to the hoop to do something good. It was like watching someone with a good NBA player's attitude.

'The second half started a little shaky for us,” White said. 'To be honest, I'm kind of tired of that. I was just trying to make things happen. When they pressure you, you've got to go right by them and make plays.”

In a role as big as, well, himself, 7-foot-1 junior center Adam Woodbury had perhaps his finest game as a Hawkeye. The 13 points and 10 rebounds are obvious indicators. But the total, locked-in mentality he brought to both ends of the court are, and have been, stories the box scores can't tell.

Every team has a whipping boy, it seems, someone fans single out for more than their fair share of criticism. With Iowa basketball, it's Woodbury. Maybe it's because, as Wilt Chamberlain once said, nobody loves Goliath. Maybe it's because the player was a hyped recruit, but hasn't fit the public's image of what a 7-footer should be.

Asked if barbs aimed at Woodbury bothered McCaffery, the coach said 'Yes. In a big way. Because it's unfair. All that kid does is work is tail off in every facet of everything he does. And he gets criticized unfairly.”

As the last line of Iowa's defense when he's in the game, Woodbury constantly barks directions to his teammates. It isn't the case of a hyper player just yapping.

'A lot of guys talk. You better be right,” said McCaffery. 'I don't need you talking to the wrong guy. That's the beauty of (Woodbury). When he's talking, he's right and they do what he says.”

It's a basic basketball truth that the biggest guys are typically slower to develop as college (and pros) players than forwards and guards. But Woodbury has never seemed to let frustration bog him down, and he'd been playing very solid ball before Saturday.

'It might not be pretty,” said Woodbury. 'I can't get above the rim and dunk like Whitey or Gabe (Olaseni), or anything like that. I'm a below-the-rim guy. That style's not what fans want to see. Fans want to see highlight blocks and things like that. I just try to do the little things to help us win.”

Like winning a scrum to win an offensive rebound and instantly calling a timeout while sprawled on the court. That avoided a tie-up with 3:42 left and Iowa holding a 7-point lead. Not coincidentally, perhaps, OSU never got as close as seven points after the Hawkeyes' subsequent possession.

'Boy, he was a monster today,” McCaffery said about Woodbury.

Now it's on to a monster of a game at Wisconsin, with Iowa on even terms with the Badgers for at least the time being. The dark days of Hawkeye basketball seem so 10 days ago, don't they?