Hlas: Hawkeyes poke, plaster Maryland

IOWA CITY - There was Twitterverse tumult over another Adam Woodbury eye-poke Sunday, but the big story inside Carver-Hawkeye Arena was the mugging the Iowa men's basketball team gave Maryland.

This could sound like an overreaction as large as Woodbury himself, but the Hawkeyes may be the Big Ten's second-best team at the moment.

The league's won-lost standings show only Wisconsin with fewer conference losses (one) than Iowa's four. Yes, the Hawkeyes have lost three of their last five games. But the way they've played in two straight dominant wins makes it appear a path is clear for Iowa to be the league's second banana.

The schedule ahead is favorable. More favorable is the way Iowa dissected the 16th-ranked Terrapins 71-55 three days after beating Michigan by 18 points in Ann Arbor.

Iowa led 24-5 with 7:33 left in the first half, and the Terps stayed down by double-digits the rest of their first-ever visit here. It wasn't a fair fight.

'That might be the best we've played as a unit, that stretch in the first half,” Iowa's Aaron White said.

White had a team-high 17 points, but was just one headliner in a cavalcade of stars for his team. Peter Jok hit 3 of 4 three-pointers and had 15 points. Mike Gesell attacked perhaps as purposefully over an entire game as he has in his career, and had a career-high nine assists.

Woodbury matched his career-high 16 points and had his second superb effort in a row.

'He was a Top 50 player coming out of high school, he's played three years, he's played a lot of minutes,” Maryland Coach Mark Turgeon said. 'They get a lot out of him.”

But what people beyond Iowa's borders wanted to talk about when it came to Woodbury was him poking Maryland freshman star Melo Trimble in an eye as Trimble tried to advance the ball toward the basket.

The officials reviewed video and gave Woodbury a flagrant foul 1. The call didn't sit the least bit well with Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery, who became physically antsy at his press conference when asked about it, and refused to comment on the call itself.

His reason is one of common sense. When a Big Ten coach criticizes officiating, it produces hot water and a hefty fine.

Later, though, McCaffery did say this to ESPNEWS: 'I'm going to be honest with you, this is much ado about nothing,” insisting there was nothing intentional about the poke and expressing great respect for Trimble. Which Woodbury and White also did afterward.

Woodbury had no qualms discussing the matter.

'I was trying to swipe the man of the ball,” he said. '(Trimble) put his head in there. I talked to him about it (after the game). He doesn't seem to have any problem with it.

'It's part of the game, man. Sappy (Iowa's Anthony Clemmons) got hit in the mouth, nobody said anything. Whitey got hit in the face, nobody said anything. I get hit in the mouth, hit in the face all the time. It's just part of the game. The game's going a little fast, those guys are real quick.

'If anybody thinks I'm doing that intentional in front of people on that stage, I don't know what to say to them. Wrong place, wrong time. Bad luck. It's happened three times (twice in Iowa's Jan. 20 loss at Wisconsin) in three weeks, but the span of time is what's gotten me the bad publicity. … In no way, I tried to do that.”

Three times in three weeks looks bad, and there's no way around that. Whether you accept the criticism and ridicule that will come with it or not, it was out there Sunday, will be out there today, and will linger for a while.

So maybe that deflects some shine from Iowa's play Sunday, and maybe McCaffery's terse response about it in his postgame press conference does the same. But as this second eye-poke sideshow of the season comes and gradually goes, Iowa is 6-4 in the Big Ten and suddenly seeing the hard part of its schedule in its rearview mirror.

If the Hawkeyes don't win their next three games (Minnesota Thursday, at Northwestern next Sunday, Rutgers on Feb. 19), it will be a surprise. If this team continues to progress, it's not difficult to envision it finishing alone in second place.

It's a team playing aggressive, unselfish ball 23 games into the season, a team that just throttled Michigan and Maryland in a four-day period. The results many expected of the Hawkeyes last year may be the ones they'll attain this time around.

l Comments: (319) 368-8840; mike.hlas@thegazette.com