3 Takeaways: Slumping before and after halftime

IOWA CITY - Sponsored cardboard handouts with the number '3” littered the lower bowl of Carver-Hawkeye Arena in the wake of Iowa's 90-75 loss to Iowa State on Friday night.

As fans shuffled out of the arena, those scattered cards symbolized everything about the evening for Iowa men's basketball. What once was neat, organized and hopeful became collateral damage to a Cyclone.

With two games left in non-conference play, Iowa sits at 8-3. The Hawkeyes have played four major opponents and lost to three. Two teams - Iowa State and Texas - blasted Iowa early in the second half in a pair of decisive losses. In the other two games - North Carolina and Syracuse - Iowa fought doggedly and beat North Carolina and lost to Syracuse.

But a disturbing trend has emerged for Iowa that overlaps the end of last season with the first third of this year. In games against Power Five opponents, Iowa falters late in the first half and the start of the second. The Hawkeyes play catch-up throughout the second half, but only twice have they been successful.

In the four games against Power Five opponents this year, Iowa led two (Texas and North Carolina), tied one (Iowa State) and trailed the other (Syracuse) by two points. Inside of the final 1 minute, 7 seconds of the first half, those teams have outscored Iowa 16-0. Then, from halftime through the first media timeout of the second half, those teams have outscored Iowa a combined 53-13. Here's a breakdown:

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Iowa and Iowa State were tied 33-33 with 1:01 left in the first half. The Cyclones scored the half's final five points, then soared on a 21-2 run after halftime to lead 59-35 just 5:20 into the second half.

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The Hawkeyes led North Carolina 31-25 with 1:00 left in the first half. The Tar Heels scored the half's final four points, then scored the first five points of the second half to lead 34-31, 1:44 into the half.

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Syracuse led Iowa 31-29 with 1:07 remaining in the first half, then scored the final three points in the half. Then, the Orange outscored the Hawkeyes 8-4 to lead 42-33 with 17:55 left in the game.

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Iowa outpaced then-No. 10 Texas 30-20 with 1:04 left in the first half. The Longhorns scored the half's final four points, then trampled Iowa as part of a 19-7 run just 3:45 into the second half.

Counting the late first-half and early second-half runs, Iowa's opponents have outscored the Hawkeyes a combined 69-13.

In its final five games last year, Iowa managed to shed either a tie or the lead within the first five minutes of the second half. Iowa's halftime leads totaled 13 points (with one tie) in those five games. The combined score of its opponents' post-halftime runs was 49-15, and Iowa dropped four of those games. The only win was against last-place Purdue.

'That is the trend,” Iowa senior Aaron White said. 'I thought we were past it. If I knew something that was happening, I would tell you and I would fix it. But I really don't. We've just got to rebound from it.

Against Iowa State, it was a complete collapse in all areas. The Hawkeyes went 8:39 without a field goal overlapping the halves. In the second half, Anthony Clemmons missed an easy shot at the rim, then Iowa had five turnovers in a six-possession stretch. Two possessions ended with blocked shots. Iowa State scored on 10 consecutive trips up the court, and the Cyclones hit 10 straight shots.

'They got a lot of run outs because we turned it over,” Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery said. 'We had a couple of, I wouldn't say unforced turnovers, but they had their hands in the passing lane and (we) coughed it up, then got out on the break and finished. They'll shoot the 3 in transition as well. You give the team 12 3s, and you have a tough time beating them.”

2. Jok's time is now.

Iowa's shooting woes have extended beyond calling them a slump. Iowa hits just 42 percent from the field and 30.3 percent from 3-point range. Among Big Ten teams, Iowa ranks 12th and 13th, respectively, in those categories. Last year Iowa was third in field-goal percentage and fifth in 3-point percentage.

Iowa sophomore guard Peter Jok has struggled for most of the season, and he remains a streaky shooter. But against Iowa State, Jok knocked down 5 of 10 from the field and 2 of 4 from 3-point range for 14 points. He added six rebounds and three assists with no turnovers in a career-high 25 minutes.

'He should grow,” McCaffery said. 'He's a good player. He's an active offensive player. He's a threat offensively. He can make the 3. He can make the pull-up jumper. He attacks his 3s and makes his free throws. Defensively he's way better than he used to be. He's battling defensively. The other thing was his stamina was better (Friday), so I was pleased with that. So you can leave him out there for longer periods of time. You don't have to yank him because he got tired.”

Jok is Iowa's one pure backcourt player with upside as a scoring threat. The offense has languished this year, as expected, with the loss of Devyn Marble to the NBA. The Hawkeyes led the Big Ten both in scoring offense and scoring margin last year and now rates 10th in scoring and eighth in scoring margin. Jok can't fill Marble's shoes yet, but he's the player who has the closest ability.

Iowa's opening Big Ten schedule is brutal: at Ohio State, vs. Nebraska, vs. Michigan State, at Minnesota, vs. Ohio State, at Wisconsin. Every team but Minnesota played in the NCAA tournament last year, and the Gophers won the NIT. Iowa finished 2-4 against those teams at those locations last year. If Iowa can't score from the perimeter with regularity, that record might be worse this year. With Big Ten play only 17 days away, it might be time to shift 25 minutes a game to Jok.

3. Moving forward.

Both McCaffery and his players showed their disappointment with the loss. McCaffery's postgame news conference began about 40 minutes after the game, and they played didn't drift into interview sessions until McCaffery's session was way over.

McCaffery was direct in his critique but never showed his frustration. Here's his description of Iowa's postgame locker room.

'What I would do in a situation like this is hold them accountable, OK?” McCaffery said. 'It's not all screaming and yelling. It's, ‘OK, We didn't execute here. We didn't defend there. We weren't locked into the game plan here, and we've got to manage the game a little better there.'

'Now I'm going to go after some guys individually who were involved in those situations to try to get them to understand. ... It's a little like the Texas game in a sense that once the wheels started coming off, defensively we broke down, offensively we broke down. Maybe a little more offensively than defensively this game, but we had nine straight possessions against Texas, too, where we didn't score.

'I don't know what it was here. But start of the second half, we didn't have too many buckets for a while, and it makes it hard. Because the lead got to double figures pretty quickly.”

The players took the result hard. Not only did Iowa lose the game, but they were blown out at home in front of a sellout crowd by their instate rival. The Hawkeyes had a chance to reverse last year's painful defeat in Ames and instead whiffed badly.

'It was 24 at one point,” White said. 'We're better than that. At home? I don't have a word for it.”

White then exhaled loudly before the next question, and who could blame him? Not only do the players have to endure the loss on the court and relive it in the aftermath with their coach, they have o answer for it with questions from the media. It's not always easy, and they do the best they can.

There are plenty of questions for the Iowa men's basketball program, few of which can be answered now. But two stand out more than the others. First, is Iowa the team that played the No. 13 team in the country to a first-half draw or is it the team that caved under duress early in the second half? Second, does it really matter?

'When it comes down to it, we're all disappointed,” White said. 'But it is one game, and you've got learn from it and get back on track.”

FRAN MCCAFFERY TRANSCRIPT

Q. Talk about that first half (Matt Thomas' 3-pointer)?

COACH McCAFFERY: I thought that was a big play in the game. I think you're right. We had a chance to tie it up, go up one, we're down five. Thomas makes a big shot, got to give credit there. At the start of the second half, a couple stops, Clemmons gets it to the rim. They hit a three. Just kind of snow balled a little bit from there. Then we got tentative a little bit, I thought, offensively.

We had a couple guys open on back picks, got the deflection, the run out. Took a couple timeouts, I think, back to back pretty quickly to try to settle everybody down.

Q. Did it feel like that Texas game again where you were scoring and the defense, they were scoring it well?

COACH McCAFFERY: Yeah, but our offense really struggled there. It was, yeah, they were scoring, but they got a lot of run outs because they turned it over. We had a couple of, I wouldn't say unforced turnovers, but they had their hands in the passing lane and coughed it up. Then got out on the break and finished. They'll shoot the three in transition as well. You give the team 12 threes and you have a tough time beating them.

Q. You only turn it over twice in the first half, and then you turn it over five times in six possessions.

COACH McCAFFERY: Yeah, that was it. You know, in the turnover, it was Gabe, it was Whitey. Whitey is usually pretty good. Like I said, I'm standing right behind him when he had the one. Mike's wide open on the back pick, and he's trying to throw it to him, but he stared him down and kid made a good play.

Q. What is the mood in the locker room? What did you say to them?

COACH McCAFFERY: What I would do in a situation like this is hold them accountable, OK? It's not all screaming and yelling. It's OK. We didn't execute here. We didn't defend there. We weren't locked into the game plan here, and we've got to manage the game a little better there. Now I'm going to go after some guys individually who were involved in those situations to try to get them to understand, and I think Rick's right. It's a little like the Texas game in a sense that once the wheels started coming off, defensively we broke down, offensively we broke down. Maybe a little more offensively than defensively this game, but we had nine straight possessions against Texas, too, where we didn't score.

I don't know what it was here. But start of the second half, we didn't have too many buckets for a while, and it makes it hard. Because the lead got to double figures pretty quickly.

Q. You've seen outside shots fall before, but right now they're in a slump and it really cost you tonight. What is the confidence level right now?

COACH McCAFFERY: You know, it's good to see Pete get going. Josh hit a couple. The game wasn't in the balance any more, but at least he hit a couple. Jarrod said to me, Coach, they all feel good. He was sure on everything, it seemed to me so that was tough because we need him. He was kind of aggressive offensively I thought in the first half, which we want him to be, but we need him to score.

We had a couple of chances where we could have maybe gone up because we were down. We were down eight, and we caught it. We tied it. We were up two, down two, up three, down three, that kind of thing. Could have given us maybe a lead at that point.

Q. How do you, when a game changes so fast like those first six minutes of the second half, you're calling timeouts, I mean

COACH McCAFFERY: Well, there's only a couple things. You've got to start pushing different buttons. You make a couple substitutions. Maybe get energy. Go big, go small. Press, don't press. Trap, don't trap. Try to execute. We were trying to go inside and we missed a couple of opportunities. We turned it over a couple of times, like I said, trying to feed the post. Then we got a little tentative feeding the post, and we've got to throw the ball inside. Even if we don't shoot, it creates a double team. It creates everybody coming in. You can play in and out. We were just a little bit too perimeter oriented in that stretch.

Q. It looked like Woodbury had some chances in the paint. Either maybe too aggressive or I don't know, what was it?

COACH McCAFFERY: The one time he fumbled the ball and then he kind of rushed it in the first half. That was a big play. We got the ball right to the front of the rim. I forget what the score was, but I think it was a one possession game at the time. Yeah, he rushed it a little bit. He's having more success with his face up jumper lately than he is with his back to the basket moves. But I thought certainly he did a great job on Niang in the first half defensively, so I'm pleased with that.

Q. I know you're going into finals week and you don't have a game for a while. But how do you try to deal with this, get this taste out of your mouth and try to move this team forward?

COACH McCAFFERY: I've been here before. You have a great win; you have a tough loss. It's no different. You go back to work. You break the film down. You hold them accountable. You don't kill them. You're reasonable about it. You know, you've got to encourage them. You've got to get them believing again because they clearly had some doubt tonight.

We won't do much (Saturday). We're actually off the next two days because we have a bunch of time and we have finals coming up. Finals are very important, so we'll encourage them to focus there. We'll get some workouts in. We'll watch some tape with the guys and slowly we'll bring them back.

Q. Pete's been a guy that he had a good game tonight. He's been coming along strong for you. He is growing. He seems to be growing?

COACH McCAFFERY: He should grow. He's a good player. He's an active offensive player. He's a threat offensively. He can make the three. He can make the pull up jumper. He attacks his threes and makes his free throws. Defensively he's way better than he used to be. He's battling defensively. The other thing was his stamina was better tonight, so I was pleased with that. So you can leave him out there for longer periods of time. You don't have to yank him because he got tired, not because you wanted to.

Q. How do you think Iowa State played without Bryce Dejean-Jones?

COACH McCAFFERY: I'll talk about how Iowa State played. I don't talk about people who didn't play, and I don't think you should. They have a really good team. I'm very impressed with Fred's team and the job he does. They've got a lot of weapons. Somebody asked me the other day, do you change anything? No. They've got other guys they can put in there. Nader's a really good player, and Edozie's a good player, and Thomas is a good player. They've got other good players, and that's what they did.

l Comments: (319) 339-3169; scott.dochterman@thegazette.com