Missed opportunities doomed Iowa at Michigan

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - The final score didn't show and neither did a massive run early in the second half. But trapped in Iowa's 87-73 loss at Michigan on Sunday were a handful of missed opportunities that could have kept the Hawkeyes in striking distance.

Iowa (8-13, 1-8 Big Ten) matched the Wolverines possession-for-possession in the first half. Melsahn Basabe scored seven of Iowa's first 11 points to give the Hawkeyes a six-point lead. Iowa scored on six consecutive possessions late in the half and took its final lead at 32-30 on a 3-pointer from Bryce Cartwright.

After trailing by as many as 21 points midway through the second half, Iowa rallied to cut its deficit to eight points with 3:20 left in the game before faltering late.

"You can look at a lot of our games. We have great stretches in both halves," Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery said. "We started the game well. We were under control, we ran our offense. We defended fairly well. But the game's 40 minutes long. That's where we have struggled.

"We have those segments where we have our empty possessions or they have runs that are difficult to overcome, especially when our team's on the road."

But in the second half Iowa struggled defensively with a maddening stretch. Michigan scored on 11 of its first 13 possessions and hit 16 of its first 20 shots. Michigan sank 73.1 percent of its second-half shots and was 14-of-28 from 3-point range for the game.

The game resembled a pair of Big Ten losses for Iowa against Illinois and Northwestern. The Fighting Illini sank 10-of-12 first-half 3-pointers and 13-of-18 overall in the Big Ten opener. Against Northwestern, Iowa surrendered 10 3-pointers in the first half, and the Wildcats were 14-of-28 from 3-point range overall.

"It's obviously something that's problematic for us," McCaffery said. "It's not just that we're not getting there; it's a function of what they're doing to put us in a position to make sure that we don't get there."

"We let them keep driving, kicking and getting up shots, and we didn't learn after the first couple of times we needed to stop doing that and stay with our man and not help so much," Iowa junior Matt Gatens said. "After about 10 of them, we finally realized it."

There was one difference for Iowa this game. The Hawkeyes didn't get bogged down offensively; they just couldn't stop the Wolverine on defense.

"The one thing I felt we did in that stretch is we were getting pretty good shots ourselves," McCaffery said. "We had a missed layup in there, we got some good shot opportunities. Obviously you need stops and scores when you're behind, but we weren't turning the ball over.

"We had 10 (turnovers) and Bryce (Cartwright) had none, so we just needed to focus a little bit harder on getting the stops that we needed."