Game a lot more fun when shots are dropping

Iowa's coaches and players knew their outside shooting was too bad to be true. Through six games, the Hawkeyes (3-5) struggled from 3-point range. Iowa made 26.6 percent of its 3-point shots, down from its average of 36.4 percent last season. The two games before last night's game against Northern Iowa, Iowa's perimeter shooting bounced back. Iowa tied a school record with 15 3-pointers in a win against Prairie View A&M and shot 48.4 percent overall. Last week in a six-point loss to Virginia Tech, Iowa hit 12 of 27 3-point shots. It's been a nice change for coaches and players to talk about how their shooting touch had returned rather than their early struggles. “I just think it's the law of averages,” said Iowa assistant coach Chad Walthall, who served as interim coach for the second straight game last night. “When you're a good shooting team, you're working on shooting consistently. Eventually, you're going to shoot the ball well. “It's amazing how when shots go in, it snowballs. It can just start to snowball and kids start to feel good about it. A guy might hit one or two and the other guy watches them and watches that ball go in the net. Sometimes the same things happens if you're missing shots. “Again, law of averages. We're just too good of a shooting team to keep the shooting the ball as poorly as we were.” Anthony Tucker was the team's shooting ace last year, hitting 42.7 percent of his 3-point attempts. He struggled in the first six games this year, hitting 22.7 percent of his 3-point attempts. He returned to form against Virginia Tech and Prairie View A&M, making six 3-pointers in each. He tied a career-high with 24 points against Virginia Tech and scored 20 against Prairie View A&M. “I wish there was some magic formula,” Walthall said. “If I knew it, we'd all do it all the time. I think again it's a matter of you hit one or two and that confidence just triggers. He deserves a lot of credit for the work he's put in. He's put in a lot of work after practice, before practice, sometimes you just have to shoot your way out of it. “Eventually, we knew he'd start putting them in. Once you put the time, you'll get rewarded. He's started to get rewarded.” Tucker said the team started to work on attacking on offense, which has helped him get back into the flow. “I'm starting to shoot the ball a little bit better. It's nice,” Tucker said. “It's been frustrating definitely, but it's starting to get better. It's nice to see the ball go in. “We focused on attacking in practice, and we want to go attack, because we play well when we do. So it's something that we're concentrating on.”