Video: Iowa men rally once, but fall to Texas

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- In stretches Monday night against No. 3-ranked Texas, Iowa's men's basketball team played at its highest level in the three-year Todd Lickliter era.

Iowa scratched back from a 15-point first-half deficit against a more-talented team and took a three-point second-half lead. The Hawkeyes, though, showed their youth and inexperience when the Longhorns blasted past Iowa on a 17-0 run.

Overall, the 85-60 result was what most people expected. But looking inside the numbers, Lickliter saw growth from a young team.

"I think we're better tonight at the end of the game than we were at the beginning," Lickliter said. "We're better than the team that played previously. Right now that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to become a really good team, and we faced a really, really good team.

"In stretches, we competed about as well as you're going to compete. We just couldn't do it consistently tonight. Hopefully through these experiences, we will grow."

After trailing 26-11 midway through the first half, Iowa scored on 10 of its final 13 possessions going into halftime. The key shot was a 70-foot buzzer-beater from freshman point guard Cully Payne that knotted the score at 38-38 at halftime.

"I saw the clock running down, and I just threw it up," Payne said.

Iowa out-rebounded Texas 17-15, and freshman post Brennan Cougill scored 10 of his 11 points in the first half.

But the second half was completely different and fit the game's expectation. Iowa guard Matt Gatens drilled a three-pointer on Iowa's first possession to take a 41-38 lead. Then Texas ripped a 17-0 run, highlighted by three consecutive buckets by Texas center Dexter Pittman. Iowa was limited to only one shot on 10 of its next 11 possessions, and the Hawkeyes didn't score on any of them.

"We didn't get set back on defense," Iowa center Jarryd Cole said. "Pittman got some easy buckets right there; it kind of drained us a little bit. But we can't let that happen. That's a mistake. We have to fight through it. It's not going to be easy."

Texas hit 66 percent of its second-half shots. Even more impressive, the Longhorns sank all 17 field-goal attempts from inside the three-point arc.

"Offensively, I think we turned the ball over a couple of times in a row, which kind of hurt because they were able to go down and get layups," Payne said. "Then we just missed a couple of shots here and there but outside of that, I think we were running our stuff pretty well."

Iowa's players didn't sulk after the loss. They were disappointed but were upbeat about how they competed against Texas.

"I think whenever all five of us is clicking on the floor at the same time and we're doing what we're supposed to be doing, then we're hard to be beat," Cole said. "We're hard to defend. That's what we need to be doing, and it showed right there. We were down by 15, and we came back and tied it up by halftime. It doesn't get any better than that. 

"If we can do that more consistently, we can be a good team."

Iowa (1-3) faces Wichita State at 6:45 p.m. tonight in the CBE Classic consolation game. Texas plays Pittsburgh afterward.

"We can play higher percentage basketball, and we can play longer stretches of really good basketball," Lickliter said. "Then we'll be that team that I think we're capable of.

"It was demanding. It's definitely not a time to feel sorry for ourselves."