Offensive woes hinder Iowa men’s basketball team in 79-67 loss to Oklahoma

CEDAR RAPIDS — Iowa’s men’s basketball loss Thanksgiving afternoon to Oklahoma could be summed up in three words.

Clank, clank, clank.

That was the sound you heard repeatedly as Hawkeyes shooters missed attempt after attempt from beyond the 3-point arc in a 79-67 defeat at the Raby Children’s Invitational in San Diego that wasn’t really as close as that score indicated. Oklahoma scored the game’s first points and led for all but one minute, by as many as 22 points late in the second half.

Iowa (3-2) missed its first 14 shots from beyond the arc, going 0-fer completely in the first half. Freshman Brock Harding finally splashed one home in transition with 12:44 left in the game, and the Hawkeyes ironically hit their final three trey attempts, all coming in the final couple of minutes.

But 4 for 23 overall isn’t good. It seemed the vast majority of the misses were short off the front rim.

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And this is coming off a 2-for-12 effort from 3-point range in a win over Arkansas State.

“We had some really good shots,” said Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery. “I do think we forced a couple. But for the most part, I thought we had good looks at it. It’s rare that we’re going to be 1 for 20 at some point (in a game) from 3. We recognize that, one, this is a really good rebounding team, and, two, we’re not making our shots at a percentage we normally do.

“It was clearly a struggle offensively.”

McCaffery was encouraged by Iowa being able to outrebound Oklahoma (5-0). But the Sooners were able to get to the rim a lot in building a lead that included 36-24 at halftime.

Junior forward Jalon Moore led Oklahoma with 18 points. Guard Javion McCollum added 14, including three tough fadeaway or step-back shots at the end of shot clocks in the second half to quell any momentum Iowa may have been building.

“It really starts on the ball,” Iowa’s Payton Sandfort said. “We’ve got to have more pride (defensively).”

“It was the drives, it was the screen (and) roll. It wasn’t anything other than that,” McCaffery said. “They’ve got a lot of guys that can go off the bounce.”

Freshman center Owen Freeman continued to show well early in the season for Iowa, leading his team with 13 points and seven rebounds off the bench. Sandfort added 12 points.

Iowa got 29 points from its five reserves, who are all freshmen or sophomores. The Hawkeyes play Seton Hall (4-1) in a tournament consolation game Friday afternoon at 5 p.m.

“Don’t let it sit there for too long. Just get back to it,” Sandfort said. “We need to address just kind of being tougher. I think they really out-toughed us, which is sad. We outrebounded them, we worked on that all week, so I’m proud of us for that. But they were more physical on the ball, and we turned it over a lot. That just can’t happen. We’ve got to be better than that.”

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