Iowa men’s basketball team rebounds with win over Seton Hall

CEDAR RAPIDS - Amazing what a little shooting will do for a basketball team.

The Iowa Hawkeyes got their offense untracked and beat Seton Hall, 85-72, Friday night in the consolation game of the Rady Children’s Invitational men’s tournament at San Diego.

Iowa (4-2) led from virtually start to finish, taking a 5-2 lead on a 3-point shot from Tony Perkins and never trailing. The Hawkeyes built as much as a 15-point lead, led by 11 at halftime (44-33) and withstood a Seton Hall (4-2) rally in the second half that brought the Pirates as close as four.

Payton Sandfort had 22 points and Ben Krikke 19 to lead Iowa, which struggled mightily offensively in a 79-67 loss Thursday afternoon at this tournament to Oklahoma. The Hawkeyes shot 56.4 percent from the field, including 7 of 19 from beyond the arc.

“We played a really, really good team. We knew that when we got on the plane. We played really well today,” said Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery. “We did some good things yesterday, had some things that needed to be corrected, and we got them corrected. It’s exactly what we hoped to accomplish when we came out here.”

“I was really impressed with the guys,” said Krikke. “We talked a lot about effort. Last night we came out flat against Oklahoma. which was frustrating. We just got into the film room, figured out what we needed to figure out, made adjustments. Credit to our coaches. They did a great job scouting them tonight. We executed the game plan well, played with energy, just felt a lot more connected.”

Iowa went 1 for its first 20 from 3-point land against Oklahoma and was behind the entire game. It also had issues against the dribble drive.

This was a nice rebound.

“Just helping each other on the defensive end,” Krikke said. “Yesterday it felt like we were on an island defensively, they were getting downhill, getting easy layups, stuff like that. Today we were pretty intentional about being in the gap, helping each other. Then we didn’t matchup against Oklahoma’s physicality, either.

“We had to lock into that as well.”

Iowa hosts North Florida on Wednesday night at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

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