Hawkeye men make big comeback, but don’t get big comeback win at Indiana

(This story was written in Cedar Rapids.)

Iowa climbed all the way out of a 17-point hole only to fall back down in the final two minutes of its men’s basketball game at Indiana Tuesday.

The Hoosiers scored the last eight points for a 74-68 victory at Assembly Hall. Iowa dropped to 4-6 in the Big Ten, 12-9 overall. Indiana is 5-5, 13-8. It snapped the Hawkeyes’ four-game winning streak over the Hoosiers.

Iowa trailed 44-32 three minutes into the second half, but worked its way to a 49-49 tie with 10:37 left. The Hawkeyes took a 54-53 lead with 8:43 to go, and things were seesaw after that.

Payton Sandfort swished a jumper off a cross-court inbounds pass from Patrick McCaffery for a 68-66 Iowa lead with 1:40 to go, but freshman guard Gabe Cupps sank a 3-pointer on Indiana’s subsequent possession.

Cupps was in the game because senior Xavier Johnson suffered an upper-body injury with 2:12 remaining and left the game.

The pivotal play after that was when Iowa’s Josh Dix chased down a defensive rebound as he was falling out of bounds. He flipped the ball off teammate Owen Freeman’s foot. The carom went to Indiana’s Trey Galloway, who immediately fed Kel’el Ware for a dunk and a 72-68 lead with 26 seconds remaining.

That second-chance basket was indicative of the biggest stat in Indiana’s favor, a 45-32 advantage in rebounds.

Iowa’s offense never got into a first-half flow as it fell behind as much as 39-22 before scoring the half’s last six points to get within 11 points.

The Hoosiers had an 11-0 run as the Hawkeyes went 6:57 without a score and 7:49 without a basket. Anthony Leal made back-to-back 3-pointers for the Hoosiers in the run, matching his season total for 3s.

“We didn’t match their energy level at the start of the game,” Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery said in his postgame press conference. “They jumped us. Our defensive intensity and execution were way better in the second half.”

Leal finished with a career-high 13 points. He had scored 14 points all season entering the game.

“Where I come from in the NBA, you call that a true pro,” said Indiana Coach Mike Woodson. “And Anthony is the ultimate teammate in terms of hanging in there with me.”

Sandfort equaled his career-high of 26 points for the second straight game, and had a team-high eight rebounds. Teammate Tony Perkins had 22 points, 17 in the second half.

It was Perkins’ fourth-straight 20-point game. He finished second to Leal in Indiana’s 2020 high school “Mr. Basketball” voting.

Freshman center Owen Freeman had foul trouble and trouble dealing with Ware. He had a career-low 4 points. Iowa forward Ben Krikke was 1-of-9 from the floor and scored 2 points, his lowest total in the last four seasons.

“It’s not so much they didn’t have great games,” McCaffery said. “They didn’t rebound.

“They had only five rebounds in the game combined. We got out-rebounded by 13. Makes it tough.”

Iowa shot a season-low 35.4 percent from the field and was 6-of-22 from deep. The Hawkeyes stayed in the game in large part because they made just three turnovers, tying their fewest in McCaffery’s 14 seasons at Iowa.

Ware, a 7-foot sophomore who had missed the last two games with an ankle issue, had 23 points and 10 rebounds for the Hoosiers.

“He altered a lot of shots at the rim and had some big blocks,” Sandfort said on the Hawkeye Radio Network’s postgame show.

Indiana’s leading scorer this season, forward Malik Reneau (16.6 ppg) rolled an ankle in the game’s third minute and didn’t return to the game.

Iowa’s next game is at home against Ohio State (13-8, 3-7) Friday at 6 p.m.

“We’ve got to start stringing together some wins if we want to make a run in March,” Sandfort said.

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