Iowa Hawkeyes men take it to Michigan State on the road, 78-71

(This story was written in Cedar Rapids.)

Iowa earned its biggest men’s basketball win of the season Tuesday night.

The Hawkeyes upset Michigan State 78-71 at Breslin Center in East Lansing, Mich. Iowa got its second Quad 1 win in four days and improved to 8-8 in the Big Ten, 16-11 overall. The Hawkeyes defeated Wisconsin in overtime last Saturday in Iowa City.

This is the first time the Hawkeyes have been .500 in the league since they were 3-3. Michigan State’s three-game winning streak was snapped as it fell to 9-7, 17-10.

“I couldn’t be more proud of these guys tonight,” Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery said on the Hawkeye Radio Network’s postgame show.

Iowa had a 16-point lead two minutes into the second half. The Spartans whittled it to 70-65 with 2:31 left, then Iowa reinserted freshman center Owen Freeman, who played just eight minutes in the game because of foul trouble.

Freeman immediately fed junior forward Payton Sandfort for a layup and then scored on a dunk with 1:14 left for a 74-65 edge. The Spartans got no closer than seven points after that.

Sandfort had a game-high 22 points. Teammate Ben Krikke had 18 points and a season-high 14 rebounds.

The Hawkeyes shot 50.9 percent from the field and made only six turnovers in beating Michigan State for the fifth time in their last six meetings.

“There’s a lot of strategy that goes into our game plan,” Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery said on the Hawkeye Radio Network postgame show, “but the two most important things were don’t turn it over and rebound the ball. We outrebounded them (35-34) and we had six turnovers.”

The Spartans were 10-of-20 from 3-point range, but missed eight layups and were just 7-of-14 from the foul line.

The Hawkeyes scored 21 of the game’s last 27 points in the first half for a 45-33 lead.

Michigan State led 27-24 with 6:34 left in the half, but the Hawkeyes scored the next 10 points for the eighth and final lead change of the half, and game.

Krikke had one of his finest games at Iowa after averaging just 7.0 points and 2.7 rebounds over his previous three games.

“I don’t know if I’ve had a stretch like that in my career,” Krikke said. He was back to his early-season form Tuesday, getting a lot done in the paint with Freeman and Ladji Dembele out of the game. Dembele had foul trouble himself after getting a pair of assists and making his first 3-pointer since Dec. 16.

Iowa relied heavily on a 2-3 zone with their big men sidelined, then man-to-man defense, said McCaffery, “was what got us home.”

Patrick McCaffery came off the bench to lead Iowa’s first-half scoring with 12 points in 11 minutes, making all four of his field goal attempts.

“That’s the Pat we know and love,” Krikke said.

Iowa shot 57.1 percent in the half to the Spartans’ 37.9. The Hawkeyes built their lead despite the absence of Freeman, who was taken out of the game for the rest of the half after getting his second foul with 16:56 remaining. He got two more fouls in the first 3:29 of the second half, and was again removed.

He was in the game and getting it done, however, when it mattered most.

As for Michigan State, “We flat out didn’t bring it,” said their coach, Tom Izzo. The Spartans’ nine-game home winning streak was halted.

“They just played harder and better than we did,” Izzo said. “It looked like we were in quicksand right from the get-go.”

Iowa’s next game is at No. 12 Illinois (19-6, 10-4 Big Ten) Saturday at 1:15 p.m.

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