Another career-high scoring output from Bennett Stirtz as Iowa brushes past Northwestern

IOWA CITY — He’s not an overly emotional guy on the basketball court.

You won’t see him woofing at an opposing player, won’t see him yelling at any of his teammates if something bad happens. The guy is low flow, even keel all the way.

That’s in interviews as well.

But that didn’t mean Bennett Stirtz was going to choose to pass up the opportunity to chirp his own father postgame Sunday afternoon. Oh, Roger Stirtz was gonna hear it.

Count on it.

That’s because star guard Bennett Stirtz went off for a career-high 36 points as the Iowa Hawkeyes got past Northwestern, 76-70, before 11,474 fans at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. It took exactly one week for him to go past his previous scoring high, which was 32 in a win last Sunday at Oregon.

According to Bennett, his dad let him know after that game that it was pops that still held the family record for most points in a college game. Roger Stirtz popped for 34 points in a game for NCAA Division II Emporia State.

Move over old man. That 34 is nothing now.

“There actually wasn’t a scoreboard at Oregon that had the (individual) points, so I had no clue (what he had scored),” Bennett Stirtz said. “My dad let me know because his career high was 34, and he let me know I didn’t beat it. So I’m gonna let him know right after this press conference. I’m gonna give it to him.”

What was he going to say?

“Take that,” Bennett Stirtz said with a smile. “I just beat your career high.”

Iowa’s sixth straight victory didn’t come especially easy against a Northwestern team that dropped to 10-14 overall and 2-11 in the Big Ten Conference. The Wildcats led much of the first half, by as many six.

Iowa (18-5, 8-4) sputtered offensively the first 20 minutes but put together a good stretch in the final four-minute segment to somehow take a 39-35 lead into the break.

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“Our guys need to realize that this is the Big Ten, and you’ve got to make sure that you are consistently at your best,” Iowa Coach Ben McCollum said. “I thought Northwestern had a lot to do with that (first half).”

The Hawkeyes were much, much better to begin the second half, with a Stirtz lane drive and ensuing 3-pointer giving them a 54-40 lead with 12:52 to go. He had 22 second-half points, making 12 of 20 field-goal attempts, 4 of 6 from 3-point range and all eight free throws.

“I’ve got to attack more,” Stirtz said. “There was just a lull, and no one was driving the ball. I was kind of looking to others to drive it, and I wasn’t. So I know I have a lot of gravity if I drive it. That makes all the other guys open.”

“Bennett Stirtz was fantastic. He really controlled the game,” Northwestern Coach Chris Collins said. “We tried a lot of things defensively to try and get the ball out of his hands ... He played like an all-American player today.”

Northwestern, which lost its previous game by 40 at Illinois, didn’t disappear, climbing back within one possession, 70-67, with 2:02 to go. But Stirtz hit a driving layup, Iowa got a defensive stop, and that was what.

Tavion Banks added 13 points for Iowa. Nick Martinelli, the Big Ten’s leading scorer, led Northwestern with 21 points, though Iowa did a nice job defensively on him.

Martinelli, who incurred first-half foul trouble, was just 6 of 19 from the field. The teams combined to shoot 51 free throws, which make this game a slog much of the way.

Iowa’s next game is Wednesday at Maryland (5:05 p.m. tipoff).

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“The thing with really good players that people don’t realize is that players around him have to allow him to be great,” McCollum said. “What I mean by that is a lot of teams have great players, and Bennett is obviously one of the best. But their teammates want some more shine out of it, so they won’t allow that player to be great or shine to a certain level.

“Everything is built not just so Bennett can have big games. But when they are staying home (defensively), his teammates allow him to shoot and do those things and just want to win. At this level, I don’t think you see a lot of that. Where guys are as unselfish.”

Banks was asked what he thought when Stirtz began to take over.

“I was like ‘Let him do his thing,’” he said. “Sometimes if he gets double-teamed, I try to help him out. He throws it to me, I just throw it right back to him. He was on fire, so I let him do his thing.”

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