Iowa pulls away at Rutgers to stay unbeaten in Big Ten play

PISCATAWAY, N.J. — Before he could put the finishing touches on his scouting report, Iowa coach Fran McCaffery saw Rutgers' 50-point setback against Purdue scroll across the ticker.

'I think we would all prefer that that not be the game before ours,'' McCaffery said following the Hawkeyes' 90-76 win over Rutgers on Thursday night at the Rutgers Athletic Center. 'I think that's safe to say.''

Fortunately for McCaffery, Peter Jok and Anthony Clemmons diminished any thoughts of a potential letdown. The shooting guards each produced career-high scoring performances, with Jok scoring 29 and Clemmons netting 20 points as No. 9 Iowa continued its best start in Big Ten play in 19 years with a convincing road triumph.

'We saw they got beat by 50, but we weren't worried about that,'' said Jok, who hit five of his nine 3-pointers in his first game since being named Big Ten Player of the Week on Monday. 'We wanted to come out and work on us and not worry about the score from last game. We knew we were going to get their best because they got embarrassed in their last game. It wasn't pretty but we got the win.''

McCaffery knew his Hawkeyes would get all they could handle from a Rutgers team coming off its most lopsided home defeat in school history just three days ago. Ultimately, Iowa's sixth-year coach said he was just looking to get back home with another win.

And thanks to a double-double effort from senior center Adam Woodbury (12 points, 11 rebounds) and a 20-point, eight-rebound performance by senior forward Jarrod Uthoff, the Hawkeyes (15-3, 6-0 Big Ten) accomplished that goal.

'I think we all knew that we were going to get a really intense effort from Rutgers,'' said McCaffery, a Philadelphia native who grew up about an hour away from Rutgers. 'I think Monday night was a fluke. It was a bad match. And I think to a man their players committed themselves to competing in a different way, which they did.''

While he wasn't satisfied with how Rutgers (6-14, 0-7) registered its highest shooting percentage (48.1) in a Big Ten this season, McCaffery was pleased with his team's scoring output.

'We basically outscored them,'' McCaffery said. 'We didn't really defend them that well. But I look at it like this: everyone likes to talk about, 'we didn't do this, we didn't do that.' They did some good stuff, so I credit them. But we still scored 90, and in this league we want to get a 'W' and get on to the next game.''

Iowa scored the game's first eight points and then led 13-2 before Rutgers responded with a 14-4 run to produce a respectable showing in the first half. Jok, who averaged 19.5 points in a pair of wins last week, scored 19 in the first half on 7-for-11 shooting to send the Hawkeyes into intermission with a 45-37 advantage.

Rutgers, which led for just 28 seconds in the entire game, was paced by Mike Williams, who scored 13 of his team-high 17 points in the second half.

But after an Omari Grier 3-pointer cut Iowa's lead to 80-72 with 4:15 to play, Jok responded with a jumper at the other end and the Hawkeyes led by double digits the rest of the way.

'We went on a couple of cold spells, they hit a couple of shots, but we were able to hit those big 3's,'' said Uthoff, who made four of six 3-pointers for an Iowa team that hit on 11-for-29 from beyond the arc overall. 'It's always tough coming into a Big Ten arena and getting a win, but this is a big win for us and we look forward to Purdue on Sunday.''

Uthoff surpassed 1,000 career points in the win.