Big rebound: Iowa Hawkeyes do the grunt work and take down No. 18 Ohio State

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Connor McCaffery said he kept saying this to his Iowa men’s basketball teammates in their pregame huddle Saturday afternoon at Value City Arena:

“Pissed off.”

The Hawkeyes didn’t come to Columbus Friday with their daubers down after an 84-79 home loss to Michigan the night before.

“We kind of immediately moved on,” McCaffery said, “but I will say we definitely still had a sour taste in our mouth. I think that showed.”

Iowa dug in for its daunting date with No. 18 Ohio State, a team that entered the game tied for first place in the Big Ten loss column. The Hawkeyes earned a 75-62 win predicated on the age-old principles of defense and rebounding.

It was the best victory of the season for Iowa (18-8 overall, 8-7 Big Ten), its first against a ranked team. It was earned largely by relentless coverage of Buckeye All-America candidate E.J. Liddell, the 6-foot-7, 240-pound, do-it-all forward.

“I feel like we competed at times rather than 40 minutes,” Liddell said. “I felt they came out and played 40 minutes hard.”

Liddell had a hard 15 points. Iowa put two and sometimes three players at him, and limited him to two points in the first 17 minutes of the second half when the Hawkeyes went from trailing 45-41 to leading 68-55.

Kris Murray played a lot of defense on Liddell in the second half. Keegan Murray did his part. And the 6-foot-5 McCaffery, who never met a defensive assignment he didn’t embrace, was very much in that mix.

“You’ve got to throw multiple guys at him,” McCaffery said. “So that’s what we tried to do with me, Keegan, Kris all rotating on him. It was a group effort. You’ve got to be physical with him and meet his physicality.”

The Buckeyes opened a 21-10 lead when Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery called time with 13:12 left in the half. Keegan Murray, normally as close to stone-faced as it gets for a star player, clapped his hands and showed some emotion in the huddle.

More importantly, he proceeded to score 10 straight points by himself in under two minutes to make it a 21-20 game. Murray had 20 of his game-high 24 points by halftime, which ended with Iowa up 39-38.

Brother Kris Murray was scoreless in the half. He was a dynamo thereafter, scoring 11 points, finishing as his team’s leading rebounder with eight, and playing perhaps his best defense of the season.

“He played all right,” Keegan Murray said about his brother, with Kris in earshot. “He could have played better.”

Then Keegan put brotherly teasing aside and spoke truth. “He played big for us, especially in the second half, especially in getting stops, getting easy buckets.”

“I knew I had to be locked in defensively,” Kris said. “I thought defensively I was really good today, especially on E.J. and (power forward) Zed Key.”

Many Hawkeyes were really good in this game. Point guards Joe Toussaint and Ahron Ulis, guards Jordan Bohannon and Tony Perkins, and forward Patrick McCaffery all made significant second-half contributions.

Iowa rebounded figuratively and literally. It had a whopping 20 offensive boards and out-rebounded the Buckeyes, 40-31. The possession that defined Iowa’s performance came after Ohio State had scored seven straight points to pull within 68-62 with 2:39 remaining.

Kris Murray missed a 3-pointer and Connor McCaffery came up with the rebound. Ulis missed a drive and Bohannon came up with the rebound. Then, Ulis fed Connor McCaffery, who knocked in a 3-pointer with 1:42 left. The Buckeyes didn’t score again.

“I was yelling ‘AU! AU!” Connor McCaffery said. “I pretty much knew when I let it go that I was pretty sure it was going in.”

It was Connor McCaffery’s only shot in his 21 minutes of playing time, something splashy to go out on after all his grunt work on defense and within Iowa’s offense.

“He has a keen sense of what our team needs at any given time,” Fran McCaffery said. “He will fight you in the post.

“His communication ability, especially when we have some younger players out there, is really, really special. Makes my job easier.”

It was a big win. A chance to get another is Tuesday when No. 19 Michigan State comes to Iowa City.

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