After tight first half, Hawkeye men wallop Northern Illinois, 103-74

IOWA CITY — Iowa topped the 100-point mark for the fourth time this season and second-straight game, beating Northern Illinois 103-74 in men’s basketball Friday night at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

Behind nine points in 3:21 from Payton Sandfort, the Hawkeyes shot out of the second-half gate, going on a 15-5 run before the half’s first timeout to open a 69-53 lead.

Before the second half hit the 10-minute mark, Iowa took advantage of NIU’s lax defense to build an 85-58 advantage. The Hawkeyes finished with 56 points in the paint.

Six Hawkeyes scored 10 or more points. Ben Krikke led Iowa with 20 points. Sandfort had 16. His brother, freshman Pryce Sandfort, made three 3-pointers and scored a career-high 12 points.

Senior guard Tony Perkins had a career-high eight assists to go with 10 points and three steals. Sophomore guard Dasonte Bowen had 15 points off the bench. Freshman center Owen Freeman had 12 points, nine rebounds and three blocked shots.

Freeman had five offensive rebounds, four steals. Those are not typical numbers from a 6-foot-10 teen who is 13 games into his college career.

“If you’d been at practice in June and watched practice every day, you wouldn’t be surprised,” Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery said. “You could see it coming. It’s not like he started slow and he was behind and he couldn’t figure stuff out and it was going to be a learning curve. None of that.

“When he was healthy, from minute one he was one of our best players.”

NIU (6-6) had 21 turnovers, Iowa just seven.

The game was racehorse. The Huskies trailed by just 54-48 at halftime despite having zero rebounds, 12 turnovers to Iowa’s 28 and four, and 27 shots at the basket to the Hawkeyes’ 46.

NIU made 66.7 percent of its field goal tries in the half and was even better from 3-point distance, canning 8 of 11 for 72.7 percent. Things chilled after that, with the Huskies shooting just 29 percent overall in the second half.

Krikke had 16 points in the half, 12 in the first eight minutes as Iowa built a 27-15 lead behind a 13-0 run that took a mere 2:21 to stack. The Huskies closed to within a point later in the half before Iowa scored the last four points before intermission.

There were individual duels aplenty in that half. NIU guard David Coit and Perkins tested each other plenty. Centers Yanik Konan Niederhauser of the Huskies and Freeman blocked three shots apiece in the half.

The Hawkeyes take an 8-5 record to their next game, next Tuesday night at No. 23 Wisconsin (9-3, 1-0). Iowa lost Big Ten tilts to Purdue and Michigan earlier this month. It has three one-sided wins since then.

Krikke said he thinks his team is up to re-entering conference play.

“We’ll continue to practice hard and address things we need to address, and we keep coming together as a team and playing off our strengths.

“We’re obviously a deep team. I think we’re ready.”

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