No. 15 Duke defends, defeats Iowa in men’s basketball, 74-62

(This story was written in Cedar Rapids.)

NEW YORK — Iowa couldn’t hang with the Duke men’s basketball team Tuesday night in Madison Square Garden.

The No. 15 Blue Devils (9-2) never trailed once they took a 6-5 lead, and pulled away from the Hawkeyes (6-2) in the second half for a 74-62 Jimmy V Classic win. Duke led by as much as 18 points.

Iowa scored eight straight points to pull within 68-60 with 1:11 left, the only time it was within single-digits in the game’s final 14 minutes.

Duke started four freshmen. They and the rest of the team’s nine-player rotation out-shot and out-rebounded Iowa. The Blue Devils had a 44-35 edge on the boards. Iowa shot 39.7 percent from the field, and made only 3 of 16 3-pointers. Duke made 44.4 percent of its shots.

“You miss 38 shots, you’ve got to get more than nine back,” Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery said in his postgame press conference.

“We’ve got good shooters that didn’t make shots tonight. I thought we moved the ball and and shot open shots and they didn’t go in.”

“Three-for-16 from 3, it’s hard to win,” McCaffery said on his postgame radio interview. “I thought we played hard, I thought we fought hard.

“Some things happened in this game that shouldn’t have, that I didn’t like,” he said, without specifying.

“We played really hard.”

Junior guard Jeremy Roach tied his career-high with 22 points for Duke. The Hawkeyes couldn’t stop freshman forward Mark Mitchell, who added 17 points. Northwestern transfer Ryan Young had 11 rebounds off the bench.

The Hawkeyes were led by Patrick McCaffery and Dasonte Bowen, who had 12 points apiece as their team had a season-low for points.

“We played hard, we didn’t play well,” Patrick McCaffery said on the Hawkeye Radio Network’s postgame show. “We need to bring more than that if we want to beat them.”

Bowen got all of his career-high total in the last eight minutes.

“The kid can go,” Patrick McCaffery said.

“He’s a gamer,” Fran McCaffery said. “He’s really talented, he’s tough-minded.”

Iowa’s Kris Murray was stymied by Duke freshman forwards Mitchell and Dariq Whitehead. Coming off a career-high 31-point game against Georgia Tech a week earlier, Murray had a season-low eight points on 3-of-9 shooting. He entered the game averaging 21 points.

“That was March defense tonight on Murray,” first-year Duke head coach Jon Scheyer said.

“His shot wasn’t falling and that’s rare,” Fran McCaffery said.

“He didn’t force it. He played the game the right way. Yeah, they were mugging him, they were denying him, they were chasing him around, they were switching on him, trying to limit his touches. He just kept working and I’m really proud of him for that.”

Iowa had a season-low in points and tied its season-low in 3-pointers made. It’s 19-of-78 (24.4 percent) over its last four games.

The Hawkeyes were scheduled to fly back to Iowa after the game. They’ll have one day of practice for their 7 p.m. game at Carver-Hawkeye Arena Thursday against No. 20 Iowa State (6-1).

“We’ll get ‘em ready,” Fran McCaffery said.