Hawkeyes overcome awful start to beat Ohio State for their 20th win of the men’s hoops season

IOWA CITY — This edition of “Bubble Talk” focuses on the Iowa Hawkeyes.

An at-large NCAA tournament berth is a question mark as the final stretch of the regular season commences. Despite a solid NET ranking of 27, Iowa had lost three of four.

Matchups with third-ranked Michigan and No. 12 Nebraska still are on tap. The latter is on the road.

So take into consideration the importance of Wednesday night’s game against Ohio State. Both teams came in 9-7 in the Big Ten Conference, looking to make an impression.

Consider it impression made for Iowa.

Down 12 points early, the Hawkeyes recovered and smoked the Buckeyes, 74-57, before a lively crowd at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. The win was the 20th this season for the Hawkeyes (20-8), though that isn’t quite as magic of a number NCAA tournament-wise as it used to be.

“Let’s go win 20 more,” shrugged Iowa’s Alvaro Folgueiras, brilliant off the bench with 20 points and five assists in front of his older brother, Nacho, who plays professional for the Limerick Eagles in Ireland.

Ben McCollum became the second head coach at Iowa to win 20-plus games in his first season. Tom Davis was the first in 1986-87.

Iowa is in eighth place alone in the Big Ten.

“That stuff doesn’t really do it for me,” McCollum said. “I think maybe at some point I’ll look back. We’ve just got to continue to get better. Try and extend your season as long as you can extend your season. If you continue improving, then you can do that.”

Bennett Stirtz led Iowa with 22 points, followed closely by Folgueiras with 20. Cam Manyawu (12) and Tavion Banks (10) also had double-figure points for the Hawkeyes, who shot 57 percent from the field and made 15 of their 17 free throws.

Hard to believe there was such an awful start for Iowa in this one.

Ohio State shot out to a 14-2 lead, forcing McCollum to burn a timeout. The Buckeyes made their first four 3-pointers: two from John Moberly Jr. and two from Amare Bynum.

Iowa, meanwhile, didn’t record its first successful field goal until Alvaro Folgueiras took a great pass from Bennett Stirtz for an and-one layup. Devin Royal then made one of two free throws to put Ohio State ahead 15-5 with 13:46 left in the first half.

And then ... every single thing flipped. Just like that.

Ohio State went 8:19 without a point, Iowa’s stagnant came to life and the Hawkeyes went on a 16-0 run to jump ahead 23-18 on a pair of Trevin Jirak free throws just inside the six-minute mark.

Taison Chatman hit a trey to finally end the Ohio State drought, but Iowa immediately responded with 10 straight points for an unreal 33-18 lead. Cam Manyawu had six of those 10 points for the Hawkeyes and finished the half with a driving inside shot to put his team up 14 at the break, 37-23.

“I just think it was defensively. We came out slow,” said Iowa’s Kael Combs, who did a great job defending Ohio State’s leading scorer Bruce Thornton. “We gave up some O-boards, Coach Mac got into us a little bit. We just settled down and played defense, got some defensive rebounds.”

Thornton, by the way, came into Wednesday night’s game averaging 20.4 points per game and was last week’s player of the week in the Big Ten. He didn’t score until eight minutes into the second half, finishing with 10 points.

“Just not let him see any open shots,” Combs said. “Just stick with him the whole time and stay in front of him. Coach Mac said the primary defender has to act like you have no help. Just go one-on-one against out there ... be a dog.”

Iowa extended its advantage to as many as 23 points in the second half. The Hawkeyes outscored Ohio State in the paint, 44-18, which was another eye-opening statistic.

Folgueiras had a lot to do with that.

“I had a little extra motivation because I had my brother here. So I had some extra power today,” he said.

“I think his brother needs to stay here and come to a few more games,” Combs said.

“He eats a lot,” Folgueiras countered. “I’m not going to pay for his food.”

Iowa plays Saturday morning at 11 a.m. (Iowa time) against Penn State. Then it closes at home against Michigan and at Nebraska, before the Big Ten Tournament begins the following week.

“It wasn’t our best start (tonight), but that is kind of par for the course right now,” McCollum said. “It’s like ‘Oh, we’re going to start bad and then maybe we’ll make a comeback.’ But then we buckled down defensively. I thought we controlled the game offensively and did a good job.”

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