3 Takeways: Unselfish at center, Gesell’s growth, Marble-Bardo and the 80s

IOWA CITY - Adam Woodbury's streak of 101 consecutive starts ended Saturday, not with a blowup or an injury, but with a hug.

The junior center had opened every game of his Iowa career but Coach Fran McCaffery asked him to step aside on Saturday to make way for senior teammate Gabe Olaseni, who never has started at Iowa.

When the players were informed of the lineup, Olaseni embraced Woodbury and then backed away.

'It was quick,” Olaseni said. 'I don't want to get too close to Woody because he's kind of like a wild animal. You don't know what he'll do.”

Olaseni opened both halves for Iowa as part of the team's 69-52 victory against Northwestern in the regular-season finale. But Olaseni played just 15 minutes after getting into early foul trouble. He scored three points and grabbed three rebounds.

'It was a nice touch for Coach McCaffery to do that,” Olaseni said. 'He didn't have to it obviously. I wouldn't have really cared if he did, but it was a nice touch to hear your name being called. It was interesting, but now it's back to where I'm good at, coming off the bench in the Big Ten Tournament.”

Woodbury posted one of his best performances of the last month. He played 24 minutes, scored 13 points, pulled down five offensive boards, dished two assists with one steal and no turnovers. Woodbury offered to come off the bench in the future, but McCaffery shot that down and said the centers would return their familiar roles.

'I've got a ton of respect for Gabe, and I thought he deserved it,” Woodbury said, 'just that's his last game at Carver and being able to start and being able to start the second half as well. I've got the utmost respect for him and what's done for my career and just the person that he is.”

'That's the relationship that they have,” McCaffery said. 'That's something special about our team.”

Individually, Olaseni and Woodbury each are considered among the Big Ten's best centers. But together they form one of the best center tandems in college basketball. Olaseni averages 8.3 points and 4.8 rebounds, ranks fourth among Big Ten players in blocks (1.5) and seventh in offensive rebounds (2.1). Woodbury puts up 6.8 points and 5.3 rebounds and ranks 11th in offensive boards (2.0).

'There's always a back and forth about who should start, me or Woody,” Olaseni said. 'I see it all the time on social media. So it gets annoying at times, just knowing that he is my teammate and without him there, I wouldn't be the player I am today.

'It's always interesting to see what people say who don't have a good scope on stuff outside, like the pluses-minuses, he should be playing in this game. ... Definitely just playing against him these past three years have definitely helped me and understanding he is my brother first.”

2. Gesell the leader.

Junior point guard Mike Gesell didn't score in Saturday's win, but he dished nine assists with only one turnover in 22 minutes.

Gesell tossed four lobs to senior Aaron White that produced dunks. In many ways Gesell has found his stride leading the team.

'When I'm getting assists, I feel like I'm scoring,” Gesell said. 'I feel like I just get as happy with the assists as the point guard. I was just trying to do whatever I needed to do for our team to win.

'The back line in their zone was really coming up, and I was looking over the top to Whitey, and Whitey did a tremendous job of always being in the right spot at the right time.”

Gesell also earned an admirer in Roy Marble, the school's all-time leading scorer and father of Gesell's former teammate, Devyn Marble.

'His maturity has really helped because (Gesell) was already smart,” Marble said. 'To be smart with the ball and now to recognize his own strength, and coordinate it with being a distributor with a very, very low turnover ratio makes this such a dangerous team.

'The strange thing is, you know how you get a new motorcycle and you crash and burn a few times until you really know how to ride that motorcycle? I think that's where Gesell is. Gesell and a lot of guys, they know the tendencies they know the red light when it goes off. They know the dos and the don'ts, the angles to take when they want to get a shot.”

3. Friendly competitors.

Few Big Ten series historically are as intense as Iowa-Illinois, and many of the rivalry's greatest games took place in the late 1980s.

Iowa's all-time leading scorer, Roy Marble, often competed against Illinois' top-shelf defender Stephen Bardo. The former competitors met on Friday night at the hotel before Saturday's Iowa-Northwestern game. Bardo served as color analyst for BTN, while Marble was honored at halftime by Iowa officials.

'Roy was physically gifted, but the thing that got Roy over the top was he was a competitor to the highest degree,” Bardo said. 'He'd go for a loose ball, he'd go for a rebound like his life depended on it. He played every play like that. He was very difficult to defend.

'I was one of the better defenders in the league, and I couldn't do anything with him at times because once he got going, he was so physical, so athletic and so competitive. That's the thing where I don't know if he got enough credit for how competitive he was. That's what I'll remember about Roy the most.”

Marble remains Iowa's all-time leading scorer at 2,116 points. He's 323 points ahead of No. 2 Aaron White, who passed Greg Stokes and Acie Earl on Saturday. Bardo was named the Big Ten's defensive player of the year in 1989, when the 'Flying Illini” earned a Final Four bid.

'He was a very fierce competitor as well as a defender,” Marble said of Bardo. 'He could defend, man. He had length. I would hate that because a lot of times he would get a tap on my shot or alter my shot because of his length.”

In their six meetings against one another, the home team held serve all but once. In 1987, No. 1 Iowa rallied from a 22-point deficit at Assembly Hall and beat Illinois 91-88 in overtime. The Hawkeyes advanced to the Elite Eight that season.

'I told one of the assistant coaches at Northwestern that Iowa was the most talented team in our four years,” Bardo said. 'Think about this: Indiana won the national championship in ‘87. Michigan won it in '89. We got to the Final Four, and Iowa was the most talented out of all of those teams. So that tells you how competitive the conference was. It was unbelievable back then.

'People don't realize that Matt Bullard transferred in, and he didn't start for a while. He came off the bench for a while and he's a 10-, 12-year pro. So that's how talented that era was of Iowa basketball. We never won in here. I was 0-4 in Carver against the Hawkeyes. I get a hard time about that.”

Iowa's win at Illinois was rare. From 1988-2013, the Hawkeyes were 1-22 in Champaign. In the final two battles between Marble and Bardo at Assembly Hall, the Illini rolled the Hawkeyes 94-81 and 118-94.

'They played hard. We knew there was no joking around on those trips,” Marble said. 'It was quiet because you knew, don't be laughing now and crying later on. It was all straight-laced. Everything was above the rim; we used to play above the rim. It's amazing all those battles, because that's what they were.”

The teams engaged in the most recent installment of their series less than two weeks ago at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Iowa won 68-60 in one of the season's most intense competitions. With the history and proximity of the schools, Bardo said the 107-year-old rivalry, which Illinois leads 82-70, will endure.

'When you come into this venue and the sound ricochets down off this court, it's an intimidating place to play,” Bardo said. 'Then you go over to Champaign, there's all kinds of history with like Jimmy Collins, Bruce Pearl and all that stuff. You throw all that in the mix, you've got a natural rivalry where they don't like each other.”

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