Hlas: Hawkeyes dunk troubles, drown Rutgers

IOWA CITY - Iowa dunked the basketball seven times Thursday night.

Adam Woodbury, the 7-foot-1 Iowa center who is the first to admit he isn't in the habit of mangling basketball rims, dunked twice in the first five minutes of his team's 81-47 thrashing of Rutgers at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

'I knew you guys were going to ask me about that,” Woodbury jovially said to reporters afterward.

On his second jam, Woodbury drove down an empty road for the easiest of scores.

'It was almost like a drill with the lane opening up for me,” he said.

Almost like a drill. There's your four-word summary of this one.

After losing back-to-back games to Minnesota and Northwestern, the Big Ten schedule gave the Hawkeyes a timely gift.

Rutgers, at home. It was a reset button. The Hawkeyes pressed it with glee.

The rout means nothing to the outside world. It doesn't really get the Hawkeyes a step closer to the NCAA tourney, because just playing Rutgers may hurt your resume. The last-place Scarlet Knights, after all, have been defeated by double-digits on 11 occasions, including their last four times out.

Yes, Rutgers beat Wisconsin in New Jersey with Badger star Frank Kaminsky unavailable to play because of a concussion. And the Lakers beat Golden State once this season, the Dolphins beat the Patriots once, Virginia Tech's football team beat Ohio State …

Anyway, Iowa had two choices Thursday. Either extend the two-game slog that began a week earlier or hit that reset key and play good ball against an undertalented, overmatched, weary foe. The Hawkeyes chose to treat Rutgers like one of the Hampton/Longwood/Alcorn State tomato cans from their home nonconference schedule. 'It gets us back on track,” said Iowa forward Jarrod Uthoff, who had 14 points and 4 steals in 25 minutes as he continues to build a very nice body of work this season.

'We'll hopefully win six in a row here.”

Right now, Hawkeyes Coach Fran McCaffery would be ecstatic with getting the new win streak bumped from one to two. Next is Sunday afternoon at Nebraska. The Cornhuskers aren't great, but they're no Rutgers and they won't lack for fan support against Iowa in their spiffy new Pinnacle Bank Arena.

'Every venue on the road in this league is tough,” McCaffery said. 'We've got three road games left and they are all going to be brutal on the road.”

Sunday looks like a pivotal day in the Hawkeyes' season. Win, and they're 8-6 in the Big Ten and sitting a lot prettier in their quests for a winning league record and a decent seed in the league tourney. Win, and the good feelings that surrounded the team after they whomped Maryland here on Feb. 8 will return.

Lose, and you'll have dropped three games to second-division teams in your last four starts, with the win against a team so marginal that no media from New Jersey traveled here to cover the game.

It's highly likely Iowa won't dunk seven times Sunday.

'Just in terms of style and location,” said McCaffery, 'it's going to be a different game.”

Yes, it will. It will have two competitive teams.

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