Iowa surges past Purdue, still unbeaten in B1G

IOWA CITY — Iowa players and coaches know they have something special in senior forward Jarrod Uthoff, and so does the rest of the Big Ten.

Uthoff added to his season highlight reel and in turn propelled the No. 9 Hawkeyes to their best league start in 46 seasons. Uthoff, the Big Ten's leading scorer, put up 22 points to push Iowa to an 83-71 win against No. 22 Purdue on Sunday at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

In yet another big-time performance, Uthoff added three assists that were every bit as vital as his four 3-pointers. Twice on back-to-back possessions, Uthoff successfully drove in the lane past Purdue freshman Caleb Swanigan, which brought up center A.J. Hammons. Both times Uthoff dished to Iowa center Adam Woodbury for easy layups, which stretched a four-point lead to eight points.

Uthoff, who stands nearly 6-foot-10, did most of his damage against the powerful 6-9 Swanigan. In the teams' first meeting at West Lafayette, Purdue (17-4, 5-3 Big Ten) had top defender Rapheal Davis guard Uthoff. That led to 25 points from Uthoff, and Purdue Coach Matt Painter elected for the change. The result was the same.

'We considered going with Rapheal on Uthoff, but (Peter) Jok has been so good,' Painter said. 'No matter who guards Uthoff, I thought he had the upper hand on them. He's a tough cover. He's put them at another level.'

Uthoff twice hit 3-pointers in the game's first three minutes to vault Iowa to a 10-4 edge. When Purdue rallied and took a seven-point lead, Uthoff knocked down another to cut the deficit to four. Then, as part of an 8-0 run to start the second half, Uthoff capped it with another 3-pointer to push Iowa ahead 41-35.

'You can't double him, because you know we've got weapons,' Jok said. 'It's a like a mismatch nightmare for anybody who's guarding him. Whenever he has mismatches — which is pretty much any night — we just go to him.'

Uthoff took advantage of his reputation with those passes to Woodbury. The first looked almost like a jumper, but it was placed perfectly at head level for Woodbury. On the second pass, Woodbury drove near the basket and flipped the ball around Hammons for the easy bucket.

'To be honest, in practice, I do that a lot,' Uthoff said. 'The five-man has a tendency to come up, especially when he sets a down screen. So when I'm coming up, if I see a resemblance of the five-man coming up, I know that's going to be open because there's no weak side that can guard him. I know that's going to be open so when I see that five-man, I just throw it.'

'I think what you saw was an aggressiveness that you love to see him play with,' Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery said. 'I mean, he was really attacking, and I don't think anything he does anymore surprises anybody.'

Uthoff averages 18.9 points and has scored in double digits in every game this year. In Big Ten action, he averages 20. The last player to score more than 20 a night was Adam Haluska in 2007.

Woodbury finished with 13 points and 10 rebounds in a tough match-up against Purdue's 7-foot tandem of Hammons and Isaac Haas. Hammons scored 10 points with six rebounds, while Haas had only one point and two rebounds.

'He was special today, Adam Woodbury,' McCaffery said.

Five different Iowa players hit 3-pointers in the second half's first seven minutes to take the Hawkeyes from a 35-33 halftime deficit to a 56-41 lead. Bench players Brady Ellingson, Nicholas Baer and Dominique Uhl each hit 3-pointers on consecutive possessions.

'The thing I wold say about Iowa is a lot of people have good teams that don't want to get to their bench, but these guys don't have much of a drop off and in fact, against teams like us, they tend to improve,' Painter said.

Iowa (16-3, 7-0 Big Ten) has won 13 consecutive Big Ten games, one shy of tying the school record. The Hawkeyes remain tied atop the Big Ten with Indiana and are 7-0 in league play for the first time since 1970. Iowa has won six of its seven Big Ten games by double digits this season.

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