Iowa Basketball: The Day After

A lot of times, as fans, we can get caught up in an emotional win like last’s night victory in East Lansing. So caught up, in fact, that we miss some key parts of the game when typing up a recap. Well, today I thought about it some more and came up with some things Iowa did well and some they didn’t do so well.

For starters, and I tweeted this a couple times last night, Dom Uhl didn’t get enough credit for his play in the first half. Mike Gesell has been this teams motor and when he picked up his second foul early in the first half, I got worried. Gesell killed the Spartans in Iowa City and now he’d be riding the bench for the rest of the first half.

As Gesell left the game, Uhl came in. He then went on to score 7 straight points for the Hawkeyes to give them the confidence they needed to continue without their point guard. Dom was big in keeping Iowa’s heads up and focused in that first half.

To go along with that, senior point guard Anthony Clemmons was huge in that stretch, too. With Gesell leaving, he was now being asked to not only guard Bryn Forbes, but to handle the ball as well. An underclassmen may have shied away from the opportunity, but this was a senior playing against two of his old high school teammates, in his hometown for the last time. This was what Clemmons wanted!

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He did an excellent job of locking up Forbes and hit some key three point field goals, which is something he isn’t known for, in that crucial first half.

The play of Peter Jok, who seems to be maturing before our eyes, was outstanding. Jok scored a game high 23 points in the rout and was as confident as I’ve ever seen him. Pete is a pure shooter and a lot of times what gets shooters in trouble is, they start thinking about it too much. Last night, Jok wasn’t over-thinking anything, he was just stopping and popping, and the shots kept falling.

During last night’s broadcast, the announcers kept saying that Michigan State led the country in rebounding margin (they’re now 2nd). Well, the Hawkeyes out-rebounded the Spartans by four and it was mostly thanks to their hustle. Iowa had a possession last nearly two minutes last night because of their offensive rebounding. If Iowa is showing this much hustle on the offensive glass all year long, they’re going to tough.

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Finally, I want to touch on the last six or so minutes. What the heck happened to Iowa’s offense? Everything they were doing throughout the game that got them the giant lead in the first place was abandoned. It was just 20 seconds of Gesell dribbling around mid court and then they’d get a terrible shot. This is my only knock on otherwise a great game. If Iowa can sure up that late game offense, the Hawkeyes have got to be the favorite to win the Big Ten right now.

Iowa will take on Michigan this Sunday afternoon in Iowa City. Tip off is set for 3:30 p.m. CT.

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