Iowa Hawkeyes Use Second Half Surge To Defeat Michigan

The Iowa Hawkeyes came into Sunday’s game against the Michigan Wolverines looking to stay undefeated in conference play. They were taking on a Michigan team that had hopes of knocking off their second ranked team in the last five days.

When the game between Michigan and Iowa first tipped off, it looked like Iowa was going to blow the Wolverines out. The Hawkeyes had taken a 9-0 lead within the first minute and a half of the game and Michigan looked stunned. John Beilein, being the veteran head coach he is, took a time out to settle his guys down.

As the first half progressed, Iowa’s lead started to shrink. In fact, the Wolverines actually took the lead from Iowa at 21-20. They were beating Iowa back door and Iowa was forced into taking some shots that they might not normally take.

Iowa settled down a bit, got into their press, and started taking better shots. After a Jarrod Uthoff made jumper that made it 31-26, Adam Woodbury stole the ball from Michigan’s Aubrey Dawkins and took it from half court to the rim and slammed it home to give Iowa a 7 point lead.

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This is something we probably won’t ever see again, but boy did it wake the Hawkeye faithful up inside Carver Hawkeye Arena. The teams played out the rest of the half and Iowa would take a 38-33 lead into the locker room.

The Wolverines came out of the halftime break smoking hot from behind the three point line. They made three three’s in the first four minutes of the half and had the Hawkeye lead down to one.

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With 12 minutes left in the game, Dom Uhl would make a jumper that gave Iowa a 53-52 lead and Uthoff was parked on the bench. Iowa then went on a 12-0 run over the next four minutes to build an 11 point lead. The run was fueled by three three point field goals, two from Peter Jok and the other from Anthony Clemmons.

After being on the bench for around 6 plus minutes, Jarrod Uthoff came back and immediately had an impact. He hit a three with just over five minutes left in the game to push the Iowa lead to 12.

A Derrick Walton Jr. three pointer with 3 minutes left would cut the Iowa lead to five, but Jok answered with the biggest shot of the game as he buried a three pointer on the other end to extend the lead back out to eight. It seemed like every punch that Michigan threw, Iowa had an answer for it.

After that Walton three, the Wolverines wouldn’t make another shot from the field as Iowa cruised to an 82-71 win to push their Big Ten record to 5-0.

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Uthoff led all scorers with a surprisingly quiet 23 points. Jok stole the show in the second half when he scored 14 of his 16 points. Woodbury and Uhl were the other Hawkeyes in double figures with 12 and 10 respectively.

One other huge takeaway I had was the fact that Iowa only turned the ball over four times, and all of those came in the first half.

Iowa will now turn their attention to the Rutgers Scarlet Knights. They’ll travel to Piscataway, NJ on Thursday looking to extend their Big Ten record to 6-0.

Stay locked into Dear Old Gold for constant coverage of the Iowa Hawkeyes.

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Iowa Hawkeyes Use Second Half Surge To Pull Away From Michigan

By Dylan Burn | Jan 17, 2016

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