Maryland Terrapins Outlast Iowa Hawkeyes

The Iowa Hawkeyes traveled to College Park, Maryland for a battle with the 8th ranked Maryland Terrapins. This figured to be a great game, but did it hold up?

I’m not really sure where to start to be honest.

Iowa was pretty bad on defense and shooting the ball in the first half. Maryland made six three point field goals in the first half to Iowa’s two. Iowa’s Jarrod Uthof played his worst game of the year by a landslide, and the Hawkeyes only found themselves down six at the halftime break.

Adam Woodbury and Dom Uhl did a good job of keep Iowa in the game during the first half. The pair had seven points a piece in the half. Iowa would take a 29-28 lead late in the first half, but two three point field goals from the Terps shifted the lead back their way, 34-29.

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Iowa went into the locker room trailing by a score of 41-35 and they were unbelievably bad in the first half, that was encouraging. I mentioned that the first four minutes of the second half would be huge for Iowa if they were going to remain in this game. Well, they answered and went on a 7-1 run over the first four minutes of the half and tied the game at 42.

The Terps went 5:48 without scoring to open the second half, but Iowa couldn’t seem to build any type of lead. You can credit Maryland’s defense, but Iowa was also very bad on the offensive side of the ball for most of the night. After Maryland got back on track, the Hawkeyes would go scoreless from right around the 17 minute mark to the 12 minute mark. You aren’t going to win most games if you go scoreless for five minutes at a time.

However, Iowa crawled back into it and with 8:10 left in the game, Woodbury gave the Hawkeyes a one point lead with a layup inside. Fourteen seconds later, he picked up his fourth foul, and would be forced to sit. This complicated things.

Woodbury would sit down for a couple minutes, but Fran McCaffery would be forced to put him back in and with 2:47 left in the game, he fouled out. Again, it was a suspect call on Woodbury. This pretty much killed Iowa. Adam was so good for the majority of the game that the fact that the officials had the stones to foul him out on that play, is unreal.

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However, the biggest moment came a couple seconds later. The Terps missed a shot and the rebound came to Robert Carter. Mike Gesell then took it from Carter and the officials fouled Carter out on a pretty bad call as well. Gesell was going to the line with a chance to tie the game at 62.

Unfortunately, Mike doesn’t perform too well late in games and that wouldn’t change tonight. He missed the front end of a one-and-one which led to a jump ball that favored Maryland. The Terps took a timeout and Mark Turgeon drew up a perfect play for his star freshman, Diamond Stone, and Stone got an easy dunk to give Maryland a four point lead. Gesell would then turn the ball over the other way and that would lead to an easy layup on Maryland’s side.

This game was ultimately over. It was a fouling game during the last minute and the closest the Hawkeyes got was four points. Iowa went on to lose the game by a score of 74-68.

While disappointed, you can’t expect to win them all. Iowa played awful for a majority of the game and their best player shot 2-13 from the field. Jake Layman‘s length had something to do with Uhtoff’s struggles, but he simply wasn’t himself.

Iowa now has the pressure of being undefeated in conference play off their shoulders. That should allow them to play a little looser. The Hawkeyes will return home on Sunday afternoon and welcome in the Northwestern Wildcats. Iowa and Northwestern will tip off at 2:00 p.m. CT inside Carver Hawkeye Arena.

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