Iowa basketball: Hawks squeak by Panthers Tuesday evening

The Iowa basketball team improved to 6-0 after squeaking by the University of Pittsburgh Panthers 69-68 in last night’s matchup. Here’s the recap.

It wasn’t exactly a pretty game, but the Iowa basketball team persevered Tuesday evening at Carver Hawkeye Arena when taking on the previously undefeated Pittsburgh Panthers. At the buzzer, the Hawkeyes walked away victorious 69-68 in a game where the Iowa basketball team was behind for the majority of the game.

With the victory in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge, the men’s Iowa basketball team improves to 6-0 and heads into Big Ten conference play against the #22 Wisconsin Badgers Friday night undefeated.

The Panthers came out firing on all cylinders shooting over 60% from the field in the first half and building a 46-40 lead heading into halftime. Fran McCaffrey and his staff were able to make adjustments heading into the second half, however, and held Pitt to just 22 points. Fran had this to say about the second half adjustments in his post-game press conference.

"We had to adjust personnel and we had to do some things in the second half, and I thought when I challenged them at halftime, in a very direct way, they responded and I’m really proud of that.They scored 22 points in the second half. You know, we slid our feet. We battled on the glass. We got to the floor, and we really fought."

While the Hawkeyes had a solid second half performance defensively, they struggled throughout the game offensively (36.5% shooting from the field), but the story of the Iowa basketball team so far this year has been their ability to step in certain areas when things are going well in others.

Either way, Fran was happy with the win.

"When you win a game like this, it’s a great feeling in the locker room because it certainly was not a thing of beauty by any means, but that’s how games are sometimes. Every game is different. Every game has a different flow. Every game has a different feel.We came into the game thinking we could do some things we didn’t do and then we did some things we didn’t think we’d be able to do, and that’s the kind of team we have."

Offensively, freshman Joe Wieskamp paced the Iowa basketball team in scoring with 18 points on 7 of 13 shooting while also leading the team in boards with 11. The two big men, who I thought would have a big game given the matchup they were presented struggled throughout.

Starting front court duo Tyler Cook and Luke Garza combined for 14 points and then rebounds, which would be a good performance if that was for just one player. Unfortunately it was not.

Leader of the team Jordan Bohannon put in the most minutes with 37 and while he struggled to get his offensive game going (4 for 12 shooting), he did manage to swipe six steals from the Panthers.

The big takeaway from this game is that Iowa did a great job of dealing with adversity. They were down going into half, their bread and butter (offensive scoring) was struggling, and they were being challenged by questionable calls (or lack thereof) by the officiating crew all day.

Tyler Cook got drilled in the face and received nothing from it.

Meanwhile Jordan Bohannon got a crappy foul call on a drive in the second half.

At the end of the day though, the Iowa basketball team won and that’s all that ultimately matters. Considering how strong the Big Ten appears to be this year, they need to be able to take care of business out of conference.