Iowa basketball: Hawks survive last non-conference game against Bryant

In their last non-conference game before entering Big Ten play, the Iowa basketball team struggled to blow away a terrible 3-8 Bryant Bulldogs team.

Last night’s game against the Bryant Bulldogs, one of the worst teams in the nation according to KenPom.com, was supposed to be one of the easiest victories to date for the men’s Iowa basketball team. The Hawks, however, got more than they bargained for and found themselves in a forty minute battle in Carver Hawkeye Arena. Although the game was frustrating to watch as the Iowa basketball team just struggled to pull away, I won’t look too much into the score as indicative of what this team can do going forward.

For starters, the Hawkeyes were missing one of their starters, Luka Garza, who is recovering from a sprained ankle, and they basically played their starters most of the game. In fact, the starters averaged 32.8 minutes in last night’s contest with Tyler Cook leading the way by playing every single minute of the game. On the bench, just three guys rotated in (Maishe Dailey, Connor McCaffery, and Ryan Kriener). Factor in that Kriener saw just three minutes and McCaffery had his lowest minutes of the season at 13, it’s easy to realize that the Hawks were not at full capacity.

That being said, the Bulldogs put up a good fight. Despite not holding a lead for more than 37 seconds the entire game, Bryant managed to stay within five points consistently throughout. The largest lead the Iowa basketball team even possessed was a twelve point lead late in the first half, which Bryant immediately began digging into.

Iowa, however, would manage to hang on to secure a 72-67 victory against Bryant on the heels of another impressive performance by junior forward Tyler Cook who put in 19 points along with 12 rebounds and six assists. Jordan Bohannon added another 17 on five made three-pointers and two free throws and Garza’s lineup replacement, Nicholas Baer, put in 12 points on 4-9 of shooting while also posting five blocked shots.

As has been the case for most games this season, the Hawks got to the line at a high rate, taking 31 shot attempts, but they struggled again shooting the ball from the floor posting just a 45.7% shooting percentage, ten points lower than their season average.

At the end of the day though, the Hawks got a win on a night when they were clearly struggling. The only bad thing that could honestly come from this is that the Hawks have a decent chance of falling out of Monday’s AP Poll as they have seen their position dip over the last few weeks with their lackluster non-conference schedule. To be honest though, that doesn’t really matter at this point because if Iowa can take care of business in the Big Ten conference schedule starting with Purdue Thursday night, they’ll begin to climb once again.