Iowa Basketball: Hawks Blown Out by Purdue

Iowa Basketball was decimated on the road by the Purdue Boilermakers falling 104-68.

104 points. The 13th ranked scoring offense in Big Ten play just hung 104 points on your Iowa Hawkeyes. The Boilermakers shot 55.9% from three and 63.1(!!!)% from the field.

Iowa led this game 2-0 after a Luka Garza lay up, it would be the only lead Iowa had in this game. Purdue proceeded to run off 17 straight points with no timeout as if Fran McCaffery was waiting to see if Mackey Arena could get any louder. Iowa didn’t answer with a run to cut it single digits in fact they did the opposite. The Hawkeyes tightened up under the pressure and in the hostile environment and were blown out by an average Purdue team.

I have to confess, there won’t be much game analysis on this one. I turned the game off at halftime. I have watched, beginning to end every single Iowa basketball game this season (including Depaul) and this game was impossible to get through. Good on you if you managed to watch the debacle but I couldn’t bring myself to watch the end of the game.

Iowa struggled on offense on the road again, shooting 42.6% from the field and 24% from three. Luka Garza seemed to be the only one awake on the offensive end, but only if we could say that about his defensive effort, specifically on the glass. The Big Ten’s second-leading rebounder managed just one (1) rebound in this game, and it was an offensive one. Five minutes into the game, every single Purdue miss was rebounded by Purdue. That can’t happen.

Purdue had the game of the decade and I think that factually might be the case. I’m not sure if you put the best five players in Iowa history out there they would have won that game tonight. Purdue was just better tonight, simple as that. All 104 points weren’t because of bad defense, Purdue wasn’t missing shots. Contested shots, open shots, backward shots, it didn’t matter. Iowa couldn’t do anything to stop them and once Purdue gets hot at home, there is no looking back. Just ask Michigan State who suffered a similar fate when they traveled to Mackey Arena.

Now, it’s time to flush it. Move on to Nebraska. Pretend this trip to West Lafayette never even happened. The Big Ten is too deep to take games off and sit and mope about past losses. It sucks to lose, especially like that, to a team that isn’t anything special. But, let’s just move on.

#17 Iowa Basketball will be back in action Saturday back at home taking on unranked Nebraska in a chance to avenge our worst loss of the season.