Hawkeyes advance with NIT win over Wildcats
While many teams around the country decided the National Invitational Tournament wasn’t worth their time and effort, Iowa was more happy to show up and play an entertaining basketball game. The Hawkeyes used a career high effort from Payton Sandfort and a strong second half from Ben Krikke on their way to a 91-82 victory over Kansas State on Tuesday night at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
With the win, Iowa is now 19-14 on the season. They will move on to face Utah in the second round of the NIT. The game will be played at Utah on either Saturday or Sunday at a time yet to be determined.
In the last few games Iowa has gotten off to slow starts. That was not the case on Tuesday night. Sandfort was determined to get Iowa going and he did just that, hitting his first three triples of the game in the first few minutes to give the Hawkeyes an early 11-6 edge.
After an Owen Freeman free throw, Iowa was up 14-8 and looked to be in good shape. Once again it was Sandfort who helped to continue to build the lead. After the Wildcats cut the lead to four, Sandfort completed an old fashion three point play along with dialing up his fourth one from long distance and the Hawkeyes were up 22-12.
The two teams traded scores in the middle of the first half, but Iowa netted back to back buckets thanks to a putback by Owen Freeman and a layup by Krikke to make the score 34-23, which was Iowa’s largest lead of the game to that point. After a timeout, Iowa went on a 6-0 burst that was started by a three from Tony Perkins and the lead grew to 41-28.
Just before the end of the half, Sandfort drilled another three pointer to give him 22 in the first 20 minutes of action and the Hawkeyes went to the break up 50-39.
Krikke scored the first bucket of the second half, but the Wildcats scored the next ten points and suddenly Iowa’s comfortable 13 point edge was down to just three and Fran McCaffery called a timeout to address his team.
The Hawkeyes responded and built the lead back to seven and then after Cam Carter cut it to four on a three point field goal, Iowa went on a 9-0 run that was capped by a three pointer from Ladji Dembele to make it 69-56.
The Wildcats had one more run in them and Iowa went stagnant on offense. The Hawkeyes went just over four minutes without a field goal and Kansas State scored seven in a row to cut Iowa’s lead to 72-67. But, Krikke came to the rescue for Iowa with back to back buckets and then another Sandfort three made it 79-70. Krikke hit a three from the corner and Sandfort matched him and Iowa closed out a post season win.
