Sooners handle Hawkeyes
It’s rare to see a college basketball game where both teams combine to make less than ten three point field goals, but we saw that on Thursday afternoon when Iowa fell 79-67 to Oklahoma in the first round of the inaugural Rady Children’s Invitational in San Diego.
Both teams made four three pointers in the game and shot 20% or worse from distance, but the difference in the game was the Sooners dominated the paint and were able beat Iowa 46-34 in paint scores on their way to their fifth victory on the season. Iowa falls to 3-2 on the year and will play either USC or Seton Hall on Friday afternoon at approximately 5 pm central time on FOX.
Iowa never led in the game and the Hawkeyes tied the contest just once at 2-2 after a putback by Payton Sandfort. He finished with 12 points and 7 rebounds in the loss.
Oklahoma was the clear aggressor out of the gate. Guard Otega Oweh got to the basket right out of the gate and then pushed the lead in the first half to ten points at 22-12 after a bucket. Iowa kept trying to chip away at the lead, but every time Iowa would cut the lead to single digits, they had an answer. One of those was a dunk by Jalon Moore to make it 26-16. Moore finished with a team high 18 points and was 6-7 from the floor and a perfect 5-5 from the charity stripe.
Iowa trailed 36-24 at the break, but the second half proved to be more of the same. Moore finished off a dunk and an old fashion three point play to push the lead to 44-28 with 17:24 left in the game. Another dunk by Moore pushed the lead to 19 points, 63-44 with 7:19 left in the game.
A layup by Payton Sandfort and a three pointer from Josh Dix cut the Sooner lead go 74-59, but then Oklahoma put their foot on the gas once again.
A couple of bright spots for the Hawkeyes. They had 29 bench points in the game, including a team high 13 and 7 rebounds from freshman Owen Freeman. Brock Harding also had 6 points in the game. The Hawkeyes also won the rebounding battle 44-35.
