Iowa falls on Senior Day
The up and down Iowa basketball season hit another low point on Sunday afternoon. The Hawkeyes were double figure favorites against Nebraska and didn’t make a field goal in the last 6:12 of the game and fell to the Cornhuskers 81-77 on Senior Day in Iowa City. Patrick McCaffery led the Iowa attack with 23 points, including making a career high six three point field goals.
With the loss, the Hawkeyes fell to 19-12 on the season and they wrap up the Big Ten regular season with an 11-9 mark. Iowa will move on to the Big Ten Tournament next week in Chicago with their next game undetermined at this time. Nebraska finishes the regular season 16-15 and 9-11 in conference play.
Once again the Hawkeyes were playing with fire early on at home. Nebraska was red hot out of the gate knocking down three straight triples followed by a driving field goal by Keisei Tominaga to give the Huskers an 11-5 lead with 17:06 left in the first half.
Iowa then mounted their first rally of the game to pull within two before Nebraska pushed the lead to 18-9 on a bucket by C.J. Wilcher. He had 12 points in the game, including a couple of important buckets late in the game. Then Iowa went on a 12-0 run to take the lead 21-18 after an old fashioned three point play by Kris Murray. The junior forward finished with 22 points and 7 rebounds in the game, but he was just 3-13 from three point range.
With the game tied at 36, Iowa finished on a 7-3 run, capped by a three pointer by Murray to go to the locker room up 43-39.
There were times in the second half when it felt like Iowa was about to take control of the game, but they pesky Huskers would never go away. Tony Perkins put the Hawkeyes up five at 47-42, but Jamarques Lawrence hit one of his five three pointers to cut the lead to two points.
Murray hit a three point field goal with 12:07 left in the game and Iowa was up 62-55 and Nebraska looked wobbly and called a timeout. Then the son of Fred Hoiberg, Sam, came off the bench and hit a three pointer and the Huskers asserted that they were not going away in this game.
The Hawkeyes kept the lead until Lawrence nailed another three pointer to put Nebraska up 73-71. Iowa tied it back up again at 75 before Wilcher scored five straight points and the Huskers held on for the four point win.
