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Hawkeyes fly past Colonials

On3 imageby: Tom Kakert11/05/25HawkeyeReport
Isaia Howard(1)
Isaia Howard and the Hawkeyes fly past Robert Morris.

If you had asked Ben McCollum to write a script for the five plus minutes of his first game as Iowa’s head coach, it would have probably looked something like what we saw at Carver-Hawkeye Arena on Tuesday evening.

Iowa played suffocating defense and shot the ball at blistering clip on their way to a 17-2 lead with 14:43 left in the first half. From there, the Hawkeyes cruised to McCollum’s first win as Iowa’s head coach, 101-68.

Early on it was Iowa getting to the charity stripe. Cam Manyawu with the first three from the foul line and he scored five of the first seven. Then Bennett Stirtz got into the act. He scored the next five points for the Hawkeyes. The run eventually ended with a three point field goal by Alvaro Folgueiras that forced Robert Morris to call at timeout with the score 17-2.

While the Colonials scored five points after the timeout, Iowa also kept pouring it on, pushing the lead to 20, at 27-7 after a three by Folgueiras and layup by Kael Combs. Robert Morris scored the next six points before a Manyawu dunk and a Howard drive put Iowa up 31-15.

Tavion Banks has a terrific game and he got going offensively at that point with a free throw and a dunk. Banks finished his night with 17 points on 6-7 shooting. Eventually Iowa doubled up the Colonials in the first half after Howard connected on a pair of free throws to make it 36-18.

The lead elevated further in the first half with more from the charity stripe by Howard and a driving dunk by Cooper Koch. Stritz then hit a triple to double up the score again before halftime at 44-22. Stirtz scored a team high 19 points and 6 assists in the contest.

Eventually we went to break with Iowa comfortably ahead leading 49-26 and shooting a blistering 64% from the floor.

After Robert Morris opened the scoring the second half with a three point field goal, Banks and Stirtz answered back again to push the margin back to 53-26. Then a Koch three pointer followed by a Stirtz dunk off a pass from Combs pushed the Iowa lead to 61-35.

The Colonials pulled to within 21, at 61-40 after a three point field goal, but the Hawkeyes then went on an impressive 11-0 run with Banks accounting for six of those points, including a dunk and a layup. Folgueiras hit another three and Iowa enjoyed their largest lead at 72-40.

If there was a downside in the second half for the Hawkeyes it was that after holding Robert Morris to just one three point field goal in the first half, the Colonials netted 10 of 13 in the second half of the game.

Iowa eventually played out the string for a comfortable thirty point victory. The Hawkeyes will play their second game of the season on Friday evening when they host Western Illinois with the game time set for 6:30 pm. The contest will air on BTN+.

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