Iowa Hoops: Poor outside shooting sinks Hawkeyes in loss to Utah State

In another stretch Friday night, the Iowa Hawkeyes played another back-and-forth game in a row at a neutral site. Unlike last week, the Hawks couldn’t come away with the win in a 77-69 loss to Utah State in Kansas City.

The Hawks kept the game within reach early with defense despite starting 0-9 from three in the first 7 minutes. Seydou Traore came on and made an immediate impact with 2 blocks in his first minute of playing time. Despite making just one bucket, Iowa went from three down to four up in his time on the court. Later, he came in and manned the top of the zone to superb effect as the Aggies threw passes into the stands. The highlight was an alley-oop from Brock Harding.

While the defensive effort overall was a strong one, the dam burst in the second half as the rebounds fell big time and the second chance points piled up for the Aggies. They had 8 in the second half and turned them into 14 points. The back breaker was a move by mason Falslev when the shot clock was winding down after the original shot did not pull the rim. He led the game with 25 points.

That extended the lead to 63-57 with 6:58 left, but Iowa couldn’t get it within two points the rest of the way. A pair of buckets generated by Brock Harding (his own layup and an assist to Owen Freeman) made it 63-61, but a well-called timeout set up a basket for the Aggies.

Brock Harding’s best game amid a shooting night from three

The Moline product had a team-high 19 points on 8/15 shooting and was the man who consistently generated baskets throughout the second half. He made a pair of three pointers early in the second half as the Hawks hung on to the lead and added 5 assists. The bugaboo with his game has been his turnovers, and he had just 3 of Iowa’s 16, a viable number considering how the game went.

Harding consistently found himself inside the funky 2-3 zone that Utah State deployed and consistently gave open looks to his teammates. They just didn’t fall as the Hawks went just 5/26 from deep. Yuck.

Personal opinion is that this is the type of look you are trying to get against a zone. They weren’t the lazy passes around the perimeter punctuated by contested zone-busting attempts. Still, there were opportunities for Iowa to turn really good three-point looks into shots at the rim. Payton Sandfort’s penultimate miss (1/12 from deep) was an open corner attempt that he took despite having the entire baseline as a driving lane. Again…yuck.

Where was Traore?

The Manhattan transfer accumulated a team-high +9 in 18 minutes, but was not on the court during the game. It was during the time frame that Falslev accumulated 8 of his game high 25 points in a span of six minutes as they got out of reach.

Perhaps part of it was Harding playing so well and disrupting the rotation Fran established against Washington State with Drew Thelwell & Traore playing across the other side but it felt like the game desperately needed his ability to influence the game at both ends of the pitch.

While Iowa struggled defensively in the second half, it’s worth mentioning that turnovers were also brutal for the Hawks. Despite 18 points on 9/12 shooting from Owen Freeman, he found himself confused by the zone as they threw more bodies at him on his post-ups. The sophomore had four turnovers, all in the second half. The Aggies got 6 points out of them.

Let’s talk about the defense again

I know moral victories aren’t victories, but the Hawkeyes forced 18 turnovers against the team that was going to lead the nation in turnovers tonight. They scored 95+ points in each of their first 4 games. From an advanced analytics standpoint, they held the Aggies to ~1 point/possession after they lit teams up to 1.44, 1.47, 1.60, and 1.27.

The defense gave Iowa a chance to win tonight (it’s now ranked 57th according to KenPom) and continues to look much improved from previous seasons. If they tighten up the rebounding and they will continue to be a tough team to beat even if the shot isn’t falling.

Next: USC Upstate Tuesday, Nov. 26 at 19.00 (BTN | Carver-Hawkeye Arena)