Iowa and No. 16 Ohio State will try to rebound from wrenching losses when they play Thursday in Columbus, Ohio.
The Hawkeyes (14-7, 4-6 Big Ten) lost 90-86 in double overtime at Penn State on Monday despite leading by three points with less than 10 seconds left in the first OT.
“We had our chances,” Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said. “I thought we mixed defenses, we had different guys step up at different times.”
Iowa has lost its past two road games by a total of six points and will face another challenge against the Buckeyes (13-5, 6-3).
“That’s what’s fun about it,” Hawkeyes forward Keegan Murray said. “That’s why I signed up to play in the Big Ten, to play great teams every single week.”
Ohio State is feeling a little sour as well after an 81-78 loss at then-No. 6 Purdue on Sunday. The Buckeyes were down 20 points with 14:35 to play but tied the score at 78 in the final minute before a 3-pointer by Jaden Ivey with 0.6 seconds left ended Ohio State’s three-game winning streak.
“I’d have been really disappointed if we didn’t fight through the final buzzer,” Ohio State coach Chris Holtmann said. “I would have been devastated because that can’t be who we ever are. So, glad we did.”
The Buckeyes can point to Ivey’s buzzer-beater as the culprit, but their real downfall was being outscored 13-2 to start the second half after trailing 39-30 at intermission.
“I don’t think that last shot was the reason we lost,” Ohio State forward E.J. Liddell said. “It was plays before that. We put ourselves in a hole. To fight all the way back — if we played like that throughout all 40 minutes of the game, we’d be in a good spot.”
If the Hawkeyes are to become the first team to beat the Buckeyes on their home court this season (9-0), they will need to get more minutes from Murray, who entered the game Monday as the nation’s fifth-leading scorer but was again hampered by early foul trouble. He sat out the final 11:20 of the first half after picking up his second foul. In Iowa’s previous game, fouls kept him on the bench against Purdue for the last 11:19 of the first half.
“It (stinks) not getting in a rhythm offensively, defensively because of foul trouble,” Murray said. “I’m trying not to get in foul trouble in the first half. But things just aren’t going my way right now so I have to keep learning from it, trying to play without fouling as best I can the rest of the year.”
He still scored 21 points, all in the second half, against Penn State, including a tip-in of a missed 3-pointer by Jordan Bohannon in the final second of regulation to force overtime.
The Hawkeyes will be without fifth-year senior Connor McCaffery, son of the coach. He had scored a total of six points in the previous seven games but had a season-high 12 against Penn State before sustaining a separated shoulder late in the second half.
–Field Level Media
