The Hawkeyes made seven triples in the second half en route to a game-changing 21-0 run. Iowa advances to the third round on Thursday.
CHICAGO - After 20 minutes of basketball in Chicago's United Center, Iowa basketball found itself in a bit of trouble.
The No. 9-seeded Hawkeyes trailed by as many as 11 points in the first half against the No. 17 seeded Maryland Terrapins, and Iowa's three-game losing streak to close the regular season was suddenly in danger of stretching to four.
Then the second half began.
The Hawkeyes looked like a different team on both sides of the floor, using a 21-0 run early in the period to pull away for a 75-64 victory in the second round of the Big Ten Tournament on Wednesday.
Redshirt freshman forward Cooper Koch scored a team-high 19 points on six triples, while Bennett Stirtz rebounded from a poor first half to collect 13 in the second (17 for the game).
Iowa advances to the third round, where it will face No. 8-seeded Ohio State on Thursday. Tip-off is set for 11 a.m. CST on Big Ten Network.
First Half
Morning games in the early rounds of the conference tournament usually don't draw very large crowds, so both teams were forced to create their own energy. Iowa turned it over three times in its first four possessions of the game, but stingy defense kept the hungry Maryland guards at bay.
The Hawkeyes' strong defense also led to good offense as well. Iowa struggled to make jumpers, but two steals by Isaia Howard led to a couple of transition buckets for the Hawks.
Even still, offense continued to come at a premium rate throughout the half. Cam Manyawu had a pair of foul shots coming out of the under-12 media timeout, but missed both. That triggered a 15-0 Terrapin scoring run and a 21-12 deficit for Iowa.
The Hawkeyes went from a double-digit pregame favorite to just a 2.5-point favorite by this point, and that's when they decided to wake up. Maryland slumped into a 2:06 field goal drought, and Iowa took advantage by orchestrating a 6-0 run to cut the lead down to 24-20 with 2:33 left in the half.
The Hawkeyes continued to put the clamps on for the remainder of the half, and though Cooper Koch missed an open triple in the final seconds, Iowa found itself down by just a point despite going 11/27 from the floor in the first.
Second Half
The first four minutes of the second half surpassed the entire first in terms of offensive efficiency. Both teams traded buckets, but back-to-back corner triples from Koch gave the Hawkeyes a 36-34 lead at the first media timeout. After the break, Bennett Stirtz, who didn't hit from outside in the first half, willed in a circus trey late in the shot clock to extend Iowa's lead to five.
Then, he buried an open three on the Hawkeyes' ensuing possession to give Iowa a further cushion, and the floodgates opened from there. All of this was part of a 20-0 scoring run over 5:02, allowing the Hawkeyes to jump out to a 50-34 lead.
Just when the game seemed over, Maryland responded by making five consecutive field goals to slice Iowa's lead down to 56-47 with 7:10 left. The Hawkeyes began to go stagnant offensively, and were forced to call a timeout as a result.
Whatever Ben McCollum said in the huddle worked. Iowa quickly grew its lead to double-digits, and that was that. Three-point shooting proved to be the major reason for the Hawkeyes' second half surge, as they went 7-for-12 in the period (2-10 in the first half).
The outside shooting also carried over to the rest of the offense, as Iowa shot an impressive 65% from the floor in the second half.
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