IOWA CITY – The Iowa Hawkeyes men’s basketball team fell to the Michigan State Spartans, 82-67, Thursday night in Iowa City.
Tonight’s loss snapped Iowa’s five-game win streak and was only its second defeat since Dec. 6, 2018. Iowa led at the half, 35-31.
Sophomore Luka Garza led the Hawkeyes in scoring tonight with 20 points. Garza has scored 20+ points in three straight games (Penn State, Illinois, Michigan State).
Tyler Cook (17 points) moved past Michael Payne, Chris Kingsbury, and Melsahn Basabe into 32nd place on Iowa’s all-time scoring chart with 1,138 points.
Iowa (16-4, 5-4) returns to action Sunday at Minnesota (14-5, 4-4) in the only regular season meeting between the two teams. Tipoff is slated for 4:05 p.m. (CT) at Williams Arena in Minneapolis.
http://asaptext.com/asap_media/media/26/153/transcripts/35226.pdf
http://asaptext.com/asap_media/media/26/153/transcripts/35226.html
University of Iowa Basketball Media Conference
Fran McCaffery
Postgame Men’s Basketball
Michigan State – 82, Iowa – 67
Q. You guys came in averaging 27 free throw attempts, had eight tonight. A function of not being aggressive enough offensively, or what leads to that?
FRAN McCAFFERY: Our game plan was to throw the ball inside, and we did. Many times. We threw it in there a lot.
Q. So you guys were aggressive enough?
FRAN McCAFFERY: Phenomenally aggressive, the most aggressive we’ve been all year long tonight, throwing the ball inside.
Q. That four-minute block right out of halftime, Tyler scored 11 points. What did they change to kind of prevent him from scoring?
FRAN McCAFFERY: Nothing.
Q. Your perimeter shooters, they missed a lot of open looks —
FRAN McCAFFERY: Yeah, you’re right. That was — we had some good shots. I thought we had some good — I thought Isaiah had some good looks, Joe, J-Bo, and they’ve been making them. And they were open. So that’s unfortunate. They’re good kids. Just tell them to keep firing.
Q. What makes their offense-to-defense transition, especially off a make, so tough? It seems like that’s kind of where they made that run after half.
FRAN McCAFFERY: Yeah, you know, their bigs run, they get it in quick. I thought we did a pretty good job for most of the game. That one stretch we didn’t do as well.
Q. Talk about the atmosphere. I know it was something —
FRAN McCAFFERY: The atmosphere was great. Our fans are phenomenal. They always are. The students showed up in full force. I appreciate that. The players appreciate that more than anything. It was loud in here, and that’s what you want.
Q. I assume you expect this team to bounce back. You’ve had some tough losses before.
FRAN McCAFFERY: Yeah, absolutely. There were a lot of good things that happened for our team tonight, and you can’t lose sight of that because you get beat. There was a stretch in the game where it got away from us. That’s unfortunate. We really had some clean looks there. Like I said, we were throwing the ball inside to get to the free-throw line, just to stop the game and slow it down a little bit, and — so that’s unfortunate.
Q. What was the game plan on Cassius?
FRAN McCAFFERY: He’s just a really good player. That kid is a special player. He keeps his dribble, he looks for people, and he kind of picks his spots, when to shoot the ball. His shooting percentage from three is tremendous. He makes big shots in very important situations. He’s really consistent at doing that and controlling the game. That’s why they’re where they are, and you’ve got to give him credit for that. He’s a tremendous player.
Q. Did you sense your guys being frustrated with the lack of foul calls during the game and maybe struggling to overcome that?
FRAN McCAFFERY: You said that, I didn’t.
