Iowa basketball's flop vs. Utah State raises red flags ahead of Big Ten play
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Following Friday’s men’s basketball contest against Utah State, Payton Sandfort indicated that Iowa wouldn’t truly know what it’s made of until presented with a significant challenge.
That came emphatically with a 77-69 neutral-site loss to Utah State in Kansas City on Friday.
The Hawkeyes mostly cruised through their first five games this season — with the only true test coming against Washington State — a contest Iowa still won by double-digits, something it had done every game this season until Friday.
But Utah State brought arguably the biggest test to date. The Aggies, off to an undefeated start of their own, delivered a blow that Iowa finally couldn’t get up from, outscoring the Hawkeyes by 12 points in the second half.
Iowa got a harsh reality check on Friday. If the Hawkeyes are serious about their ambitions this season, they can’t afford to make a habit of flops like this.
“It’s fun being undefeated but you don’t really find out who you are as a team until you go through some adversity like this,” Sandfort said. “How we respond is going to be critical. It’s a basketball season. You get some losses. It’s just kinda how the game is. How you respond, how you stick together and how you move forward, progress as a team is super important.”
With a laundry list of shortcomings on Friday, this group will now face its share of skepticism.
Iowa shot a putrid 5-of-26 from beyond the 3-point arc. On top of that, Iowa turned the ball over 16 times, was just 50% from the free throw line and was beaten on the boards 47-31.
“When you’re a team that shoots a lot of threes, you’re going to have times when you don’t make shots,” said sophomore Brock Harding, who was one of the few bright spots with a career-high 19 points. “We know that if we’re not making shots, we got to pick that up on the defensive end, especially on the glass, as well. If we’re not making shots, we also can’t get outrebounded, can’t miss free throws. Just little things like that, that matter in close games against good teams like tonight.”
Friday was jarringly bad for a program known to be explosive offensively. In his return from a wrist injury, Josh Dix scored just four points on 2-of-7 from the field. Sandfort, who revealed he is dealing with an injury, shot just 4-of-18 from the field, including 1-of-13 from deep.
Sandfort, Iowa’s senior leader, was far from the All-Big Ten-caliber player Iowa needs him to be. He knows as much, shouldering responsibility for the loss and looking inward multiple times when meeting with the media on Friday after the game.
- “If I’m myself tonight, we win. I take 100% responsibility for that.”
- “Honestly, I was wide open. They were a really good team, they’re physical. They did a lot of good things. But I got a lot of really, really good looks and they got to go win. Got to go in.”
- “We just got to be more physical with our box-outs. It starts with me. I thought Owen (Freeman) did a good job rebounding. I got to get him some help and be flying in there.”
Friday was ugly for Iowa, but not all bad.
After scoring no fewer than 95 points in each of its first four contests this season, Utah State was held to 77 on Friday. The Aggies shot 46% from the field, 33% from 3-point range and turned the ball over 18 times.
If Iowa doesn’t have its lowest-scoring game of the season, those could be winning numbers. The Hawkeyes’ defense has been one of the more encouraging developments this season. Aside from shooting and rebounding, Iowa’s performance against Utah State was not necessarily a definitive step backward.
In that sense, Friday was not a full-fledged letdown. If you assume that Iowa’s offense will come around, as it typically does under head coach Fran McCaffery, a lack of scoring doesn’t seem as irreparable as it would if defense was the bigger issue.
“It was a game we probably could’ve, should’ve won,” Sandfort said. “They’re a really, really good team. They’re probably going to be in the NCAA Tournament again. We’re right there with NCAA Tournament teams. Clean up some things, we’ve got to rebound, we’ve got to be more physical, the offense has to be better. We can take strides. It’s early and we’ve got a young team and everyone's excited to be here. There’s a lot of big games ahead, a lot of good basketball ahead. So we just got to learn from it.”
Despite being picked to finish 11th in the Big Ten in a preseason media poll, Iowa sounded confident leading up to this season. The Hawkeyes believed they were better than national perception gave them credit for.
Friday’s loss to Utah State showed Iowa still has a ways to go to prove itself.
Utah State might be an NCAA Tournament team. Still, Friday’s matchup seemed like a manageable hurdle for Iowa to show it is on the path to something bigger this season.
The Hawkeyes still believe they are. But that means showing Friday is a springboard for better, not something that will become a trend.
“The amount of talent this team has, the togetherness this team has,” Harding said. “We’ve been preaching it since June that this is going to be the best team that we’ve had here in a while, since I’ve been here — I’ve only been here two years, obviously. But all the older guys are really bought in and I think we know that we need games like this, we need things like this early in the season to help us win later in March. And I think we're excited for what it's going to build.”
Follow Tyler Tachman on X @Tyler_T15, contact via email at ttachman@gannett.com
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