By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – Even though he stands almost 7-feet tall, Iowa freshman center Luka Garza still is just a kid.

And the kid in him was easy to spot after Saturday’s 84-82 loss to Indiana at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

Garza was devastated after the loss, which was Iowa’s fifth in a row, 13^th in Big Ten play and 17^th overall in what has turned into a disastrous season.

The Hawkeyes made their first 10 field-goal attempts, thanks largely to Garza, who made all five of his shots in the first half.

Iowa also led Indiana by as many as 13 points in the first half, overcame a 13-point deficit in the second half and had its best shooter – sophomore point guard Jordan Bohannon – in position to be the hero until his fade-away 3-point attempt bounced off the rim.

Tyler Cook grabbed the offensive rebound, but then missed a short put-back attempt as time expired.

Garza had about 25 minutes to digest the loss before meeting with the media, but none of the sadness or frustration had dissipated when he started answering questions.

Garza never broke down, but there was a moment when he seemed close to shedding a tear when asked how tough it is to stay positive under such difficult circumstances.

“It’s frustrating to lose, but we’re all determined and nothing is going to bring us down,” said Garza, who turned 19 in December. “Each of us is going to reflect and learn from it. There have been a lot of tough losses that have come and no one has really lost like this before ever in their high school careers, or even last year. We haven’t been losing like this, so it’s different.

“But we’ve got a lot of strong-minded guys in there, who are going to keep working and try to make a run.”

Garza was part of a high school team in Washington D.C. that finished 25-6 and advanced to the championship game of the  Mid-Atlantic Athletic Conferene last season.

Fellow freshman Jack Nunge led his high school team in Indiana to an undefeated regular season last season, while sophomore forward Cordell Pemsl won two state titles in 2014 and 2015 at Dubuque Wahlert.

So in many ways, this amount of losing is new to most of the Iowa players. And it hurts.

And much of it is beyond Garza's control, considering Indiana's starting backcourt outscored Iowa's starting backcourt 47-15, and by 30 points from 3-point range.

“I’m biased, I’m a guard,” Miller said after Saturday's victory. “But guards win, man. The best guard tandems and backcourts, they win games."

Miller was a former point guard in college, so he speaks from experience on both ends. His team won largely because the Indiana guards dominated their opponents.

Saturday’s game was there for the taking, but as so often has been the case this season, Iowa failed to seize the moment.

Bohannon’s potential game winner was hardly an open look, but he’s made that shot probably too many times to count in practice, and in some games.

He also made a game-winning shot to defeat Wisconsin last season, but this isn’t last season, not by a long shot.

“It was a normal one-dribble pull-up that I normally do in practice and that I’ve been working on my whole life, but it didn’t fall,” said Bohannon, who missed eight of his 10 3-point shots.

Last season, when Iowa almost made the NCAA Tournament with four freshmen starters, is now a distant memory, erased by a season that nobody saw coming, especially Garza.

Everybody hates to lose, but Garza seems especially bothered by it. This season is wearing on the fans, so imagine how the players feel because they live with it every day.

The 6-foot-11 Garza has performed well this season, with Saturday’s 17-point performance on 6-of-8 shooting from the field another step forward.

But when your team loses, it just doesn’t feel the same.

It was hard not to feel sorry for Garza as he addressed the media simply because he was so sad and isn’t very good at hiding it.

Some players can put on a good face after a defeat, but not Garza.

You admire that losing bothers Garza so much because it shows that he cares about the team, first and foremost.

Garza might not be ready to be the team leader as just a freshman, but his teammates would be wise to follow his example when it comes to losing.

His teammates need to hate it, too, because if you don’t hate losing, you eventually start to accept it.

Some might argue that Iowa already has reached that point, but the anguish on Garza’s face provides hope because it shows that he is willing to fight and compete until the very end.

Cook also stood tall in defeat and was a beast on the boards, finishing with 28 points and 10 rebounds in Saturday's game.

He and Garza give Iowa an immensely talented, and young, one-two punch on the frontline.

And yet, their team is struggling to stay out of last place in the Big Ten.

Neither one is a great defender at this stage, and their teammates are no different.

That's the problem.

Indiana entered Saturday’s game only shooting 31.3 percent from 3-point range, but still made 14-of-24 attempts, with 13 of them coming from two players.

Senior guard Robert Johnson entered the game shooting 34.2 percent from 3-point range, but it was hard to tell as he tied the record for most threes at Carver-Hawkeye Arena with nine on 12 attempts.

Freshman guard Devonte Green also made four of his five attempts from 3-point range.

“We just weren’t as active in the zone as we needed to be,” said Iowa coach Fran McCaffery. “Our close outs were not effective enough.

“It’s pretty obvious who was hitting shots. It was two guys. Okay. One makes nine and the other makes four, so that’s thirteen threes between two guys. So you’re going to close out differently to them than you are to anybody else.

“And for some reason, we did not ever figure out you can’t stop short. When Robert Johnson is on fire, you just can’t stop short. You just can’t. And we just kept doing it and it was extremely frustrating.”

McCaffery showed his frustration by slamming a clipboard to the ground during a heated timeout in the second half. His face was as red as the trim on Indiana’s visiting uniforms as he screamed at his players.

McCaffery also shifted to what he thought was a stronger defensive lineup in the second half that included forwards Ahmad Wagner and Nicholas Baer off the bench.

But it just wasn't meant to be, again.

And to think, the mood would have been totally different after the game if Bohannon had made a shot that he makes countless times in practice.

“I thought Bohannon’s shot was going in on us," Miller said. “We’re lucky to come out of here with a win.”

Luck always plays a part in any season, good or bad. Teams also make their own luck, but there has been little of that from Iowa this season.

All that remains in the regular-season is a game at Minnesota on Wednesday followed by the season finale against Northwestern next Sunday at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

Iowa is almost assured of being one of the bottom four teams that will compete on the first day of the Big Ten Tournament, which will be held Feb. 28 through March 4 at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Lose that game and it would mark the first time since 1938 that Iowa’s season ended in February.

To help put that in perspective, that was the year before Nile Kinnick won the Heisman Trophy.