By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – The friendly confines of Carver-Hawkeye Arena seem to bring out the best in heralded freshman Joe Wieskamp.

The 6-foot-6 Muscatine native scored a career-high 20 points, including 18 in the first half, as the 20^th-ranked Iowa men’s basketball team improved to 5-0 by pounding Alabama State 105-78 before an announced crowd of 12,939 on Wednesday at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

Wieskamp has scored in double figures in each of his first three games on Iowa’s home court. He had a team-high 15 points in the season opener against Missouri-Kansas City and 10 in the second game against Wisconsin Green-Bay.

But he was also coming off back-to-back games in the 2K Empire Classic in New York City in which he hardly was a factor on offense.

Wieskamp only scored four points on 1-of-6 shooting from the field during a 77-69 victory over Oregon in the semifinals last Thursday at Madison Square Garden and was held to two points during a 91-72 victory over Connecticut in the championship game last Friday, both of which came on free throws.

“Right after we got back, I was in the gym working,” Wieskamp said. “It bothered me a little bit to struggle. But I thought I did a lot of good things defensively and helped our team win.

“But I know what I’m capable of doing offensively, so I just got back in the gym.”

Some advice from sophomore center Luka Garza also helped Wieskamp break out of his mini scoring slump..

“Luka really helped me out a lot and told me about his experiences that he went through last year,” said Wieskamp, who ended his high school career as the all-time leading scorer in Iowa in Class 4A with 2,376 points. “And so I just came out in this game trying to be aggressive.

In addition to given Wieskamp some good advice, the 6-11 Garza also led Iowa in scoring with 22 points, including 19 in the first half. He made all eight of high field-goal attempts and 5-of-6 free throw attempts.

“I just told him to keep that high school confidence,” Garza said of his advice to Wieskamp. “That’s something I went back to kind of last year. I’m thinking, I’m playing college. I’m a freshman and everything is different.

“You know you’re still that same player so you’ve got to continue to play with that kind of confidence. I was just trying to preach that to him a little bit.”

Iowa did what a nationally ranked team is supposed to do against a vastly inferior nonconference opponent at home.

The Hawkeyes bolted to a 12-0 lead and led 68-37 at halftime.  The only drama in the second half was wondering how many points Iowa would score before the game ended.

Wieskamp and Garza combined for 37 points in the first half to match Alabama State’s point total in the half.

They were removed from the game, along with Iowa’s other three starters, to a rousing ovation with 14 minutes, 17 seconds left in the second half. None of the five starters returned to the game as Iowa coach Fran McCaffery spent the rest of the half emptying his bench.

Walk-on guard Austin Ash received one the loudest ovations when he made a 3-point basket to give Iowa 99 points.

Junior forward Ryan Kriener then put Iowa over the century mark with a basket that also drew a loud ovation from the fans who were still in the stands.

It didn’t even matter that junior point guard Jordan Bohannon was held scoreless because the game was such a mismatch.

Redshirt freshman point guard Connor McCaffery continued his solid play by coming off the bench to score nine points and dish out seven assists in 13 minutes of playing time.

Connor McCaffery has played in countless games at the high school and AAU level, but he couldn’t recall a game in which his team scored 68 points in the first half.

“That’s actually a first,” Connor McCaffery said. “That’s a lot of points.”

Connor McCaffery said there was an effort to get Wieskamp involved in the offense early in Wednesday’s game.

“Yeah, just a little bit,” Connor McCaffery said. “But his offense is going to come. His third college game is in Madison Square Garden, you can’t overreact to that or anything like that. He’s going to get his. He’s a great scorer, a greast shooter. He’ll be fine. He settled down tonight and obviously played great.”

The best thing about Wednesday’s game from Iowa’s perspective besides the lopsided score was that nobody was injured.

Junior forward Cordell Pemsl missed his fourth consecutive game due to a lower leg injury, but that is the extent of Iowa’s medical report right now.

Fran McCaffery wasn’t sure about Pemsl’s status when asked if the undisclosed injury could keep him out for a long stretch.

“I hope not,” McCaffery said. “We won’t know that probably for a while.”

Garza led Alabama State 6-0 before the game was even two minutes old and the lead quickly doubled to 12-0 on a breakaway dunk by Isaiah Moss with 17:47 left in the first half.

Moss made 6-of-9 field-goal attempts and finished with 15 points, while junior forward Tyler Cook scored 16 points and had four dunks.

The attendance for Wednesday's game seems to indicate that fans are intrigued by this Iowa team, which was picked by most to finish in the lower half of the Big Ten Conference.

Fran McCaffery was pleased with the turnout on the night before Thanksgiving.

"Iowa would say typically the night before Thanksgiving is a night when people come out and they're looking for something to do, everybody is home," Fran McCaffery said. "We had some promotions, but I think more importantly, the team is winning. We had a great performance in New York and everybody saw it. So I think they are getting behind the team and it's grest to see."

Iowa will defend its national ranking again next Tuesday when it faces Pittsburgh at Carver-Hawkeye Arena as part of the Big Ten/ACC Challenge.