Iowa defense leads the way in 72-62 win over No. 16 Ohio State
By Tyler Devine
IOWA CITY, Iowa – The weather outside was frightful on Saturday, and there were many times last season when Iowa’s defense was the same.
But this is a new team, and a new season as Iowa’s 72-62 victory over No. 16 Ohio State showed.
Iowa improved to 14-3 overall and 3-3 in Big Ten play.
The Hawkeyes struggled on offense for much of the first half at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, but the defense, particularly against Ohio State’s leading scorer Kaleb Wesson, helped to keep the score close at 26-24 at halftime.
The 6-foot-9, 270-pound Wesson finished the game with just two points on 1-of-5 shooting from the field, and he also committed five of Ohio State’s 21 turnovers.
“There is a variety of things you can do (to stop Wesson),” Iowa head coach Fran McCaffery said. “Maybe we did a good job of it today but I’m sure others have tried the same thing. You’ve got to at him, you’ve got to make him defend. You’ve got to run, make him run, make him work and you’ve got to play him before he gets it.
“If you let him bury you deep and you let him catch it he’s virtually unstoppable.”
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Iowa helped its cause by getting Wesson in foul trouble in the first half. He entered the game averaging just over 17 points per game, but spent much of the first half on the bench and then had little impact in the second half.
Iowa took advantage of Wesson’s absence by outscoring Ohio State 36-18 in the paint while also holding the Buckeyes to just 37 percent shooting and allowing the Buckeyes to attempt just 11 free throws.
“I think they did a good job post trapping,” Ohio State coach Chris Holtmann said. “We’ve probably got to do a better job of getting (Wesson) into some position. The foul trouble hurt him too.”
A lot of the task in guarding Wesson was put on sophomore forward Luka Garza and junior forward Ryan Kriener.
Not only was the 6-foot-11 Garza invaluable on the defensive end, he also led all scorers with 16 points on 6-for-7 shooting from the field.
The 6-foot-9 Kriener also chipped in 11 points on 5-for-7 shooting in just 12 minutes.
“We got Kaleb Wesson off the floor and once he came back in we had already established an inside game,” Garza said. “Our guards were looking for us, we ran a lot of action with our ball screens. It was a good action and we kept going back to it and all of our bigs did a really good job today in posting up and getting open.”
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McCaffery said that his team going through a 14-19 season while giving up nearly 80 points per game made them realize how important defense is, particularly against Big Ten competition.
“We’re deeper, we’re smarter, we’re better defensively,” McCaffery said. “And you would expect that. We’re a year older. Sometimes you’ve got to go through and get your ears pinned back a bit and figure exactly why a particular thing is really important. It might seem like it’s kind of important, no it’s really important.
“If you let Kaleb Wesson catch it deep he’s going to get 25 (points). I wasn’t expecting him to get two but I didn’t want him to get 20.”
Bohannon joins 1,000 point club: Junior guard Jordan Bohannon became the 48th Iowa player to score 1,000 career points with a free throw with 1:19 remaining in the second half. Bohannon also dished out a game-best eight assists, which matched his season high.
“I said it doesn’t mean that much to me, but again it does because of the people I’m being mentioned with,” Bohannon said. “I’ve watched Iowa since I was little and all the people that were able to join that club, it’s pretty special.”
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