By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – It was Nicholas Baer’s day on Saturday, but the game belonged to a determined Rutgers squad.

The Scarlet Knights ruined Iowa’s Senior Day by building a large lead in the second half and then hanging on for an 86-72 victory in Iowa’s regular-season home finale at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

Iowa made a late comeback as it so often has this season, cutting a 21-point deficit in the second half to 12 points on a 3-point basket by Baer with 3 minutes, 43 seconds left to play.

But then Rutgers answered with back-to-back breakaway dunks to push the lead to 76-60 with less than four minutes remaining.

Iowa point guard Jordan Bohannon made a 3-pointer to cut the deficit to 76-64 with 2:57 left to play, but it was too little and too late as Iowa lost its second game in a row and fell to 21-8 overall and 10-8 in the Big Ten.

"I can't say anything to the outside noise, but I know what I say to my guys and that's just, hey we're hitting a bump in the road right now and we're going to have to adjust," Baer said. "I'm confident, we have a veteran group here. We're not playing our best basketball right now. But we're excited that we're going to turn it around and coming into March that we want to be playing our best."

Rutgers improved to 14-14 overall and 7-11 in the conference, while also avenging a 71-69 loss to Iowa at home last month that came when Iowa freshman Joe Wieskamp made a game-winning 3-point shot from the baseline that hit the backboard and still went in.

Rutgers guard Ron Harper Jr., said the loss to Iowa in February was a huge motivating factor for Saturday's game.

"Me and my teammates said they stole what was ours that last game," said Harper, who led Rutgers with a career-high 27 points on Saturday. "That last shot was heartbreaking. So that definitley was in our heads today and we just wanted to go out and get vengeance."

One of the loudest ovations in the game came when Baer fouled out with one minute remaining after having scored 17 points. He was replaced by his brother Michael Baer, a 6-foot-6 walk-on sophomore forward.

Iowa coach Fran McCaffery participated in the Senior Day ceremony just minutes before the tip-off and then headed to his office in Carver-Hawkeye Arena where he watched the game with Iowa radio play-by-play announcer Gary Dolphin.

McCaffery and Dolphin are both serving suspensions that have dominated the headlines for the past week.

McCaffery is serving a two-game suspension for berating an official in the moments after this past Tuesday’s loss at Ohio State, while Dolphin is suspended for the remainder of the basketball season for calling Maryland center Bruno Fernando King Kong in his post-game show.

Dolphin’s comment was considered insensitive since Fernando is black and Dolphin has since issued a public apology and wants to speak with Fernando after the basketball season.

The Iowa players dismissed any talk about the distractions from this past week being a factor in their performance on Saturday.

"I don't think so," Baer said. "There is something about our group is we're always going to focus in on what we need to do."

Bohannon said the loss had more to do with what Rutgers did on the court, which included making 11-of-23 shots from 3-point range. Harper entered Saturday's game shooting just 26.4 percent from 3-point range, but he made 4-of-7 attempts from behind the arc on Saturday. 

"You have to give Rutgers a lot of credit tonight, they shot the ball well," Bohannon said. "They had guys making threes. Harper had another big game against us. We didn't think he was much of a shooter and hasn't been shooting that well. But was making shots tonight.:

Former Iowa basketball player Ahmad Wagner was part of the sellout attendance for Saturday’s game.

Wagner would have been a senior on the current Iowa team, but he decided after last season to resume his football career, and the 6-7 former forward now plays receiver for Kentucky, where he has one season of eligibility remaining.

There wasn’t much for Wagner and the fans to cheer about, though,as Rutgers controlled the tempo and the momentum for most of the game..

Rutgers expanded its lead to 25-15 on a breakaway lay-up by freshman Montez Mathis with 7:40 left in the first half.

Junior forward Issa Thiam entered the game late in the first half and had a huge impact by making three 3-point baskets from the same spot on the baseline in front of the Iowa bench. His third trey expanded Rutgers’ lead to 39-27 in the final minute of the first half.

Bohannon then finally got loose and made his only 3-pointer in the first half with about 5 seconds left to narrow the deficit to 39-30 at halftime.

Iowa only made 9-of-24 field-goal attempts in the first half and also had seven turnovers.

But to struggle in the first half was nothing new to Bohannon or to his team. It has been a pattern throughout the season, so there was no reason to panic at halftime.

But there was reason to be concerned when Iowa fell behind 47-32 within the first four minutes of the second half.

The arena still was silent and precious time was ticking off the clock.

Bohannon made two free throws to trim the lead to 50-37 with 13:52 left to play.

Iowa then forced a turnover with its pressure defense and there was hope that might trigger yet another dramatic comeback.

Ryan Kriener then made two free throws and Rutgers missed an alley-oop dunk attempt on its next possession.

Kriener made two more free throws with 13:01 remaining and the fans finally had something to cheer about with Iowa having scored six consecutive points.

But Rutgers had an answer as sophomore guard Geo Baker made a 3-pointer to expand the lead to 56-42 with 11:40 remaining.

Baker also made a basket to give Rutgers a 63-44 lead with 8:51 remaining.

Iowa assistant coach Andrew Francis acted as the head coach in Fran McCaffery's absence since he had the scouting report for the Rutgers game. Francis also addressed the media after the game.

"We had a couple good days of preparation," Francis said. "The guys really did a good job of preparing for this game, but we got a little bit of a slow start. It didn't seem like we were able to get into an offensive rhythm."

Senior Day started on a high note for Iowa, but ended with fans heading for the exits with more than four minutes remaining and with Iowa trailing by nearly 20 points.

Iowa will try to get back on the winning track when it plays at Wisconsin on Thursday.

"There's still a lot of season left," Francis said.