By Dallas Jones

IOWA CITY, IA – Tuesday’s road matchup in East Lansing looked daunting for the Hawkeyes. Iowa is 15-11 on the season and 7-8 in the conference, but they are coming off a huge 88-86 win over Wisconsin before they faced off with Michigan State.

In recent years, by this time in the year Iowa would’ve locked up their tournament bid and looked at February as a chance to boost their resume.

This year, the Hawkeyes are looking at their last five games of the year with a sense of urgency, it is now or never.

So what do they do? Play their best 40 minutes of the season and breathe a little bit more life into their season. Here are my takeaways from the game.

Hawkeyes know how to fight through adversity

The Hawkeyes had their back against the wall early in the first half. Arguably their best player Owen Freeman went to the bench just before the 16 minutes mark due to early foul trouble and Ladji Dembele followed right behind him with two fouls.

It was veteran Patrick McCaffery who came through off the bench and led the charge. He put together one of his best half of the season scoring 12 points (4-4 FG, 4-5 FT), leading an 18-3 run in a four minute span.

Ben Krikke also played a huge role in the Hawkeyes halftime lead as he played every minute in the first half. He also was one rebound shy of a first half double double and most importantly, he did not record any fouls in the first half.

We have seen the Hawkeyes lose leads and overcome them at times this season, this time the first half surge was a hole that Michigan State could not dig themselves out of.

Veterans lead the way of late

Last game it was Tony Perkins who stepped up in the biggest moments. Today it was a trio of Hawkeyes including Payton Sandfort, Ben Krikke and Patrick McCaffery.

They combined for 54 of the teams total 78 points. Sandfort and Krikke played 38 of the games 40 minutes.

McCaffery played 27 minutes off the bench tallied four rebounds and two assists to go along with his 14 points.

While many of the recent Hawkeye basketball teams have had a key go to go guy, this team truly plays the game how it’s meant to be played. Whoever is hot, will get the ball in his hands. At times that has bitten Iowa, but when you see big impacts all the way down your roster, great things can happen.

Light at the end of the tunnel

Iowa came into today’s game sitting at eighth in the Big Ten standings. With the Big Ten tournament looming in Minneapolis next month, the Hawkeyes would have quite the uphill battle if they want to bring home the trophy once again.

That journey can look much easier after these last five games as four of the five games they play will be against teams higher in the standings than they are.

Those games go as follow, @ Illinois, vs Penn State, @ Northwestern and vs Illinois.

Now that they have taken down Michigan State, the Hawkeyes are just a half of a game behind Nebraska and the sixth seed.

A 3-1 record in such games would have the Hawkeyes finish 12-9 in the conference.

Giving the Hawkeyes a very high chance of getting a bye in the tournament and most importantly, boost their tournament resume.