By Dallas Jones

IOWA CITY, IOWA – The biggest game of the year for the Hawkeyes and we are not talking about the game in Minneapolis.

The Iowa Hawkeye men’s team hosted the Illinois Fighting Illini with a chance to not only give themselves a better seed in the Big Ten tournament, but also a chance to boost their NCAA tournament resume.

Unfortunately, the Fighting Illini proved why they are one of the best teams in the country with their twelve point victory.

Here is how it happened.

1st half: You could not draw up a colder start for the Hawkeyes as they did not score their first points until the 14:58 mark of the first half. They missed their first nine shot attempts before Sandfort’s basket and already trailed 10-2 at that time.

That was just the beginning of the Hawkeyes worst start of the year. Illinois continued to grow their lead and reached the 30 point mark before Iowa even made it to double digits.

The Hawkeyes found a way to respond as they cut a 30-9 deficit to a 31-19 game in less than four minutes. They eventually cut the lead all the way down to eight in the half.

Brock Harding was key in sparking the Hawkeyes run as he came in and put up six points and six (!!) assists in the first half, while tying Pryce Sandfort for the best plus/minus on the team at plus seven.

2nd half:  The offensive struggles that hurt the Hawkeyes early in the first half continued into the second half as they shot just 12/32 (37.5%) from the field and 6/15 (40%) from three in the second half.

Payton Sandfort accounted for a majority of those points as he score 19 of the Hawkeyes 32 second half points. Iowa never lead in the game at any point and even though they got the lead down to four at one point thanks to a couple big threes from Sandfort, the run never stuck.

There are a lot of reasons this game did not go the Hawkeyes way, but there is no time to dwell on them as in just four days the Big Ten Men’s tournament will kickoff in Minneapolis.

The Hawkeyes will officially own the seventh seed in the Big Ten tournament and they will get a rematch of last year’s conference tournament matchup against the Ohio State Buckeyes.

What does today’s loss mean for the Hawkeyes NCAA tournament hopes? They will now more than likely need to take down the Buckeyes and avoid a third loss to the Illini if they want to make a strong case.

Now the Hawkeyes are one of the few teams in the Big Ten with past tournament champions on their active roster, so we will have to see how that helps them this coming Thursday.

Hear from both coaches and Hawkeye wing Payton Sandfort on the game and looking ahead here: