By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – The Iowa men’s basketball team returned to the win column on Sunday against an opponent that probably had no chance of winning.

Iowa crushed an overmatched New Orleans squad 104-57 before a small crowd at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

The Hawkeyes made 14 shots from 3-point range, shot 62.7 percent from the field and had five players score in double figures.

Iowa also had seven players that blocked at least one shot, led by sophomore forward Owen Freeman with three.

The 6-foot-10 Freeman also led Iowa in scoring with 22 points on 10-of-12 shooting from the field.

The only real drama as the game unfolded was if Iowa would cover the 31.5 point spread.

Sunday’s victory, which improved Iowa’s record to 8-3, came three days after Iowa had suffered an emotional 89-80 loss to No. 3 Iowa State this past Thursday at Carver-Hawkeye Arena

“It’d be easy to kind of be down in the dumps after what happened Thursday, but we came out firing right away and ready to go,” said sophomore forward Pryce Sandfort, who scored 10 points off the bench. “So, I’m really proud of us.”

Iowa played Sunday’s game without sophomore forward Seydou Traore, who has been recovering from an ankle injury.

“He said he wasn’t ready to go,” said Iowa head coach Fran McCaffery.

Asked if Traore’s absence was due to his ankle injury, Fran McCaffery said:

“I think so. Yeah.”

As it turns out, Iowa didn’t need its athletic transfer from Manhattan to win easily on Sunday.

The Hawkeyes did welcome back freshman forward Cooper Koch, who had missed the previous four games due to what he called a medical issue.

The son of former Iowa forward J.R. Koch played 21 minutes on Sunday and scored six points and grabbed five rebounds.

“I’ve been working on a medical issue and I’m just happy to be back here taking it day by day and seeing how the rest of the season goes,” Cooper Koch said. “You could probably see, I was a little gassed in the first half. But it felt really good to be out there.”

Iowa now enters into finals week and won’t play again until next Saturday when it faces Utah in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Utah defeated Iowa in the second round of the National Invitation Tournament last season.

Iowa showed no signs of a Cyclone hangover on Sunday as it led almost from start to finish.

Fran McCaffery praised his players’ approach to Sunday game, and specifically senior forward Payton Sandfort and junior guard Josh Dix for setting the right tone in the wake of the Iowa State loss.

“I would say it’s professional group,” Fran McCaffery said of his players. “We lost a tough one. If we had won it, you’ve got to do the smae thing. You’ve got to lock in for the next one. Everybody is important. The last one is as important as the next one.

“So, what’s your leadership like. It’s great with Payton and Josh and those guys. But they were locked in on Friday. They were locked in on Saturday. We practiced hard. The scout team was terrific. And we had a very, very professional approach tot his game.’