By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – For three out of four halves on its recent two-game road trip to the East Coast, the Iowa men’s basketball team played winning basketball.

It resulted in a split against Rutgers and Maryland, which under the circumstances, was pretty good for an injury-riddled team, as is the case with Iowa.

The problem is that the final half, the final 20 minutes of Sunday’s 101-75 beat-down against Maryland, was so awful from Iowa’s standpoint that it sort left a bad taste to an otherwise productive road trip.

Iowa led by four points (51-47) at halftime against Maryland and then lost by 26 points.

Nobody moves on more easily, and more willingly, than Iowa head coach Fran McCaffery and that has to be the message with Oregon coming to Iowa City on Wednesday.

Dana Altman’s Oregon squad is fully capable of manhandling Iowa if the Iowa players perform as badly as they did in the second half against Maryland.

But if Iowa can shoot well from the three, which it did in the first against Maryland when it made eight threes, then anything is possible, especially at home where Iowa poses a much bigger threat.

The Hawkeyes will once again be without sophomore forward Owen Freeman, its leading scorer and rebounder, due to a season-ending finger injury. But there is a chance that graduate point guard Drew Thelwell could return after missing the last two games due to an ankle injury.

“I think there’s  good shot on Drew,” Fran McCaffery said Tuesday on a zoom conference. “He worked out yesterday and he’s going to try and practice today.

“So, depending on how that goes will determine what happens tomorrow.”

Iowa senior center Riley Mulvey is also expected to return from an illness that caused him to miss the Maryland game.

The drubbing at Maryland has sort or mirrored Iowa’s up-and-down season in how the depleted Hawkeyes played so well in the first half, at least on offense, but then struggled so badly on both ends in the second half.

And even though Iowa gave up 101 points against Maryland, Fran McCaffery said the problems actually started on the other end of the court for his team.

“The problems was offensively,” he said. “We scored 51 in the first half, moved the ball and shot it well. In the second half, we quick shot the ball. We were shooting contested shots, and we shot ourselves in transition repeatedly, which is a problem against any team in this league, but Maryland in particular.”

As for Oregon, it has won two straight games, but prior to the winning steak, the Ducks lost five straight games, including four on the road.

Oregon is 4-4 in true road games this season.

The Ducks have three players averaging in double figures and five averaging at least 9.3 points per game.

“Oregon has been really impressive to me,” Fran McCaffery said. “They’ve got a lot of pieces that fit. They have shooters. They have size. They have speed. They have depth. I think they’re one of he better teams in our league.”

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Cheap beer: In an effort to attract more UI students to Wednesday’s game against Oregon, the Iowa Athletic Department, as part of a promotion called “Student Palooza,” will allow UI students 21 and older to purchase $2 draft beer.

Students will have to show a valid state-issued ID card and a Hawk ID to purchase alcohol.

The $2 price for beer will be available starting at 6 p.m. and will last up until the 7:30 p.m. tip-off.

Sagging attendance has been an ongoing problem for the Iowa men’s basketball team as most of the home games this season have been played with the arena more than half empty.

Oregon (18-8, 7-8) vs. Iowa (14-11, 5-9)

When: Wednesday, 7:30 pm.

Where: Carver-Hawkeye Arena

TV: Big Ten Network

Radio: Hawkeye Radio Network

All-time series: Wednesday’s game will be the ninth meeting all time between Iowa and Oregon dating back to 1949. Iowa leads the all-time series, 6-2.

It is also the first meeting since March 22, 2021 when the seventh-seeded Ducks defeated No. 2 seed Iowa 95-80 in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.