By Hawk Fanatic

The 19th-ranked Iowa men’s basketball team nearly erased a double-digit deficit at Minnesota on Tuesday and had three chances to tie the game in the final seconds, only to miss all three shots.

That allowed Minnesota to hold on for a 70-67 victory at Williams Arena in Minneapolis.

The Gophers led 58-44 with 6 minutes, 36 seconds left in the second half, but then had to withstand Iowa’s late surge, which was led by by senior point guard Bennett Stirtz, who scored all 21 of his points in the second half.

“It wasn’t just our ineptitude, I thought they asserted themselves from a physical perspective,” Iowa head coach Ben McCollum said of the Gophers. “In the second half we started to go.”

Stirtz, who struggled with foul problems in the first half, was one of three players for Iowa to score in double figures, the others being junior guard Kael Combs with 14 points and sophomore guard Isaia Howard with 10 points off the bench.

Iowa shot just 39.7 percent from the field, making 25-of-63 field-goal attempts, and just 26.9 percent from 3-point range, making 6-of-27 attempts from behind the arc.

Iowa forwards Cam Manyawu and Alvaro Folgueiras were both held scoreless, but Manyawu did lead Iowa with eight rebounds.

Iowa made 10-of-13 free throws, but the Gophers finished 21-of-28 from the line, and were helped by Iowa being whistled for 22 fouls.

Iowa also committed 14 turnovers, while the Gophers had 10.

“We’ve got to find away to get to the free throw line,” McCollum said. “I don’t know why we don’t get there.  But we put their people there a lot.

“I need to do a better job of coaching to that. And then we turned it over a little too much. But we just didn’t play our best basketball and that’s disappointing. And they (Minnesota) had a lot to do with that, though.”

McCollum has said repeatedly that there would be some low points as he tries to rebuild the program, and the loss to Minnesota is perhaps the lowest point so far.

“We’ve got some sickness going around,” McCollum  said. “But that’s whatever. That’s just an excuse. We just need to be better. We need to show up ready to compete and ready to impose our will.

“I didn’t think we not didn’t play hard. We just didn’t play with intent. You get away with a few things and we couldn’t get away with them tonight.”

Iowa only made 11-of-29 field-goal attempts in the first half, including 2-of-9 from 3-point range.

With Stirtz stymied by fouls problems in the first half, the Iowa offense became stagnant as Iowa’s top four scorers were held scoreless.

Kael Combs, and redshirt freshman forward Cooper Koch helped to pick up the slack without Stirtz running the offense by scoring nine and seven points, respectively, in the first half.

Stirtz only played nine minutes in the first half, but Iowa still kept the score close, even with Stirtz being held scoreless.

Minnesota shot 54.2 percent from the field in the first half, making 13-of-24 shots from the field, while Iowa shot just 37.9 percent from the field, making 11-of-29 field goal attempts.

But Iowa also had a 17-12 rebounding advantage in the first half.

Stirtz picked up two fouls less than five minutes into the first half and that forced McCollum to put his star point guard on the bench where Stirtz has spent very little time in his career.

Stirtz is known for playing most games from start to finish, but McCollum had to make sure that he had Stirtz down the stretch, so he sat him.

That decision paid dividends as Stirtz nearly led what would have been a huge comeback in McCollum’s first season as head coach.

Tuesday’s game matched two first-year head coaches who have something else in common, which is that each spent one season as the head coach at Drake.

McCollum led Drake to a 31-4 record in his only season as head coach last season, and that helped to catapult McCollum into getting the Iowa job, while Medved finished 17-17 in his only season as the Drake head coach in 2017-18.

Medved left Drake to be the head coach at Colorado State where he compiled a 143-85 record over seven seasons.

Medved grew up near Minneapolis and he graduated from Minnesota in 1997. So when his alma mater offered Medved the head coaching job, he gladly accepted and there have been some encouraging signs, most notably the 73-64 victory over Indiana on Dec. 3 in Minneapolis, and Tuesday’s win over Iowa.

Iowa fell to 12-3 overall and 2-2 in the Big Ten, while the Gophers improved to 10-5 and 3-1.

Iowa will return home to face Illinois on Sunday at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.