By Hawk Fanatic

Matched against an injury-depleted and struggling Oregon squad on its home court, the Iowa men’s basketball team took advantage of those circumstances by defeating the Ducks 84-66 on Sunday in Eugene, Oregon.

Senior point guard Bennett Stirtz led the way for Iowa in spectacular fashion, scoring a career-high 32 points on 12-of-15 shooting from the field. The Liberty, Missouri native also had seven assists while playing 38 minutes.

Stirtz, who played for Drake last season, and for Northwest Missouri State as a freshman and sophomore, also surpassed 2,000 career points in Sunday’s win.

Iowa has now won four straight games and improved to 16-5 overall and 6-4 in the Big Ten under first-year head coach Ben McCollum, while Oregon fell to 8-14 and 1-10.

“I’ve seen a lot of different coverages and taking what the defense is giving me,” Stirtz said on the Learfield post-game radio interview. “The shots were going in that I was shooting, and I think my teammates really played well today, too.”

Iowa will continue its Pacific Northwest road trip when it faces Washington at 10 p.m. on Wednesday in Seattle.

Junior forward Alvaro Folgueiras, senior guard Brendan Hausen and redshirt freshman forward Cooper Koch also scored in double figures for Iowa with 15, 11 and 10 points, respectively.

Oregon was without its two leading scorers in Nate Bittle (16.3) and Jackson Shelstad (15.6). Bittle is out with a foot injury, while Shelstad is out for the season with a hand injury.

The Ducks kept the score close for most of the first half, but Iowa eventually built a double-figure lead in the second half and pulled away.

“I don’t know what their record is in the Big Ten, but it’s a game, on the road, in the Big Ten and they’re hungry to get the win,” Stirtz said Oregon. “It’s going to be tough. We knew that coming in and we kind of had the mentality it’s 10-game conference tournament and we’re on to game two now and it’s win or go home. So we’ve got to bring it.”

Iowa senior forward Tavion Banks entered Sunday’s game having made 30 straight free throws and he needs just four more to tie the program record.

But Banks only played 11 minutes and didn’t attempt any free throws.

Iowa made 10-of-22 shots from 3-point range as Stirtz and Hausen led the Hawkeyes with four and three treys, respectively.

Iowa also had just five turnovers and shot 58.9 percent from the field, making 33-of-56 field-goal attempts.

“Defensively, I thought we were really engaged, and then particularly offensively,” McCollum said. “We’ve been working on it for quite a few games, just being able to get more drives that are away from a ball screen. I thought that we had been pretty ball-screen dependent, which is what we do.

“But we have to punish things away from the actual pick-and-roll, too. And I thought we did a much job tonight of doing that. We’re still a long ways away, a major work in progress. But I was really pleased with it.”

Iowa led 35-26 at halftime, thanks partly to having an 18-8 advantage in points in the paint and a 13-5 advantage in bench points.

Hausen made a 3-point basket with 10 seconds left in the first half to give Iowa a nine-point lead at the break.

Stirtz led Iowa with 11 points in the first half, while the 6-foot-10 Folgueiras scored eight points of the bench. Folgueiras also had four rebounds and two assists in the first half.

Stirtz has now scored at least 20 points in four straight games.

Sunday’s game marked just the second time that Iowa has played in Eugene.

Iowa fell to Ducks 108-98 in the second round of the 2012 National Invitation Tournament