By John Bohnenkamp

IOWA CITY, Iowa – Ben McCollum had a substitution plan for Iowa’s game against Eastern Illinois on Friday night.

The Hawkeyes have Virginia Tech and Creighton ahead next week on neutral courts, so McCollum wanted to get as many of his players significant minutes.

And it worked.

Iowa’s 91-47 win at Carver-Hawkeye Arena came on a night when the Hawkeyes got 61 bench points.

“Sixty-one?” whispered second-year player Trey Thompson when asked about it in the post-game press conference. “That’s crazy.”

Three of the four players who scored in double figures were bench players. Peyton McCollum, the coach’s son, led the Hawkeyes with 14 points. Ty’Reek Coleman had 13 points. Thompson had 11.

And Trevin Jirak, also coming off the bench, had eight points and eight assists.

“I thought that it was nice to give everybody a little bit more time,” Ben McCollum said.

It showed in the time the starters got. Cooper Koch played 26 minutes and Isaia Howard played 20, but the numbers were less for Tate Sage, Kael Combs and Cam Manyawu.

That group got the Hawkeyes (2-0) a 41-20 halftime lead, which McCollum said was important.

“I want to get my starters in rhythm as well,” McCollum said. “I thought they did a good job of building that lead to where I thought that Eastern broke a little bit, and then things kind of came a little bit easier.”

The Hawkeyes buried the Panthers (0-2) with perimeter shots — 14 of their 33 field goals were 3-pointers.

Peyton McCollum, who played 20 ½ minutes, had four 3-pointers. Thompson, in his first significant minutes of the season, had three.

“Our defense is getting there, the offense started to go a little bit,” Ben McCollum said. “That’s what we’ve seen in practice is that ability to shoot. We just haven’t seen it in games quite yet, and I’m not sure why. But I thought we got a little better rhythm throughout that second half, and part of that was I thought they broke a little bit too. But the other part was that we hit shots.”

Iowa shot 61.5% in the first half, but defensively held the Panthers to just four points over the final 8:54.

“I think it was just the same things — ball pressure, just doing what we do on the defensive side of the ball, communicate, and then holding them to one shot,” Jirak said. “I just think we took it to a new level.”

Thompson was impressive in his 13 minutes, something that McCollum said he has seen at times in practice.

“There’s been days like that,” McCollum said. “The day you guys came, he was like that. He was really good. And then I think, middle of the summer, he was shooting a high percentage, and he kind of hit a little wall there for a little bit, and then you know he started to pick it back up, doing much better job defensively. I was really pleased with him. I just felt I was happy for him.”

“It felt good,” Thompson said. “I love playing with the guys.”

Next week will be a different level of play for the Hawkeyes.

“We started the year off with what we needed to do, and now, obviously it’s Power Four games that we got to get ready to play basketball for, and compete at the highest level,” Jirak said.