INDIANAPOLIS — OK, so maybe the late-season tailspin isn’t quite over.
And maybe when next year’s Big Ten basketball tournament rolls around, Iowa should put in a special request to play against the No. 1 seed. Playing against these lower-seeded teams isn’t working out very well for the Hawkeyes.
Fifth-seeded Iowa struggled to find a third scorer, set a season high for turnovers, failed to contain a surprisingly efficient Illinois offense and failed to do much of anything in the final seconds in going down to a 68-66 loss to the 12th-seeded Illini in the second round of the tournament Thursday at Banker’s Life Fieldhouse.
It’s the third straight year the Hawkeyes have been bumped off in their first game by a team seeded 11th or lower. It’s their sixth defeat in the past eight games and it was apparent afterwards that it’s beginning to wear on coach Fran McCaffery.
“You have no idea how much I would like to express my frustration,’’ McCaffery said. “We’ll leave it at that.’’
Adding to the frustration Thursday was the fact that the Hawkeyes (21-10) twice rallied from 11-point deficits and had a chance to win it in the final seconds.
After tying the score at 66-66 on a 3-point play by Nicholas Baer with 1:40 to go, they never scored again. In fact, they got off only one shot in those last 100 seconds.
Malcolm Hill, a second-team All-Big Ten player who was held in check for most of the game, fired in a 17-foot jump shot over Iowa’s Jarrod Uthoff with 1:17 remaining to give Illinois the lead and the Hawkeyes were unable to counter.
Mike Gesell missed an out-of-rhythm shot from near the free-throw line in the next possession but the Hawkeyes got one last try after Illinois' Jalen Coleman-Lands misfired on a 3-point attempt.
After both teams called timeout with 15.2 seconds left, Gesell had the ball poked loose by Hill, setting off a scramble for the loose ball. Iowa retained possession with 4.8 seconds to go but Gesell’s high, arching inbounds pass from under the basket tipped off Dom Uhl’s hands out of bounds with 2.6 seconds to go.
The Illini were able to get the ball inbounds after that and time ran out.
“We were just trying to get a shot and get a good look at it,’’ Gesell said. “The disappointing part is we didn’t even get one.’’
Illinois will now take on No. 4 seed Purdue in the quarterfinals today at 1:30 p.m.
“I think some guys are getting a little bit mentally tougher,’’ Illini coach John Groce said. “We haven’t arrived by any means. We still have a long ways to go. But we have gotten better in a lot of areas.’’
Iowa got all but 16 of its points from two players as Peter Jok matched his career high with 29 points and Jarrod Uthoff scored 21.
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Jok had an eye-popping stretch late in the first half in which he scored 15 points in less than 2 ½ minutes, but he fouled out on a double-technical foul with 4 minutes, 2 seconds remaining. Illinois’ Kendrick Nunn flipped an elbow in Jok’s direction and the Iowa junior shoved Nunn back.
“He’d been doing that the whole game,’’ Jok said. “Coach tried to tell the refs to try to watch it, but it just got the best of me in that possession. I didn’t know I had four fouls and that fouled me out.’’
Coleman-Lands, who scored 14 of his team-high 17 points after halftime, then drilled his fifth 3-point field goal of the game to give the Illini a 66-55 lead and it looked as though the Hawkeyes were done.
But Iowa turned up the pressure on defense and scored 11 straight points on a Uthoff 3-point play, a Baer steal and dunk, a Uhl three and Baer’s 3-point play.
It just couldn’t finish the job after that, however.
“We didn’t do the things that were necessary throughout the course of the game to win, in my opinion,’’ McCaffery said. “But what I was proud of was to show the fight to come back and tie the game because it certainly didn’t look like we were going to come back and tie the game.’’
McCaffery was most bothered by the Hawkeyes’ 18 turnovers. That’s a season high.
“You can’t win a tournament game turning the ball over 18 times,’’ he said. “Can’t.’’
Nunn, who made just 2 of 13 shots in an earlier meeting between the two teams, added 16 points for the Illini (15-18) and center Maverick Morgan scored 14. He had a dozen of those in the first 12 minutes to help Illinois build an early 11-point lead that was erased by Jok’s scoring explosion.
The Illini made 10 3-point field goals in the contest and have made 24 of 49 shots from behind the arc in the first two games of the tournament.
Hill finished with just six points, about 12 below his average, and he also turned the ball over five times although he made the big plays at the end when it counted most.
“We all know that is not typical of him,’’ Illinois coach John Groce said. “But he never let it affect his defensive effort. And then the lone second-half field goal he made was a big one. He stepped up and made that.’’
McCaffery, meanwhile, said he is at a loss to explain why his team continues to struggle in the Big Ten Tournament against teams it should be able to beat.
“I would say we didn’t get off to good starts in any of those three games and in a tournament situation that’s not a good thing,’’ he said.
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