Hawkeyes’ season ends in Eugene
Posted on 18. Mar, 2012 by admin in Iowa Basketball
By Brendan Stiles
HawkeyeDrive.com
While the Iowa Hawkeyes did achieve their first winning season in five years, they also saw their 2011-12 campaign come to an unsettling conclusion, bowing out of the NIT’s second round on Sunday with a 108-97 loss to Oregon at Matthew Knight Arena in Eugene, Ore. The Ducks move on to the NIT quarterfinals to face Washington on March 20. Iowa dropped to 18-17 with the season-ending defeat.
Early on, hot shooting propelled the Hawkeyes to a 15-point lead midway through the first half. Sparking the scoring onslaught was sophomore guard Devyn Marble, one of four players to reach double figures in scoring Sunday. The Southfield, Mich., native finished with a career-high 31 points on 10-of-15 shooting from the floor and shot an unconscious 7-of-8 from behind the arc.
“Coach [Fran] McCaffery told me I needed to shoot the ball more and I was missing a lot of opportunities,” Marble said during a postgame interview with the Hawkeye Radio Network (Learfield Sports). “So I went back to the film and I put it out on the floor today.”
Oregon would trim Iowa’s lead down to four at halftime, as the Hawkeyes went to the locker room ahead 51-47. Then it was the Ducks putting on an offensive clinic in the second half, shooting 72 percent from the floor and scoring 61 second-half points.
Momentum shifted completely in Oregon’s favor as the Ducks scored seven unanswered points to tie the game at 58-58. After taking a 62-61 lead, Oregon didn’t look back as it drained shot after shot.
“Offensively, we were in great shape,” McCaffery said during a postgame interview with the Hawkeye Radio Network. “Defensively, we broke down at the end of the first half and midway through the second half. A little bit of it was foul trouble, a little bit of it was fatigue.
“We’re sitting there with a three-possession game and we just couldn’t get it back to a one-possession game.”
In addition to Marble’s effort, Iowa had three other notable performances on Sunday. Freshman forward Aaron White finished with 22 points five nights after scoring a career-high 25 points against Dayton. Sophomore forward Melsahn Basabe had 17 points playing 18 minutes off the bench, but fouled out of the game along with sophomore forward Zach McCabe late in the second half.
In what proved to be his final game as a Hawkeye, senior guard Bryce Cartwright followed up a career-high 11-assist showing against Dayton with a double-double of 12 points and 10 assists on Sunday, with eight of those dimes coming in the first half.
Also playing in what turned out to be his last game was senior guard Matt Gatens, who finished with seven points on 3-of-10 shooting. The Iowa City native ended his career with a senior campaign where he led Iowa in scoring with 15.2 points per game and was the lone Hawkeye to start all 35 games during the season.
While Iowa will move on without Cartwright, Gatens and senior forwards Andrew Brommer and Devon Archie, the future appears to be bright for this team. Marble, White, McCabe and Basabe are all among those returning in 2012-13. The Hawkeyes also bring in a class consisting of at least five players, headlined by guard Mike Gesell and center Adam Woodbury, both of whom hail from the Siouxland area.
“I thought that we had a pretty good year,” Marble said. “Hopefully next year, we can take it to the next level.”
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