Hawkeyes coast to win over Islanders
Posted on 01. Dec, 2012 by admin in Iowa Basketball
By Brendan Stiles
HawkeyeDrive.com
IOWA CITY, Iowa — After a pair of losses away from their surroundings, the Iowa Hawkeyes were back at Carver-Hawkeye Arena on Saturday and rediscovered their winning ways, defeating Texas A&M-Corpus Christi 88-59 to move to 6-2 on the season.
This proved to be a game that wasn’t all that close. Right away, Iowa jumped out to a 9-0 lead before the Islanders trimmed their deficit down to 11-7. But that’s when things really began to click at both ends of the floor for the Hawkeyes.
Iowa went on a 20-0 run to take a 31-7 lead. Part of it was Texas A&M-Corpus Christi going over seven minutes without scoring. But the bigger part of it was the play of junior forward Melsahn Basabe.
During the Hawkeye run, Basabe scored 13 unanswered points and finished the game with a team-high 17 points along with five rebounds.
“I came in today with a serious mindset, trying to establish rhythm,” Basabe said.
Also providing a spark for Iowa throughout the afternoon was center Adam Woodbury. The 7-1 freshman managed to play 20 minutes as a result of avoiding early foul trouble and finished with 13 points and five rebounds. The 13 points are a new career-high for the Sioux City product.
“That was a big key for me, to get some more time in there and just get more comfortable,” Woodbury said. “I felt the game came a lot easier to me staying out of foul trouble and moving more smoothly.”
Woodbury was one of three freshmen to start, as guard Anthony Clemmons made his first career start in place of junior forward Zach McCabe. Iowa head coach Fran McCaffery said he would evaluate before deciding whether to keep Clemmons in the starting lineup permanently or not.
Clemmons only scored one point, but tallied a team-high five assists. As a result of him starting in place of McCabe, freshman guard Mike Gesell was able to move out to the wing along with junior guard Devyn Marble and sophomore forward Aaron White was able to revert back to his more natural position playing the 4.
“I really like him playing the point and I think Mike enjoyed playing the 2 today,” Marble said. “I think it gives Mike the ability to show off his scoring ability playing the 2 and now we’ve got three creators on the floor with me, Mike and Sapp.
“It really created a lot of opportunities for the bigs to post up and people were able to get it in there to them.”
Marble and sophomore guard Josh Oglesby both provided double-figures scoring along with Basabe and Woodbury. Marble scored 15 points and added five rebounds and three assists while Oglesby finished with 12 points.
As a team, Iowa shot 29-of-52 from the floor and went to the charity stripe 29 times, sinking 22 of those 29 free-throw attempts. The Hawkeyes also held a 38-23 rebounding edge, which includes 13 offensive boards.
“I thought our focus on the defensive game plan was maybe the best we’ve had all year,” McCaffery said. “We made a team that I think is pretty good look less talented than they really are because we played guys the right way and we battled the glass.”
Iowa continues its current home-stand with a contest Dec. 4 against South Dakota. Tip-off from Carver-Hawkeye Arena is scheduled for 7 p.m. Central. The game will not be televised, but can viewed online at BTN.com.
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