Hawkeyes dominate paint in win over Coyotes
Posted on 04. Dec, 2012 by admin in Iowa Basketball
By Brendan Stiles
HawkeyeDrive.com
IOWA CITY, Iowa — Coming into their contest with South Dakota Tuesday evening, the Iowa Hawkeyes’ game plan was pretty simple. It was to attack early and attack often.
The aggressiveness, particularly at the offensive end, was what paid off for Iowa as it defeated South Dakota 87-63 at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. The Hawkeyes have now won two straight and find themselves sitting at 7-2 overall on the season.
From the get-go, Iowa attacked. Whenever it had the ball, it was going inside and getting buckets in the paint. The Hawkeyes ended up scoring 54 of their 87 points in the painted area. When they weren’t making field goals inside, they were either drawing contact and getting to the free-throw line, or they were compiling offensive rebounds (20 of them, to be precise) and keeping possession of the ball.
“We didn’t want to settle for a lot of jump shots,” junior guard Devyn Marble said. “We really made an emphasis to drive the ball.”
As it turned out, every one of those points that came inside would be needed on this night. After jumping out to a commanding lead early, the Coyotes got back in the game with their 3-point shooting and at one point in the first half even held a lead before Iowa managed to re-group.
The Hawkeyes would go on a 15-0 run near the end of the first half and take a 45-32 lead with them into halftime.
“Early on, our press was bad. It was just bad,” Iowa head coach Fran McCaffery said. “They got open 3s right off the bat off of our press. We were underneath them a little too much early. That’s how they got six 3s in the first half, so that was disappointing.”
Leading the way for Iowa was sophomore forward Aaron White. After only scoring four points in the Hawkeyes’ previous contest against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, the Strongsville, Ohio native finished with 21 points and six rebounds. He shot 7-of-11 from the floor and was a perfect 6-of-6 from the charity stripe.
“I wasn’t really happy with my performance,” White said in reference to the Corpus Christi game. “I was really upset, so I wanted to make the effort to bring some energy to the team and do what I do best.
“I think I needed a game like this.”
White was one of four double-figure scorers Iowa had on the evening. Marble had 14 points along with eight rebounds, while freshman guard Mike Gesell had 12 points and freshman center Adam Woodbury added 10 points and six boards.
In addition, the Hawkeyes received an 8-assist/0-turnover performance from freshman guard Anthony Clemmons, who made just his second career start on Tuesday, as well an 8-point, 9-rebound effort from sophomore center Gabe Olaseni in 11 minutes of play during the second half.
Now the road gets daunting again for Iowa. The good news for the Hawkeyes is that their next contest against in-state rival Iowa State is at Carver-Hawkeye Arena on Dec. 7 (tip-off is set for 7 p.m. Central and the game will be televised nationally on the Big Ten Network). However, the Cyclones have won each of the last three meetings between the two teams, including an 86-76 win over Iowa last season at Hilton Coliseum in Ames.
“The games are going to require more focus as we go on,” senior forward Eric May said. “We can’t be satisfied at any point in any game. It’s about us getting better the whole game.
“We’re going to have to really bring it these next couple of days to get ready for Iowa State because it’s a big one for us.”
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