After Iowa’s recruiting whiff Monday morning, Hawkeye fans needed something to lift their spirits.

DePaul erupting for 93 points and beating Iowa by 15 in Carver-Hawkeye wasn’t what they had in mind.

Monday was a tough day for Iowa basketball, to say the least.

The Hawkeyes struggled in both halves, but it was in the first where Iowa dug itself into a whole too deep to climb out.

Iowa’s defense was not good.

DePaul was on fire, hitting 61.4 percent of its field goals. The Blue Demons hit 11 of their 20 shots from 3-point range.

Paul Reed put on a basketball clinic. He scored 25 points on 10-of-14 shooting (three-of-four from downtown) and grabbed 12 rebounds. Fellow Blue Demon Jalen Coleman-Lands put up 17 points and five assists.

Iowa’s defense was able to force turnovers.

The Hawkeyes forced 21 Blue Demon turnovers, which led to 21 points on the other end. Four Hawkeyes finished with two steals.

The defensive intensity picked up in the second half, as 14 of the 21 DePaul turnovers happened in the final 20 minutes of action.

Iowa, however, couldn’t hold onto the ball much better than DePaul.

Iowa had more turnovers than made field goals in the first half.

That first-half offense was disgusting.

The Hawkeyes shot just 34.5 percent, hitting 10 of their 29 field goals, while turning the ball over 12 times. Iowa almost had a higher turnover percentage (32.4) than scoring percentage (37.8).

All five Hawkeye starters finished the first half with a +/- rating of -11 or worse.

Six Hawkeyes finished with two or more turnovers.

Iowa managed to only turn the ball over seven times in the first half, and that’s a big reason why the offense started to (somewhat) click. But the first half was a totally different story.

Ryan Kriener, C.J. Fredrick, and Joe Toussaint were bright spots.

Iowa’s only offense in the first half came from Ryan Kriener, who scored 11 of the team’s 30 points. In total, he scored 13 points and finished with eight rebounds.

C.J. Fredrick and Joe Toussaint started heating up in the second half. Fredrick finished with 16 points on five-of-seven shooting, while Toussaint ended with 13 points on four-of-seven field goals.

Fredrick canned two of his three 3-point attempts and Toussaint added a pair of assists and steals. Toussaint was constantly aggressive on both sides of the ball — great to see from a freshman.

Starters Joe Wieskamp and Jack Nunge had games to forget.

Shots were not falling for Joe Wieskamp.

After scoring 16 points on five-of-10 shooting in Iowa’s season-opening win over SIU Edwardsville on Nov. 8, Wieskamp hit just one of his seven field goal attempts in the loss to DePaul. He finished with four points. Just a bad night shooting, and nothing more than that.

Meanwhile, Jack Nunge finished with zeros in literally every statistical column except for two: turnovers (one) and personal fouls (one). Nunge only played 10 minutes.

Toussaint got a technical foul, and it pretty much summed up Iowa fans’ feelings on this game.

Midway through the second half, Toussaint drew a foul on DePaul’s Devin Gage.

Gage bumped Toussaint in the face and fell to the floor. After the whistle, Toussaint stood above Gage and tossed the ball at him.

The referees issued a technical.

In a frustrating game for Iowa, this summed up the feeling for Hawkeye fans.

Editor’s Note: Also an instant podcast!