In a game which felt there for the taking, the #19 Iowa Hawkeyes (15-6, 6-4) couldn’t climb the mountain against the #14 Maryland Terrapins (17-4, 7-3), losing 82-72.

In addition to the Terps, the Hawks battled themselves too often. Luka Garza and Ryan Kriener each picked up their second fouls on a silly effort poking at a rebound and a technical foul for, presumably, saying a bad word, respectively. Garza was frustrated all night, though he finished with 21 points on 9/19 shooting.

After a couple early threes from Joe Wieskamp and CJ Fredrick, the two struggled to sustain their scoring. They finished with 17 and 12, but did so inefficiently on a combined 34.6% shooting.

Despite all the inefficiencies and outside frustration, the Hawkeyes had a chance to get it within 1 with Garza heading to the line in a one-and-one situation with 9:16 left but missed the front end and kept the deficit at 52-49. Maryland quickly stretched the lead to 13 and that was that.

Anthony Cowen paced the Terps with 31 points, a career high, with 19 in the second half. Jalen Smith filled the box score with 18 points, 14 boards, and 5 blocks.

Hawkeyes cold shooting stretches to a second game

Garza, Wieskamp, and Fredrick’s lines are mentioned above but there were little positives to take from that stat line. In multiple cases, it felt like both passed on open jumpers against Maryland’s quickness and length.

Joe Toussaint had some exciting moments but was forced the issue too often, finishing 2/10 for 8 points. Part of it wasn’t his fault as he was forced into the short shot clock ballhandler but in those situations, he settled for jumpers instead of attacking the rim in an effort to collapse the defense.

Overall, Iowa finished 36.5% from the field and 33.3% from deep. It’s tough to string wins together when you’re putting up numbers like that.

The defense didn’t finish enough possessions

On no less than five possessions, Iowa gave up at least four baskets, two from inside of five feet. More on that in a moment, but you got to play defense for all 30 seconds of the shot clock, especially when the opponent is trying to limit possessions. Mark Turgeon mentioned multiple times during his in-game interview that it was a point of emphasis for his squad to slow the tempo - even hoping fatigue would factor into the second half’s tempo - and Iowa didn’t seem ready for that.

After yielding just three offensive rebounds in the first half, Iowa allowed seven in the second half, which accounted for 36.8% of Maryland’s misses. Iowa played almost exclusively zone in the second period, which enabled long rebounds to be chased by a number of Terps.

In a game where you’re not getting any breaks, you have to make them in these effort situations.

It was Iowa’s cleanest game in awhile

The Hawkeyes finished with just 8 turnovers, which is a totally winnable number and quite the contrast from the first outing between these two teams, where Iowa posted 18. They also were extending possessions in their own right with 14 offensive rebounds, which they turned into 14 points. Cordell Pemsl paced the team with five offensive boards. If they didn’t play a cleaner game, this one is much uglier.

No more home cooking

I don’t know what to say about the refs other than it felt one-sided. I always hate touching on this because Iowa did themselves no favor with shooting or rebounding but allow me to editorialize on this one point:

A major pet peeve of mine is how refs go out of their way to review whether a basket was actually good when the shot clock approaches 0. This is one play where they didn’t check the monitor and the result was an offensive rebound and a cheap foul on Connor McCaffery, his third.

There are many others, much more subjective in nature, so there’s really no reason to ramble about them. Iowa still had their chances. They still fought. This isn’t football where a loss can set you back.

But it’s imperative Iowa doesn’t let one loss turn into two and they’ll get plenty of chances against Illinois. Best take advantage of them.