Iowa 93, Southeastern Louisiana 62: SELA Later

Keegan Murray finessed past a befuddled Jalyn Hinton to the basket, then made the and-1 to put Iowa up 3 rip to start off what would be a 93-62 wire-to-wire win over the HATED Southeastern Louisiana Something-or-Others.

And that’s basically the gist of the night for Iowa against KenPom’s #314 team. Iowa has Keegan Murray, a potential power conference player of the year and lottery pick, and more power conference players around him. And SELA... doesn’t.

It’s worth mentioning here Murray led all scorers with 20 while grabbing another 10 boards in just 24 minutes of playing time.

Whenever someone tried to do too much, like Joe Kasperzyk early on, there was Joe Toussaint or Patrick McCaffery around to clean things up and feed it back to the offense. The offensive rebounding, which was hounding Iowa during the slog of its recent schedule, wasn’t a HUGE issue as the Hawkeyes pulled down 50 boards, though just 13 were on the offensive end.

Still, that might’ve been a function of the fact Iowa shot 47 percent from the floor.

When Jordan Bohannon felt cold, Payton Sandfort warmed up to the tune of 10 first-half points on 2-4 shooting from deep. When it looked like SELA might make it close at half off a three-pointer with almost no time remaining, Tony Perkins weaved through the crowd as time expired to make it 44-30 at half.

What I’m trying to say is, Connor McCaffery made his third three of the year to cap a 13-3 run for Iowa as it climbed to a 25-point lead midway through the second half, so it just wasn’t in the cards for SELA tonight.

It wasn’t until around 4 ¹⁄₂ minutes left when Iowa threw its bench into the game with Riley Mulvey and Austin Ash getting some run with a 30-point cushion. And that was all she wrote.

Iowa now has 8 days until its next contest against Western Illinois. It’s the last matchup before Iowa begins the Big Ten blood and spiders slate of death.

The rest

• There were some extra curriculars between Joe Toussaint and SELA guard Keyon Clergeot on a weird jump ball, the aftermath of which saw Clergeot ejected from the game.
• Josh Ogundele went down pretty hard on a tie up and was helped off the court by teammates. Didn’t look great!
• I’d like to see more Ahron Ulis.
• Pat McCaffery’s +/- was +29.
• Iowa went 11-33 from deep.