Brown: My Top 10 Games at Carver-Hawkeye Arena

Recalling Most Memorable Iowa Basketball Contests in Front of Home Fans

IOWA CITY, Iowa - I attended my first Iowa basketball game in person in 1967. Wisconsin was the opponent, Iowa Fieldhouse the site.

We made the drive from Fort Dodge so I could watch my hometown idol, Tom Chapman, Jr., play for the Hawkeyes. When I went back and read about the game recently I discovered that it carried much more significance than a seventh grader, head deep in hero worship, could grasp at the time. Wisconsin knocked Iowa out of the Big Ten lead with a 96-95 upset in triple overtime, thanks to Chuck Nagle’s baseline jumper with 8 seconds on the clock. Iowa’s 21-game home-court winning streak was over.

Chapman scored 19 points that night. I didn’t remember that, either. I do remember he gave me his game-worn socks, still wet with sweat, after the game.

I’ve seen plenty of Iowa games in person since then, many of them as a reporter and later columnist for the Des Moines Register. Because it was my job, the games carried more significance than my first one as a wide-eyed kid, watching his hero run up and down the court for Coach Ralph Miller.

A majority of those games have unfolded at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, the host of 660 men’s basketball games to date and a building celebrating its 40th anniversary this season. I’ve seen buzzer-beaters, nailbiters and blowouts. Many of them have escaped the memory bank, like the details of that Wisconsin game in 1967. But others never will. And in honor of the arena’s 40th birthday, here are 10 games I witnessed in person and will always remember.

No. 1 - No. 11 Iowa 88, No. 5 Michigan 80, Jan. 31, 1993

The Chris Street game. It was the Hawkeyes’ first home game since the death of Street 12 days earlier in an automobile accident. It remains the most emotionally charged game in arena history. And it’s one that Jim Nantz of CBS, who was courtside for the call of the Super Bowl Sunday contest, has never forgotten.

Shortly after my book on Street, “Emotion in Motion,” was published in 2018, I received a text message from Nantz. He and partner Billy Packer had also worked the Iowa-Duke game in Durham on Jan. 16, the final one of Street’s career.

“As fate would have it I had a 15-minute chat with Chris Street the day before the game,” Nantz told me. “He left an indelible positive impression. Like we all were, I was crushed a couple of days later by the tragic news. We were also there a couple of weeks later, when his mom and dad showed up. I can’t even begin to quantify how many times I’ve thought of that great young man during the past 25 years. I often wonder what his life would be like now. It’s been a long time since the accident but I can still clearly see him in my mind from my time in Durham. And it still hurts.”

Iowa Coach Tom Davis remembers the emotionally charged atmosphere that day. He also remembers trying to lock into the game plan, which served as a distraction to the crushing loss of a player he loved to coach.

“I remember trying to think about the problem at hand, which was probably a good thing,” Davis said. “It got my mind off other things.”

Kenyon Murray was a freshman from Battle Creek, Mich., and Michigan’s reigning Mr. Basketball. He had picked Iowa over the Wolverines. He had also become close to Street during their short time together. With all that on his mind, he still had to play the game.

“I was a ball of emotion,” he remembered.

Mike and Patty Street were there courtside, with daughters Sarah and Betsy.

“I knew we needed to go because that’s what Christopher would want us to do,”
Mike Street said.

Michigan’s Fab Five - Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson - were now sophomores. But they were no match for Iowa on this day.

Val Barnes scored 27 points, and Acie Earl added 19. Murray came off the bench to score 13 points and add a team-best seven rebounds.

“Iowa just played better,” Webber said.

One of the motivating factors behind writing the Street book was to tell his story to future generations.

“Bless you for letting a later generation realize there was a special young man named Chris Street who made the world a better place,” Nantz said.

No. 2 - No. 1 Iowa 101, No. 3 Indiana 88, Jan. 22, 1987

Indiana entered the season as the Big Ten favorite, and Coach Bob Knight’s team had already won at Ohio State, Michigan and Michigan State when it came to Carver-Hawkeye Arena to face the top-ranked team in the nation.

The Hawkeyes, undefeated and fresh off Top 10 victories at Illinois and Purdue, set history in making it three in a row.

“It was impactful, for sure,” Iowa Coach Tom Davis recalls.

Iowa stretched its winning streak to a school-record 18 games, breaking the mark held by the 1955-56 national runners-up.

A 16-2 run midway through the second half gave Iowa a cushion that had shrunk to 93-88 late in the game. And when all-American guard (and future Iowa coach) Steve Alford made a 3-pointer with 1:25 to play, it looked to shrink even more. But officials ruled Alford had stepped out-of-bounds before the shot, and the basket was waved off. Iowa then scored the final eight points of the game to become the first team to reach the century mark against a Bob Knight-coached team.

“When you get a win like that you’re not celebrating getting 100 points on somebody you have so much respect for,” Davis recalled. “That becomes not a very important thing in your mind.”

Six Iowa players scored in double figures. Kevin Gamble and Jeff Moe had 17, Roy Marble and B.J. Armstrong 16, Ed Horton 14 and Brad Lohaus 13. Horton also had 11 rebounds and the Hawkeyes enjoyed a 46-19 edge on the glass.

No. 3 - Iowa 83, No. 1 Michigan State 70, Dec. 29, 2015

With a hearty number of Iowa fans already in Pasadena, Calif.,for the upcoming Rose Bowl, the Hawkeye basketball team played host to a Michigan State squad playing shorthanded.

Leading scorer Denzel Valentine was held out of the game because of a knee injury. And Iowa took advantage with the third victory in program history over a team ranked No. 1.

While Valentine’s absence opened the door of opportunity even more, the Hawkeyes still had to take advantage. And they did, beating No. 1 for the first time since Connecticut in 1999.

Iowa never trailed, taking a 14-point halftime lead even though leading scorer Jarrod Uthoff didn’t play the final 13-plus minutes after picking up his second foul. The lead grew to 19 points the second half.

Point guard Mike Gesell led the attack with 25 points, and Peter Jok added 19.

“This is one of those rare times in my career where I thought we got pummeled,” Michigan State Coach Tom Izzo said.

Sixteen days later Iowa snapped a 18-game losing streak at the Breslin Center, 76-59, despite Valentine’s 14 points.

No. 4 - No. 19 Iowa 56, No. 4 Purdue 52, March 9, 1996

Playing in his final game at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, Kenyon Murray said goodbye with authority. His slam dunk in the final seconds clinched Iowa’s upset over a Boilermaker team that had already clinched its third straight outright Big Ten title and was playing for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

There was a strange ending to the game. As I was walking to the postgame media room, an Iowa basketball manager came up and told me the Boilermakers only had four players on the floor for the Hawkeyes' final possession. We hustled upstairs to the video room and watched the last sequence.

Iowa had 54-52 lead when Jess Settles tied up Purdue’s Porter Roberts with :10.9 remaining. The Hawkeyes got the ball on the alternate possession. Purdue Coach Gene Keady called a time out.

But when the Boilermakers returned to the floor, center Brad Miller stayed on the bench. Iowa in-bounded the ball with just four Purdue defenders out there. As the ball neared half court, Keady grabbed Brandon Brantley by the arm and threw him into the game. Brantley got in the vicinity of the Iowa basket just in time to see Murray’s dunk.

Iowa Coach Tom Davis had no idea Purdue only had four players until he was told after the game. Keady denied that was the case at first, but later came clean.

Purdue still got that No. 1 seed despite seeing its 11-game winning streak snapped. Jess Settles led Iowa with 18 points and Andre Woolridge had 13 points, eight rebounds, eight assists and just two turnovers in 36 minutes.

No. 5 - Iowa 70, Wisconsin 66, Jan. 19, 2013

Sometimes, the stars align. Iowa beat the Badgers on the 20th anniversary of Chris Street’s death. And one of Wisconsin Coach Bo Ryan’s assistants was Gary Close, who had been an assistant to Tom Davis at Iowa, was involved in the recruitment of Street, mentored him on the court and became very close to him.

All that made for an emotional night.

“There was an energy level in the building that I’ve never seen before,” Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery said.

Wisconsin,coming into the game with a seven-game winning streak and fresh off a victory at No. 1 Indiana, was buried in the emotion of the night.

Street’s gold Iowa No. 40 jersey was draped over the first chair on the Iowa bench. Iowa players wore t-shirts commemorating Street.

Aaron White, who played with an emotional edge that Street thrived on during his career, led the Hawkeyes with 17 points. That included 13 free throws in 15 attempts. He also had seven rebounds.

“Great night, great crowd,” White said.

No. 6 - Iowa 79, No. 9 Michigan State 78, March 8, 1995

The Hawkeyes were on the wrong side of the NCAA bubble after one-point losses at Michigan State (69-68), at Michigan in double overtime (83-82), to Purdue (84-83) and to Minnesota (55-54) in the first seven Big Ten games of the season.

But after winning five of seven league games late in the season, an NCAA Tournament bid was back in the picture.

Michigan State was tied for the Big Ten lead with Purdue with two games remaining. The first one was at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. And it looked like Iowa’s trend of losing close games was going to return. Shawn Respert’s 39 points, which included seven 3-point baskets, had the Spartans on the brink of a crucial victory.

Jamie Feick gave Michigan State a 78-77 lead with :09 remaining. Iowa called a time out and Coach Tom Davis set up a play for point guard Andre Woolridge. He raced down the floor, took advantage of screens set by Kenyon Murray and Chris Kingsbury and made a 15-foot jumper with :02.3 remaining for the victory.

“We had destiny in our hands and let it slip away,” Michigan State Coach Jud Heathcote said.

Kingsbury led Iowa with 20 points, including six 3-pointers in 10 attempts. But Woolridge had the basket that everyone remembers.

Iowa’s NCAA bid slipped away with a 110-79 loss at Indiana in the final regular-season game. Woorldge, a sophomore, went on to lead the Big Ten in scoring and assists in 1996-97, and reminds one of the best point guards Davis ever coached.

No. 7 - Iowa 67, No. 6 Purdue 65, March 5, 2011

After taking the Iowa job in March of 2010, Fran McCaffery knew a bumpy season was right around the corner. He inherited a program that had won just 38 games, and 15 in Big Ten play, over the previous three seasons under Todd Lickliter.

Progress was being made, but not many victories reflected the steps forward.

“We were competing,” McCaffery said.

Two games he pointed to were overtime losses to No. 13 Wisconsin on Feb.9 and Michigan on Feb. 19.

The Hawkeyes had lost 23 straight games to Top 25 opponents coming into the regular-season finale against the sixth-ranked Boilermakers.. But the streak was snapped and progress was finally reflected on the scoreboard.

“To be able to get over the hump was really important to us,” McCaffery said.

Forward Jarryd Cole, who stuck it out through two coaching changes and as many knee surgeries, recorded his seventh career double-double (16 points, 10 rebounds) in his final game at Iowa.

No. 8 - Iowa 78, No. 18 Indiana 66, Feb. 19, 2012

Iowa 67, No. 16 Wisconsin 66, Feb. 23, 2012

These games share the same line because of Matt Gatens. He put on a shooting performance for the ages that covered these back-to-back victories over rated opponents.

“I just remember that they were two big games against ranked teams in our home building,” said Gatens, now an assistant coach at his alma mater.

Gatens scored a career-high 30 points against Indiana, then bettered than with a 33-point effort against Wisconsin. Over those two games, he made 14 3-pointers in 20 attempts and 22 of 30 shots overall. He had a string of 12 consecutive made 3s over those two games.

Throw out the first half of the Indiana game, and Gatens made 13 of 16 3-pointers in three halves against Top 25 competition.

While Gatens was remarkable from behind the 3-point line, he clinched the Wisconsin victory from a spot he also had great success at - the free-throw line. He shot 85.4 percent from the line as a senior. And with his team leading by two points with 3.8 seconds remaining, he made two to put the game away.

“You score all these buckets and it comes down to a free throw or two,” Gatens said. “You clear your mind and think about all the reps you’re taken, and think about the ball going through the net.”

No. 9 - No. 21 Iowa 71, Indiana 66, Feb. 19, 2001

The first 20 minutes were a nightmare. Visiting Indiana, playing what Coach Mike Davis called its best first half of the season, took a 43-36 lead into the break.

Iowa’s comeback was fueled by a guy who used to wear an Indiana jersey. Luke Recker, playing against his former team for the first time, scored 17 of his game-high 27 points in the second half to fuel the Hawkeye rally.

“If I was going down, I was going down swinging,” Recker said.

Playing on a sore right knee that would cut his season short, Recker jump-started the comeback by scoring on a driving layup and back-to-back 3-pointers in the first 2 minutes of the closing half. He was guarded by Dane Fife, his former roommate at Indiana and now an assistant coach with the Hoosiers.

Recker didn’t take his foot off the pedal until making two late free throws to lock down the victory.

“One of the most special games I’ve played in,” said Recker, who would miss the last 15 games that season with a fractured kneecap.

No. 10 - Iowa 75, No. 13 Michigan 59, Jan. 14, 2012

Three days after getting pounded at No. 6 Michigan State by 34 points, the Hawkeyes rose up and knocked off Michigan. It marked the first time Iowa had defeated two ranked teams in the same season since 2006-07. The Hawkeyes won at No. 11 Wisconsin to open Big Ten play.

Michigan had not lost to an unranked team all season, but Iowa changed that by turning it over just three times the second half, outrebounding the Wolverines, 39-30, and recording 18 assists on 25 field goals.

Matt Gatens led the upset effort on both ends of the floor. He scored a team-high 19 points. He also guarded Michigan’s Tim Hardaway, Jr., who missed all eight of his 3-point attempts and scored just nine points. He had been averaging 17.6 points a game.