Hawkeyes' Frustration Is A Powerful Fuel
Fred Hoiberg saw the score on Wednesday night, and winced.
“Yeah, I didn’t like that,” Hoiberg, the Nebraska coach said.
Hoiberg has been around the game long enough to know that frustration and embarrassment can be powerful fuels.
He knew Iowa had a lot of combustibility, and his team had provided the first spark.
The 17th-ranked Hawkeyes remembered the loss at Nebraska in early January. A long time ago, but still fresh.
They certainly hadn’t gotten over Wednesday’s 36-point defeat at Purdue. A short time ago, still fresh but with a stench that lingered.
“Our practices,” center Luka Garza said, “were pretty fiery.”
“The last two days,” guard CJ Fredrick said, “we’ve been itching to get out on the court and take it out on someone else.”
It was Hoiberg and the Huskers.
Iowa’s 96-72 win over Nebraska on Saturday night at Carver-Hawkeye Arena had its foundation in those two previous losses — that 76-70 defeat at Lincoln on Jan. 7 when the Hawkeyes made just 4 of 33 3-point attempts, and the 104-68 pounding by the Boilermakers on Wednesday, a game Iowa was never, ever in.
“I think everyone was frustrated in themselves,” guard Joe Wieskamp said. “We knew we had much more to bring to the table.”
Wieskamp’s night was a full-course meal of layups and 3-pointers, a career-high 30 points on 10-of-15 shooting. Garza added 22, his ninth consecutive game of 20 points or more in Big Ten play, the longest streak by a Hawkeye in 49 years.
“We weren’t going to be stopped tonight,” Fredrick said.
“I would have been very surprised if we hadn’t (responded),” Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said. “I could see it in the locker room after the game (at Purdue). Obviously we weren’t happy with the effort, execution and performance — pretty much everything.”
The anger burned underneath what McCaffery described as a “professional” demeanor.
“It’s not like you’re going in, turning over tables, challenging everybody’s manhood,” McCaffery said. “It’s kind of like, we have a mature group, we have a talented group, we have a group that competes and understands how to compete. We’ve shown toughness. We respected the team coming in here — they beat us once. We had to play better than we played, and we did.”
It was the largest point total of the season for the Hawkeyes (17-7 overall, 8-5 Big Ten) on a night when they went eight minutes in the first half without scoring, missing 11 consecutive shots in a gift stretch that the Huskers (7-16, 2-10) couldn’t unwrap.
Wieskamp ended that scoreless run with back-to-back baskets, and when Fredrick ended the half with an off-balance buzzer-beating one-handed 3-pointer, the Hawkeyes led 41-30.
“It was a big shot,” Wieskamp said of Fredrick’s three. “He had been struggling a bit. To see one fall, especially that one, it was nice to see for him.”
Wieskamp then opened the second half with seven consecutive points to start a 25-8 run by the Hawkeyes.
“We really hit them in the mouth with a big run, to kind of separate the game,” Wieskamp said. “I think that was huge for us.”
“It is deflating,” Hoiberg said.
Wieskamp averaged 30 points or better in his last season at nearby Muscatine High School. His previous career high was 26 points against Maryland on Jan. 10.
It’s why Garza pushed him to get to 30.
“My teammates, Luka and all of those guys, did a great job of finding me,” Wieskamp said. “They just encouraged me to keep shooting.”
Iowa’s largest lead was 86-48 with 6:54 to play in the game, and it looked like the Hawkeyes were on the way to their biggest victory margin of the season, a strange bookend to a volatile week.
They settled for what they had — their 11th consecutive win at home. They would leave in a tie with Michigan State for fourth place in the Big Ten, two games out of the lead.
“They came to play,” Hoiberg said.
