Game Story: Hawkeyes Take Down Rutgers

Keegan Murray Sets Iowa Single-Season Scoring Record in B1G Tournament Victory

INDIANAPOLIS — Luka Garza’s 2021 season was historic.

It took one season for Garza’s single-season scoring record at Iowa to be erased.

At the rate Keegan Murray and the Hawkeyes are going, there are going to be a few more games to add to Murray’s new mark.

Murray had 26 points in Friday’s 84-74 win over Rutgers in the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals, giving him 750 points for the season.

But what he and the Hawkeyes are doing is much bigger than that.

Iowa (24-9), the fifth seed in this tournament, has won 10 of its last 12 games, and will face No. 8 seed Indiana in Saturday’s noon semifinal. There’s that game, maybe Sunday’s championship game, and then the NCAA tournament ahead.

Murray’s numbers, then, could be staggering.

“For me, last year, I really just tried to learn from Luka as much as I can,” Murray, a sophomore forward, said. “Obviously, when you have the National Player of the Year on your team, you just kind of want to resemble him in a way. But for me to break his record is a big credit to him and what he's done at the university — how he's carried himself and how he's kind of put in the footsteps to become great here at Iowa. So it's an honor for me, for sure.”

“You really can't do it any better,” Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said. “He just stays the course. He's very even tempered. You guys have seen that on the court, off the court. And then as the game goes on, he affects it in so many different ways. I think that's what people appreciate about him. You look down and he has 26 points, he defends, he draws fouls. We can go to him or we cannot go to him and he just finds a way.”

It’s something McCaffery knew when he recruited Murray and his twin brother, Kris, in high school.

“Anybody that watched them, I don't think that I was that far ahead of the curve,” McCaffery said. “Like if you watched them play, you would have come to the same conclusion that I did.

“It wasn't a favor, it wasn't a gift, it wasn't, hey, we'll take a shot at two (6-foot-8) kids. That's not how I operate. I have a responsibility to this program and to the institution to recruit Big Ten caliber players. And we don't always get it right, you know that, but I was 100 percent convinced that those two kids were going to be really good, and so was my staff who watched them.”

The numbers he has put up this season, though, surprised teammate Connor McCaffery.

Asked if he thought Murray could have this kind of year, Connor said, “No,” which prompted a laugh from those around him.

“No, I didn’t, honestly,” Connor continued. “But I’m happy for him. He’s been unbelievable, in every facet of the game.”

Murray was 10-of-19 from the field, and made all six of his free throws. But what happened when Murray didn’t score, what his teammates did around him, was just as big a part of this win.

Murray scored Iowa’s first four points of the second half, then didn’t score again for more than 10 minutes. But the Hawkeyes, who led 45-35 after Murray’s second field goal of the half, kept the lead in double digits, leading by as much as 18 points.

When Rutgers (18-13) threatened, getting to within 71-63 with 6:22 to play, the Hawkeyes responded with a quick 7-0 burst — a layup by Tony Perkins, a steal and dunk by Murray, and then a Perkins 3-pointer.

Perkins finished with 16 points, as did guard Jordan Bohannon. Every Hawkeye who played scored.

The Hawkeyes suffered one of their ugliest losses of the season to the Scarlet Knights, falling 48-46 in mid-January.

They fell behind 15-5 in the opening 4 ½ minutes, but there was no question to them how they were going to respond.

“I feel like, for us, we've kind of learned how to get … we've gotten knocked down,” Murray said. “We've learned how to get back up on different stretches. And we know that if we're down a little bit, we can get on a run at any point in the game. So for us, it's just keeping the mentality to just never give up, whether we're up 20 or down 20. That's just kind of the mindset we've had these last stretch of games. It's just a credit to our guys, sticking with our scout and doing what we do best.”

“It’s a strong confidence in themselves,” Fran McCaffery said. “I've talked about that all the time. My primary objective as their coach is to get them to play with supreme confidence because that's the only way they will ever be the best version of themselves.

“I think it's really important in this league, especially with the caliber of teams that you're playing and the different styles that you see on a daily basis, you've got to be able to punch back.”

And the Hawkeyes have learned lessons. Their 74-72 loss at Illinois in last Sunday’s regular-season finale came after Kris Murray missed three free throws and Keegan Murray missed 2-of-3 in the closing two minutes.

Iowa was 25-of-27 in free throws in this win.

“Obviously against Illinois we missed a lot down the stretch,” Keegan Murray said. “We missed a lot in the second half of that game and we knew that that was kind of a learning experience for us and I feel like a lot of our guys stepped up to the plate today and made free throws when we needed them.”

March is starting to feel like the Hawkeyes are going to be around for a while.

Murray is OK with that.

“We know what we're capable of, and we've had these goals and aspirations early on in the season,” he said. “And we knew that we were going to be a good team. We knew that we had to be playing our best basketball at this point in the season.”