Hawkeyes pick up win #20, win fourth straight game
KCJJ Staff
02/17/19
After questioning how the #21 Iowa men’s basketball team could top its last game – a win on a buzzer beating three – they found a pretty good answer – another buzzer-beater. On the road. On a banked-in three-pointer from the corner. From a true freshman.
“We’re able to persevere,” freshman Joe Wieskamp, who hit the game-winner on Saturday, said of the team’s recent run of closing out late wins. “We know that teams are going to make runs at us but we just gotta stay calm, keeping fighting, and keep attacking.”
Wieskamp told HawkeyeSports.com he was “in the right place at the right time” on Saturday night when he gathered the ball off a tip-pass from Nicholas Baer off the inbounds and slid the ball off the backboard from an awkward angle.
That saved the Hawkeyes, who appeared to be beaten after Rutgers hit a three with only three seconds on the clock to take a one-point lead.
Head coach Fran McCaffery admits that wasn’t exactly how it was drawn up.
“You have to make sure you have the right people on the floor and they understand the framework of what we’re trying to do,” McCaffery said. “Contrary to what a lot of people think we diagram these things and it goes to perfection – it never goes to perfection. There are multiple options in a situation like that and you hope one of them works.”
The Hawkeyes have now won four straight games, picking up their 20th win of the season, improving to 20-5 overall and 9-5 in the Big Ten. It also keeps their slim conference title hopes alive, sitting two-and-a-half games behind Michigan.
Iowa returns to Carver-Hawkeye Arena on Tuesday, hosting #24 Maryland at 7 p.m.
