Hawkeyes can't back up their lofty ranking, suffer humbling loss to Indiana

IOWA CITY, Ia. — If it’s true, as Joe Wieskamp suggested Thursday, that the Iowa men’s basketball team started to believe in the hype surrounding its No. 4 ranking this week, that won’t be a distraction now.

The Hawkeyes were clunky on offense, lax on defense and planted firmly on their heels in an 81-69 loss to Indiana at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. That snapped a five-game winning streak.

Did it also snap Iowa back to attention?

That’s the hope of Wieskamp, Iowa’s junior small forward, who had 16 points, 12 rebounds and perhaps the quote of the night.

“There’s a lot of buzz around our team and people are telling us how good we are,” Wieskamp said. “But at the end of the day, we have to go out there and prove it.”

At the end of this day, Iowa found itself with a 12-3 record, a 6-2 mark in the Big Ten Conference and eight days of introspection ahead. And, perhaps some better effort in practices.

Coach Fran McCaffery, star center Luka Garza and Wieskamp all hinted in postgame remarks to reporters that there was an intensity missing in this week’s practices after a blowout win at Northwestern on Sunday. If so, it sure showed up Thursday when the lights came on. Indiana was happy to turn them back off, ripping off a 23-3 run in the second half and holding Iowa without a field goal for more than 11 minutes to humble the host team.

“We’ve got to lock in at practice, to focus leading up to these games,” Wieskamp said.

“We’ve just got to look in the mirror, ask yourself: Did you give everything you had during this game? If not, you’ve got to find ways in which you can learn and improve from it, and that’s starting with practice."

Leistikow:Luka Garza vows that Hawkeyes won't play like that again

Garza scored 28 points to lead the Hawkeyes, but got little help in the second half.

“We became a little too reliant on Luka,” McCaffery said.

Garza may be the best college player in the nation, but he can’t carry a team to victory against a Big Ten opponent.

Indiana is 9-6 overall and 4-4 in Big Ten play after its best win of the season. The Hoosiers made 15 of 25 field goals (60%) and 16 of 25 free throws in the second half en route to 50 points, a total Iowa simply can’t allow.

That’s why Wieskamp thought it was Iowa’s defense that was actually the bigger issue Thursday.

“I thought there was areas in which we had multiple breakdowns,” he said. “Our man wasn’t good. When we went to the zone, they were destroying it. They were killing us in the paint and then kicking it out for 3s as well.”

Indiana was the league’s least-prolific 3-point shooting team entering play, averaging just 6.1 makes per game. The Hoosiers went 8-for-17 against Iowa.

More:What we learned from humbling Iowa loss

Fredrick hobbled, Bohannon historically off-target, Wieskamp pays

Iowa, meanwhile, managed to make only 5 of 23 from the 3-point arc. Wieskamp made three of those in the first half, at which point the Hawkeyes led 37-31.

But there were troubling signs for Iowa’s best-in-the-nation offense from the start against Indiana.

Hawkeye shooting guard CJ Fredrick, who suffered a lower-leg injury late in the Northwestern win, was in the lineup but clearly not game-ready. He played 13 minutes, missed both of his shots and hobbled to the bench, not to return.

“It seemed like it was going to be OK, but he was not himself,” McCaffery said.

The good news for Iowa is that Fredrick will get a week to heal before a Jan. 29 showdown at Illinois.

The bad news was how the team looked without him. Last year, the Hawkeyes shot 4-for-33 from the 3-point arc in a stunning loss at Nebraska. That was a game Fredrick also missed with an injury.

But Fredrick’s absence didn’t explain everything that went wrong Thursday. Iowa senior point guard Jordan Bohannon, whose 323 3-pointers are the most in program history, had a night to forget, missing all eight of his attempts from the arc. It was the worst shooting performance of his 127-game Hawkeye career.

That meant Indiana was able to pay much more attention to Garza and Wieskamp, who managed only one point in the second half. Indiana had a defender in Wieskamp’s face as soon as he caught the ball, and another waiting in the gap if he tried to drive. They hounded him on cuts as he struggled to find open space that was never there.

“CJ’s definitely a huge loss,” Wieskamp said. “He brings such a presence when he’s on the floor. Just a guy that’s such a good shooter and a great playmaker. He’s looking for guys. I think when he was out, it kind of allowed guys to sag in more, be in the gaps, because they weren’t worried about our 3-point shooting as much because he’s such a knockdown shooter.

“For Jordan, he’s got to keep shooting those shots. We know that he’s such a great shooter. And we have all the confidence in the world that he’s going to knock those down.”

That’s the lesson for Wieskamp and the team. Last year’s Nebraska performance proved to be an outlier for Iowa. It’s certainly possible that Thursday’s will be for this year’s team as well. Fredrick will return. Bohannon will never again go 0-for-8 from 3-point range.

If Hawkeyes are a measuring stick, they must react accordingly

McCaffery said his Hawkeyes need “to understand a little bit better what this league is and the quality of the teams that are coming in here that we're going to face.”

That is another hint that perhaps Iowa was feeling a little too good about itself. But it’s also an important reminder for a team unaccustomed to such lofty rankings that opponents focus on that No. 4 as well.

Robbie Hummel, who broadcast Thursday’s game for a national radio audience, called it the most important win of Archie Miller’s four-year career as Indiana coach. Other media members were suggesting it was the best victory any Big Ten team has had this season.

That shows that opponents are using the Hawkeyes as a measuring stick this season. That’s a sign of respect, which Iowa must realize it has earned and now must back up. Every night.

“It was a little surprising because we had been up for the challenge pretty much in every other game,” McCaffery said of his team being badly outplayed by Indiana.

“We needed to be sharper. We needed to be better. We needed to execute better than we did. And if you don't, you're going to get beat in this league.”

This next week of practices should be very telling for the Hawkeyes, who are heading to Champaign to renew a feud with an Illini team that would love to knock them further down the rankings.

Buckle up.

Mark Emmert covers the Iowa Hawkeyes for the Register. Reach him at memmert@registermedia.com or 319-339-7367. Follow him on Twitter at @MarkEmmert.