Iowa's defense left in the dust by crisp Oregon offense in NCAA Tournament loss

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — The beginning of the end for the Iowa men’s basketball team came late in the first half Monday, when an unrelenting Oregon quintet kept shredding its defense to score 10 consecutive exclamation points.

There was a second half still to be played at Bankers Life Fieldhouse, but there were no Hawkeye second-stringers up to the challenge of quieting the Ducks. With a number of veteran Iowa starters incapable of making a dent in Oregon's attack, it was becoming clear there was no help to be found.  

Iowa lost, again, in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, 95-80. It was a bitter end for a team that entered this unique season aiming for a championship only to finish five steps short because its players always seemed one step behind their opponents Monday. The Hawkeyes, likely to lose their top three scorers off this team, headed home with a 22-9 record.

“They pushed the pace really fast and made it hard for us to be able to get back and rotate and do all the things we needed to do to be able to get stops consistently throughout the game,” Iowa center Luka Garza said.

“They had a really good game plan, and they tried to move the ball as much as they could. … Against a team like that, you've got to be able to get your defense back and set in the transition game, and they beat us in the transition game.”

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Iowa was a No. 2 seed in this tournament for the first time since 1987, dispatching Grand Canyon 86-74 Saturday before running into an Oregon team that was more than its match. The Ducks start five upperclassmen, all of them 6-foot-5 or 6-6. They are versatile, athletic and punishing. And exactly the type of team that the slower Hawkeyes struggle to contain.

On Iowa's perimeter, only Iowa junior Joe Wieskamp seemed built to handle the challenge. At 6-6, he was essentially facing five versions of himself.

“They’ve got a lot of long, athletic guards that are really good shooters but who can also rip and drive. When they’re driving and kicking and they’re hitting shots, it’s really tough to defend,” Wieskamp said. “I think we needed to do a better job of defending their drives because it led to open 3s. But it’s not one person’s fault. We, as a team, defensively didn’t do a great job.”

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Hawkeye starting guards Jordan Bohannon (6-1), CJ Fredrick (6-3) and Connor McCaffery (6-5) had the experience, but not the lateral quickness, to hang with Oregon.

Iowa coach Fran McCaffery revealed after the game that his oldest son, Connor, has torn labrums in both hips and will need a pair of surgeries to correct that. Fredrick was hampered by plantar fasciitis in his right foot for the final two months of the season. Fran McCaffery pulled both from the game early in the second half and didn’t return to them.

McCaffery’s more athletic players — sophomore guard Joe Toussaint (6-foot), freshman guard Tony Perkins (6-4) and freshmen forwards Keegan Murray (6-8) and Patrick McCaffery (6-9) — were better-equipped to stay in front of the hard-driving Ducks. But their inexperience showed too often as they struggled to stay in position.

The result was an Oregon offensive explosion. The Ducks simply couldn’t wait to attack what they quickly realized was a flawed Hawkeye defense. They outscored Iowa 18-4 to close out the first half, getting the points on four open 3-pointers, a dunk and two free throws when fouled attempting a 3-pointer. Mixed in was the most dispiriting sequence of all for Iowa, when Oregon rebounded three of its own misses and finally converted on the fourth try.

It was a glaring mixture of Oregon precision and Iowa indecision. Iowa trailed 56-46 at halftime.

“It's a hard team to cover in so many different ways. They stretch your defense,” Fran McCaffery said. “We tried man, zone, we tried pressing them; had moderate success with all three, not enough in any one.”

That was putting it mildly. Oregon’s starters combined to score 89 points on 59% shooting.

It had seemed inevitable that, whenever Iowa’s season came to an abrupt end, it would be because its defense was exposed. The Hawkeye offense ranks second in the nation in Ken Pomeroy’s advanced analytics, but the defense fell to 73rd in that metric after Monday’s loss.

Garza scored 36 points as the Ducks couldn’t match up with him inside. That tied an Iowa record for an NCAA Tournament game (matched by Bill Logan vs. Temple on this same date in 1956). Wieskamp scored 17 points and tied his career-high with five assists. Patrick McCaffery, in the most promising performance of his young career, had 10 points and showed the ability to help protect the rim during his 20 minutes.

Seventh-seeded Oregon (21-6) advanced to the second round against Iowa without playing a game. First-round opponent VCU had three positive tests for COVID-19 and had to forfeit Saturday’s contest. The Ducks will await the winner of Monday's late Kansas-USC game in the Sweet 16.

Iowa, meanwhile, fell short of that round for an 11th time in its past 12 tries, a searing disappointment to the three stars of this team who had made that — and much more — a stated goal throughout a trying winter spent in isolation.

Bohannon, Garza and Wieskamp are the highest-scoring trio of Hawkeye men’s basketball players ever with 5,227 points. But they also have just two NCAA Tournament wins to show for their stay in Iowa City together. The Hawkeyes beat Cincinnati in the opening round in 2019. Last year’s tournament was scrapped because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This year’s was a wrap almost before it started for Iowa.

Bohannon, a fifth-year senior who had surgeries on both hips during his career, has said he will not be back for a sixth. He was held without a point Monday.

Garza, a two-time all-American, nearly pursued a professional career last spring. He definitely will now and is an NBA Draft hopeful.

Wieskamp, a junior, also has an NBA future. He, too, is seen as a likely draft pick, probably in the second round. He didn’t want to address his future immediately after Monday’s game, a show of respect for his teammates who had just endured a painful loss, but it seems doubtful that he will keep a pro career on pause.

“We had big goals at the beginning of the season and we had hoped to go farther. We knew that we had the guys in the locker room that were capable of doing that,” Wieskamp said of a season that saw the Hawkeyes ranked in the top 15 throughout.

“So to come up short just stinks for everyone.”

Actually, against Oregon, Iowa didn’t come up short. It came up slow.

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.