Illinois coach Brad Underwood called Iowa “an NCAA worthy” team after the Illini beat the Hawkeyes 73-61 in the regular-season finale at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
If only it were that easy.
The Hawkeyes (18-13 overall, 10-10 Big Ten) have some work to do this week at the Big Ten Tournament in Minneapolis if they want to get selected into the 68-team NCAA field.
The simple way, if you can call it that, for Iowa to get into the NCAA tournament is just win the conference tournament and the automatic bid that goes with it, like the Hawkeyes did in 2022, winning four games in four days. Iowa will be the seventh seed, facing 10th seed Ohio State on Thursday.
The other way is just stay around long enough during the weekend to get the NCAA selection committee to have a better opinion of your resumé.
Either way, there is a lot ahead of the Hawkeyes this weekend.
“I think we have work to do, but I appreciate Brad,” Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said. “And I think he’s right, I think we are one of the better teams. We’ve got some really good wins in a very difficult league, we’ve got some good wins out of conference.
“It’s not something you want to leave to chance. You want to do some more damage this weekend, if we can.”
A win over the 12th-ranked Illini (23-8, 14-6) would have helped, but Illinois took care of that with a 17-2 run to open the game during a stretch in which the Hawkeyes missed 13 of their first 14 shots. Illinois led by as much as 21 points in the first half before Iowa went on its own run, a 14-2 burst that helped the Hawkeyes get to within 39-29 at halftime.
“We kept fighting,” McCaffery said. “We had good shots. It wasn't like I was going to criticize anybody for the shots we were taking. I thought we were taking good shots, I thought we were moving the ball. It was just frustrating for everybody.”
“Those were shots we usually make,” guard Payton Sandfort said of the poor start. “Some of those shots were halfway down, and that didn’t help. But we didn’t get stops, and they were really killing us in transition.”
Iowa was beaten 50-33 in rebounding, and the Hawkeyes had just three offensive rebounds the entire game.
“If we’re not getting stops, we had least better get offensive rebounds,” Sandfort said.
The Hawkeyes did challenge the Illini in the second half. They climbed to within 51-47 with 11:15 to play, then Illinois scored six points in 70 seconds to get the lead back into double digits.
Iowa did trim the lead to six, but couldn’t get closer.
Sandfort led Iowa with 23 points, with 19 coming in the second half. Josh Dix added 13 points.
But the Hawkeyes didn’t get much scoring elsewhere. Tony Perkins had just two points on 1-of-10 shooting. Ben Krikke had just two points, both coming from free throws, and took just two shots in the game.
Iowa was held to 35.4 percent shooting for the game.
“They're as explosive as heck,” Underwood said. “You never feel comfortable, even with an 18 or 20-point lead. I thought we had some bite to us today.”
The Hawkeyes hope to have some bite this weekend, because there are few opportunities left to add to their postseason resume.
“It’s just kind of doing what we’ve been doing,” Sandfort said. “Sticking with it, staying positive, be ready to go. We have some great opportunities coming up this week. You can’t ever get too high or too low, and I think we’ve done a good job of that to this point.”
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