Hawkeyes' Comeback Falls Short at Purdue

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The second-best scorer in the nation was in gray athletic gear, limping from a sore ankle.

One by one, it seemed, his teammates kept picking up fouls in the first half.

And rarely did a rebound come their way.

It was not going to be easy for Iowa heading into Friday’s Big Ten opener against No. 2 Purdue.

It became nearly impossible as nothing could go right for the Hawkeyes.

Yet, the 77-70 loss was a test of Iowa’s character. The Hawkeyes were down 19 in the second half, but furiously battled back to get within two points twice in the last three minutes before missing key shots to fall to a team that likely will be No. 1 in the national polls next week.

“We’ve got a lot of heart, man,” said forward Patrick McCaffery, who led the Hawkeyes with 15 points. “Everybody in the locker room has got heart. There are a lot of warriors in there with me.”

“I think we kept believing in each other, and kept executing,” coach Fran McCaffery said. “You want to always maintain an aggressive mindset, and that’s what we had.”

What the Hawkeyes did impressed Purdue coach Matt Painter.

“I thought Iowa played harder than us,” Painter said. “I thought Iowa was tougher than us.”

Iowa was without forward Keegan Murray, out with an ankle injury suffered in the second half of Monday’s win at Virginia. Murray was averaging 24.6 points per game, along with 8.9 rebounds, and that was a lot of production the Hawkeyes would have to make up.

“That’s a lot of shots, a lot of points, a lot of rebounds,” Patrick McCaffery said. “We’ve got to close that gap.”

But it was a combination of known players, and some unknowns, who would keep Iowa in this game.

Tony Perkins had 14 points and Kris Murray, Keegan’s brother, added 12. But there were the 16 minutes of Josh Ogundele’s coming-out party, when the sophomore center had seven points and five rebounds. Sophomore guard Ahron Ulis added seven points in his first true conference road test.

“We had a lot of different guys do a lot of things,” Patrick McCaffery said.

Perkins smiled and paused when asked what the Hawkeyes would take away from this.

He pointed to the little contributions that added up.

“Them coming in and producing and bringing energy taught our team we have a lot of ability to go far in this season,” Perkins said. “Show we’ve got heart.

“The main thing we were focused on was everybody coming in, and doing what you do. We’re trying to win this game.”

There was a sense all night that Purdue was about to go on a game-killing run, and it looked like the Boilermakers did that early in the second half.

Iowa got to within 44-36 with 16 ½ minutes left, but back-to-back 3-pointers from Eric Hunter Jr., and Trevion Williams pushed the Boilermakers’ lead to double digits. Later, an 11-1 run extended the margin to 63-44, and when Fran McCaffery called a timeout, the roundhouse that is Mackey Arena turned into a hothouse of swirling noise.

But Iowa held Purdue to just seven points over the next 6:46, and when Murray hit a 3-pointer from the top of the arc, the Hawkeyes were within 70-68.

They were down 74-70 and had three possessions in which they could have cut the lead again, but missed shots every time. The Boilermakers then closed out the game, but the Hawkeyes had made it scary for them.

“When they made their run, we knew we would come back with a run of our own,” Patrick McCaffery said. “Unfortunately we came up a little bit short, and that’s going to happen in this game sometimes.”

Iowa was searching for answers in a disjointed first half. The matchup of the nation’s two top scoring offenses — Iowa averaged 94 points coming in, Purdue averaged 92.4 — turned into a grind, a sign of just what this conference may look like again in the 20-game schedule slog.

The Hawkeyes had just 26 first-half points, their worst scoring half of the season.

And when the fouls began piling up in the first half, Fran McCaffery was left with few options.

Iowa was called for 16 first-half fouls, compared to just eight for the Boilermakers. Ogundele had three fouls, and Filip Rebraca, Jordan Bohannon, Joe Toussaint and Riley Mulvey each got two.

Purdue already had a size advantage even if Murray had played, but without him the Boilermakers gorged themselves with every carom, finishing the game with a 42-30 rebounding edge.

Iowa’s defense held Purdue to 42 percent shooting, and the Boilermakers committed 17 turnovers, bothered by the Hawkeyes’ pressure defense.

“I thought guys were locked in,” Fran McCaffery said. “Aggressive, physical.”

The Hawkeyes (7-1) left with their first loss of the season, a cut that didn’t hurt that much.

“We knew we were capable of that,” Patrick McCaffery said. “We knew, watching film, we were capable of competing with anybody in the country. That’s the mindset we had.

“With the people we have in the locker room, I’ll go to war with them every day.”

He then went through the entire roster.

“I’m going to war with all of them,” Patrick McCaffery said.