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Huskers can't keep up with No. 19 Iowa in 77-66 defeat

Nebraska was called for 26 fouls that resulted in 32 free throw attempts for Iowa in a 77-66 loss to the No. 19 Hawkeyes on Tuesday night.
Nebraska was called for 26 fouls that resulted in 32 free throw attempts for Iowa in a 77-66 loss to the No. 19 Hawkeyes on Tuesday night.

FINAL BOX SCORE

IOWA CITY, Iowa - After the first five minutes of action, it appeared as if Nebraska was ready to give No. 19 Iowa all it could handle on Tuesday night.

By the end of the first half, any of those notions had all but completely flown out the window.

The Huskers jumped out to a 10-point lead to open its first Big Ten Conference road game of the season, but that hot start quickly cooled off into yet another extended cold streak that allowed the Hawkeyes to take a nine-point lead into halftime and never look back in a 77-66 victory.

Senior forward Jarrod Uthoff - who came in as the Big Ten’s second-leading scorer at 18.1 points per game - carried Iowa all night long, finishing with a game-high 25 points while senior guard Mike Gesell added 22 points and 10 assists to lead the Hawkeyes to a 12-3 start to the season and 3-0 mark in the conference.

Junior guard Tai Webster led NU with 22 points, but it couldn’t come up with enough defensive stops when it mattered the most to pull off the rally. As a result, the Huskers dropped to 8-8 on the year and 0-3 in league play.

"We just kind of took our foot off the throttle a little bit," Webster said. "We stopped being aggressive and were just playing to be out there. We weren't really attacking like we were in the first half when we were scoring. We can't afford to have lulls like that."

Nebraska actually came out rolling to open the game, as pair of 3-pointers by seniors Shavon Shields and Benny Parker helped the Huskers jump out to a 10-0 lead before Iowa finally made its first basket five minutes later.

That hot start didn’t last much longer, though, as the Hawkeyes came back with an 11-2 run of their own - seven of which coming from Uthoff - and eventually took their first lead of the night at 19-17 on a 3-pointer by junior guard Peter Jok with 9:49 left in the half.

A trey by freshman Jack McVeigh with 7:33 remaining put Nebraska back up 22-19, but the Huskers’ offense would go quiet for the remainder of the half. Iowa ended up closing on a 12-0 run to go into halftime up 31-22, as NU missed its final 12 field goal attempts during its seven-plus-minute scoring drought.

"That's just what we were talking about in the locker room with the coaches, at the end of the first half where we don't score for seven and a half minutes," Miles said. "We had open looks, and I think we missed about five of them. That's just too big of a dry spell. I thought Iowa was flat early, and who wouldn't be with the week they had - beating No.1 Michigan State and No. 14 Purdue). Then they started heating up later in the half and we couldn't build a lead. So consequently we go down nine, and we shouldn't have been down nine with all those open looks."

Iowa would go on to extend that lead to as many as 16 points in the second half, and it seemed as if the Nebraska was on its way to a blowout. But two 3-pointers by junior Andrew White and a layup by Webster cut the deficit to 52-44 with 10:16 remaining, and it briefly looked like the Huskers had a comeback in the works.

That would be as close as NU would get, though, as a 3 by Uthoff quickly got the Hawkeyes back on track and helped push the lead back up to 12 just minutes later.

Shields ended the night with 13 points, but he and Webster were the only Huskers to score in double figures. Iowa would end up making 16 of its 22 free throws in the second half and made one clutch shot after another down the stretch to keep the Nebraska at bay.

"(Webster) has been a lot better for us this year," Miles said. "We need some of those other guys to contribute. We don’t have enough contributors right now.”

While many of Iowa’s free throw attempts came as a result of Nebraska fouling late in the game to preserve the clock, the biggest discrepancy on the final box score was the Hawkeyes going 24-of-32 from the line to the Huskers’ 9-of-16. Four of NU’s five starters picked up at least four fouls in the loss.

The Huskers will return to action on Saturday when they travel to take on Rutgers (6-9, 0-2) for a 5 p.m. CT tip on ESPNU.

Around the rim

***Webster’s 22 points were a career high, bettering his 21 points against Cincinnati. It was also his second 20-point game of the year and eighth double-figure effort in NU’s last 13 games.

***With the loss, Nebraska falls to 0-4 against ranked opponents this season.

***White was held to nine points, the first time in 10 games he was held out of double figures.

***Shields became the eighth Husker to score 1300 career points and grab 600 career rebounds.

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