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With 5:44 left to play in the game, Iowa’s Payton Sandfort knocked down a mid-range jumper to put the Hawkeyes up 61-54. The final score was 69-67 Maryland — Iowa didn’t make a single field goal from that point forward.
The offense went stagnant. Four turnovers, four missed field goals — and they couldn’t force stops defensively. Maryland scored 15 — nine of them coming from their star player Jahmir Young. A game that felt in control quickly turned into the most deflating loss of the season.
“I would say the movement,” Tony Perkins said when asked what caused the offense drought. “We started getting stagnant. At the beginning of the game, we have great movement. When it gets down to crunch time, we just stay still.”
“I’ve been disappearing in big moments,” Payton Sandfort said. “That’s something I want to be a lot better at. I’m working hard to get open and they key in late. Tony made some big-time plays down the stretch and I’ve got to help my brother out.”
While the end of the game wasn’t pretty, the first 35 minutes weren’t the best either. Iowa knocked down a total of three 3-pointers and shot a measly 42% from the floor.
“You’ve got to do a couple things — you have to be honest with them,” head coach Fran McCaffery said postgame. “You’ve got to understand — we did some things that are just unacceptable. I’ll take the blame for that.”
“You just can’t turn the ball over and then let them score in three seconds. They know that, they feel bad about it.”
Iowa now slips to 3-5 in the Big Ten. The good news for them is that the conference is cluttered with mid-level teams and they’re just two games out of the No. 3 slot in the conference. Next up is a road matchup with Michigan on Saturday.