The University of Iowa men’s basketball team lost to No. 13 Purdue, 78-57, on Saturday at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. The defeat marked only the second home loss for the Hawkeyes this season, bringing their record to 18-7 overall and 8-6 in conference play.
Purdue established an early lead as Iowa struggled offensively, making just two of its first 13 shots and missing all seven attempts from three-point range to start the game. With six minutes left in the first half, Iowa trailed by 15 points. The Hawkeyes managed to narrow the gap to nine before Purdue extended its lead again, going into halftime ahead 36-25.
Senior Bennett Stirtz and freshman Trevin Jirak were responsible for more than half of Iowa’s first-half points. Stirtz led all Hawkeyes with 19 points and five rebounds, while Jirak contributed six points during his first significant playing time since December.
Iowa finished the game shooting 37.7 percent from the field—its lowest mark of the season—and made just six of 22 attempts from beyond the arc. The team converted on 11-of-17 free throws but was outrebounded by Purdue, 38-30.
After halftime, Purdue increased its advantage with an early run and led by as many as 27 points in the second half. Iowa could not close the deficit below 16 points for the remainder of the game.
Head coach Ben McCollum commented on both his team’s performance and Purdue’s improvement: “It felt like we connected to the community. It was awesome that they showed up. We just weren’t great. But [Purdue] was really good too. I thought they were pretty tuned up, I thought they got shockingly better after they loss to Indiana. They changed some things. They are a completely different team than we played the first time. I told our guys, they have scars, that was the team, Braden and Fletcher, were on that team that got beat in the first round [in the NCAA Tournament]. They got scars from that and that makes them tougher.
They are a tough team, and I thought they played great. I didn’t think we played great, I didn’t think we scored it great; I thought that hurt our defense a shocking amount. I thought they were in transition a lot. I thought we had a good game plan we just couldn’t set our defense because they were in transition so much and then they got too many offensive rebounds to start and I thought that really hurt us as well.”
Despite committing only six turnovers—marking their fifth straight game with single-digit turnovers—the Hawkeyes could not overcome Purdue’s strong play or their own shooting difficulties.
Saturday’s contest drew a sellout crowd of nearly 15,000 fans for what was noted as the first sellout under Coach McCollum.
Iowa will next face No. 7/8 Nebraska at home on Tuesday night at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
