By Madeleine Stroth
IOWA CITY, IA— The Iowa men’s basketball team beat No. 13 Ranked Michigan Saturday afternoon, 75-59. The Hawkeyes gave up the lead only once to the Wolverines, but found themselves with a comfortable 10-point cushion for a majority of the second half.
The Wolverine’s pulled starting guard, Trey Burke, early in the first after he quickly piled up two fouls, but head coach John Beilein does not attribute Burke’s absence from the court to the teams’ lack-luster performance. “We took a couple hope threes and threw a couple hope passes that led to the eight turnovers in the first half, they weren’t because we didn’t have our point guard,” said Beilein, “We couldn’t string anything together.”
Four Hawkeyes ended the game in double digits, Aaron White with 12, Zach McCabe with 11, Roy Devyn Marble with 13, and Matt Gatens with 19 points. Despite McCabe’s performance on the board, head coach Fran McCafferey did not start McCabe or Eric May in the second. “They didn’t play well up there. They didn’t. You don’t have to tell them. They know.”
But Gatens was the real life of the game, bringing Carver to their feet multiple times with four of the Hawkeyes five 3-pointers of the day. McCafferey was very pleased with the senior, saying of Gatens’ game, “just an incredibly complete game with phenomenal effort focusing concentration and I’m really proud of him.” Gatens did struggle offensively at the start, missing eight attempted FG, but kept faith in his shot, “I was always told, shoot to get hot, to stay hot.”
The Hawkeyes will take on the Boilermakers at Purdue on Tuesday at 7:00pm. McCabe says that the Hawks need to stay hungry, “we can’t be satisfied with just beating a ranked team, we need to know that we’re experienced and we can beat teams like [Michigan] every night.”
Photo credit: Matt Holst, hawkcentral.com
