Iowa City, Iowa — It came down to which team could perform a little less poorly than the other. And on Saturday night, Iowa was that team. In the lowest scoring game of MSU men’s basketball head coach Tom Izzo’s career, the Spartans were upset by the Iowa Hawkeyes, 43-36, at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. When the buzzer hit 00.0, the Hawks Nest, Iowa’s student section, stormed the floor as “Overrated” echoed off the arena walls.
“I am very disappointed,” Izzo said. “I thought that was one of the worst overall games maybe since I’ve been head coach.”
No. 6 MSU (14-2 overall, 2-1 Big Ten) finished the game with more turnovers (18) than field goals (16) and only attempted four free throws the entire game — compared to Iowa’s (8-9, 1-3) 29 attempts.
“It was a total breakdown by just about every player on our team,” Izzo said. “That doesn’t happen very often, and it won’t happen again.”
The loss is the Spartans’ first since Nov. 20 against the then-No. 2 UCLA Bruins — snapping an 11-game winning streak since that day in Kansas City. While MSU shot a season-low 30.8 percent from the floor, Iowa shot even more poorly, at 27.5 percent. Yet, Iowa made buckets when they were most needed — at the end of the game.
Sophomore forward Raymar Morgan and senior guard Drew Neitzel led MSU with 10 points a piece — yet no one could find an answer for Iowa’s Tony Freeman, who torched the Spartans with a game-high 22 points.
“He did a great job,” said Todd Lickliter, first-year Hawkeyes head coach. “He was so poised, and he made big shots.”
MSU lost the lead with 2:45 to play in the first half and never regained it. The Spartans kept it within a couple points the entire second half, but squandered multiple opportunities.
With 1:12 to play in the game, Iowa led by two points until Freeman stuck a dagger in the Spartans’ side by burying a 3-pointer — extending the lead to five.
MSU couldn’t find any type of flow in the first 39 minutes, and they didn’t miraculously gain any late in the game, either.
“That three that (Freeman) hit was a big one,” Neitzel said. “Shots weren’t falling for us tonight. You just got to give Iowa credit. They were fired up and did what they needed to do to win.”
In the first 10 minutes of the game, the Spartans jumped out to a 13-5 lead, with six points coming from Morgan, the team’s scoring leader.
The next 10 minutes took a turn to the dark side for Izzo’s squad as MSU scored just five more points before heading into the locker room with 10 turnovers, a 30.8 percent field-goal performance and an eight-minute scoring drought.
Iowa came to life, finishing the first half on a 15-5 run — thanks to Freeman and his 13 points, giving his team a 20-18 lead at the break.
“We’ve watched everybody tell us how good our team is, and I think we got a little full of ourselves,” Izzo said. “They outplayed us and deserved to win.”
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