Iowa outscored Notre Dame in an entertaining affair in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge in Iowa City downing the Fighting Irish 98-93. It concluded a grueling stretch for the Hawkeyes who had trouble getting back from their tournament in the Bahamas. “I just told our guys, I am so proud of them. We played 4 games in 6 nights, we had the absolute worst travel experience in 31 years that I’ve ever been involved with. It was absolutely disgraceful. Not one guy, not one player on this team complained about what went wrong,” Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said on his postgame show.
McCaffery says Notre Dame is a tough team to play against. The Hawkeyes shot a sizzling 57 percent for the game but had trouble guarding Notre Dame as he says they have 4 players who can make threes and go off the dribble along with a center who can play with his back to the basket. McCaffery says it was hard to know what defense to play and they decided they had to outscore them, “and thankfully we did.”
The Fighting Irish erased a nine point halftime deficit but Iowa senior Devyn Marble helped the Hawks take control by scoring 13 consecutive points. McCaffery says Marble settles the team down as he says they “were sideways” to start the second half and gave up their big lead. He says Marble took control and got things going.
Aaron White led four Hawks in double figures with 20 points. Marble finished with 17 points as did Jarod Uthoff as Iowa improves to 8-1.