Though many fans of the Iowa Hawkeyes were in attendance Thursday night, the most famous of the faithful: Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore were not at Welsh-Ryan Arena to see their Hawks drop yet another college basketball game; this time to the Northwestern Wildcats.
Although it was much less closer than the first meeting. The Cats shot the lights out to an almost historical level on January 12th in Iowa City, winning 90-71 in a game that was even more lopsided than it sounds.
However, the change of venue from road to home ended up in a -16 point swing. Usually, the differential in that situation goes completely the opposite.
“It wasn’t as fluid as I would have liked, or the team would have liked but we got it done,” NU Coach Bill Carmody said.
By Paul M. Banks
“When you’re down 20 against a team like Northwestern, it’s like being down 40. We were down 13 and at that point we were dangerously close to being blown out,” Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery said.
NU outshot the Hawkeyes by just one percentage point from behind the arc, but they also took 16 more long range attempts than the visitors.
“We’re a good three-point shooting team, sort of an aberration against Penn State, when we only made two. You don’t have to be on fire, but if you take a lot of threes, you have to make 30% otherwise you’re going to struggle,” Carmody said.
Junior Center Luka Murkovic joined the long range bombing campaign knocking down both his attempts, and giving the crowd yet another one of his extremely-showboatish gestures that he’s become accustomed to doing. This one was a double-kiss-blowing-and-sky-point.
Mirkovic talked about his long range shooting stroke.
“I just try to work on that a lot help my teammates space the floor, and I’ve been working really hard on my shot. I was pretty confident in it.”
Paul M. Banks is CEO of The Sports Bank.net. He is also a regular contributor to the Tribune’s Chicago Now network, Walter Football.com, Yardbarker Network, and Fox Sports.com
He does a weekly radio segment on Chicagoland Sports Radio.com and Cleveland.com
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