Tony Perkins led five Iowa players in double figures with 24 points and Connor McCaffery handed out a career-high 13 assists without committing a turnover as Iowa rolled to a 92-75 Big Ten victory over Ohio State on Thursday night in Iowa City.
Kris Murray added 20 points and Ahron Ulis, Filip Rebraca and Payton Sandfort also hit double figures for the Hawkeyes (17-9, 9-6 Big Ten), who shot 56.9 percent from the field while seizing a share of third place in the conference alongside Maryland and Indiana.
Sean McNeil came off the bench and hit all seven of his shots to score a team-high 20 points for Ohio State (11-15, 3-12), which lost for the 12th time in 13 games despite shooting 57.1 percent from the field and hitting all 11 of their free throws.
The Buckeyes’ seven-game losing streak is the school’s longest since the 1997-98 squad dropped 17 in a row.
The Hawkeyes canned nine of their first 12 shots to build a 19-12 lead, prompting the Buckeyes to call a timeout at the 13:44 mark. McNeil responded by drilling a pair of 3-pointers and Justice Sueing drove for a layup to give the Buckeyes a 20-19 edge.
While both teams cooled off, they traded the lead for the 11th time when Brice Sensabaugh (16 points) drilled a 3-pointer to give Ohio State a 36-35 edge with 2:56 left in the half. Iowa replied with 4 straight 3-pointers — by McCaffery, Sandfort, Murray and Perkins — to forge a 47-36 lead at the break.
Iowa then started the second half even hotter than the first to blow the game open. The Hawkeyes drilled seven shots in a row — capped by Murray’s 3-point swish from the corner in front of the Iowa bench — to boost the margin to 63-47 with 15:03 to play.
The spell was broken briefly when Perkins missed a challenged breakaway dunk, but McCaffery pushed the game out of reach with four points and four assists in a four-minute stretch. He made like a quarterback and rifled a left-handed bomb to Murray for a breakaway dunk that pushed Iowa’s lead to 82-55 with 7:33 to go.
Meanwhile, Ohio State center Zed Key reinjured his left shoulder multiple times during the second half, headed to the locker room with 15:46 to play and did not return. The Buckeyes’ No. 3 scorer (11.1 ppg) finished with four points in 13 minutes.
–Field Level Media
