Bennett Stirtz’s cold stretch was continuing into the second half of Iowa’s Big Ten Tournament opener on March 11 in Chicago.
The Hawkeyes’ ironman senior had opened 2-for-10 from the floor against 17th-seeded Maryland, a statistic that was indicative of a concerning start for the Hawkeyes, who were lacking the urgency needed to lock up their status for the NCAA Tournament.
And then … an acrobatic, unlikely shot seemed to relieve any pent-up pressure that was corked on top of Stirtz and the Hawkeyes.
Stirtz’s wild 3-pointer highlighted a 21-0 second-half run from the ninth-seeded Hawkeyes as they overtook Maryland for a 75-64 win, earning a round-of-12 game against No. 8 seed Ohio State at 11 a.m. Thursday, March 12 at United Center.
With Iowa leading, 36-34, five minutes into the second half, Stirtz collected an off-balance pass from Tavion Banks with 3 seconds left on the shot clock. He pump-faked, got Solomon Washington to jump, then ducked under the Terrapin who had been hounding him all day. Stirtz effectively shot-putted a 3-pointer from the left wing toward the basket.
Swish.
Why not?
“Of course that one had to go in and not any of my easier 3s,” Stirtz said. “I thought I got fouled. But it went in.”
Even the easy stuff had looked hard for Iowa to that point.
And now, the hard stuff was going down easy.
Stirtz followed his wild 3 with another more conventional 3 from the top of the key, and suddenly the lead was 42-34. A Banks 3-point play and Cooper Koch’s fourth of five 3-pointers helped balloon the lead to 51-34 with 11:42 remaining.
From there, the Hawkeyes capped off a 50-point second half and their first win in 14 days after losses by two points (at Penn State), three points (vs. No. 3 Michigan) and in overtime (at No. 10 Nebraska).
That was the narrative-forming win Iowa needed after the close-call losses to the Big Ten’s top two teams … not a third loss this season to the bottom-two teams in the conference, which it looked like could be brewing after Maryland jumped to a 21-10 lead.
To that point, Iowa looked almost uninterested in putting up a fight.
“We were an absolute fiasco to start the game,” Iowa coach Ben McCollum said on his postgame radio show. “I don’t know if it was the nerves or what it was, we just could not get ourselves going. Kind of in each other’s way, taking out-of-character shots.
“Hopefully next game we’ll not start so slow. … Because this time of year, you only have one chance.”
What McCollum didn’t say or acknowledge: This win was really big.
It takes any sliver of doubt about whether Iowa (21-11) will hear its name called when the NCAA Tournament brackets are announced on March 15. The Hawkeyes were generally pegged as a No. 9 seed in the NCAA Tournament, so this Quad 3 win shouldn’t change that. A Quad 3 loss might’ve brought uneasiness (or a trip to the First Four in Dayton) into the conversation.
Everything from here on out is a Quad 1 game, so no more so-called bad losses are possible. Iowa will be dancing in the NCAAs for the first time since 2023.
Fresh off a first-team all-Big Ten nod by the league’s media, Stirtz got off to a choppy start. He looked frustrated and tired in the first half.
McCollum even made an extremely rare move to bring Stirtz to the bench. The 6-foot-4 point guard sat from the 8:58 mark to the 7:29 mark, a stretch of 89 seconds that was statistically his most rest in any game since Feb. 14 vs. Purdue.
Stirtz had played 595 of a possible 605 minutes over Iowa’s previous 15 games. But with his shot struggling (2-for-7 to start, with his two makes coming on routine layups) and Stirtz already having one foul, McCollum went with some fresh blood after seeing his team fall behind Maryland, 18-10.
Stirtz returned with Iowa trailing, 21-12, so it was hardly an impactful rest either way. But Stirtz attempted only one shot the rest of the half and collected a pair of assists as Iowa closed to within 26-25 at the break.
With Stirtz’s passing unlocking teammates, Iowa’s offense looked almost unstoppable in the second half.
“We got to more ball-screens,” said Koch, who finished with a career-high 19 points in his postseason debut. “Once we got the ball moving and Solomon Washington off of Bennett — he was really a dog on Bennett — (that) allowed him to get downhill and free everybody else up.”
Stirtz finished with 17 points, six rebounds and eight assists. This was a needed performance after he was limited to 11 points in the overtime loss at Nebraska.
But the postseason has been good to Stirtz. Together, he and McCollum are 14-3 in conference and NCAA tournaments during their time at Northwest Missouri State (9-2), Drake (4-1) and now Iowa (1-0).
The Hawkeyes’ previous win before this was against next opponent Ohio State, a 74-57 win on Feb. 25. Thursday’s winner gets top seed Michigan at 11 a.m. Friday.
“The good thing is we just played Ohio State. So the scout’s pretty fresh in their mind,” McCollum said. “Obviously we’ll have to make some adjustments to what they do, and we will. … It’ll be a tough game.”
Hawkeyes columnist Chad Leistikow has served for 31 years with The Des Moines Register and USA TODAY Sports Network. Chad is the 2023 INA Iowa Sports Columnist of the Year and NSMA Co-Sportswriter of the Year in Iowa. Join Chad’s text-message group at HawkCentral.com/HawkeyesTexts. Follow @ChadLeistikow on X.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Iowa delivers postseason urgency after first-half ‘fiasco’ | Leistikow
Reporting by Chad Leistikow, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
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