Unfortunately, I didn't see the first half, which seems to be the best portion of this game. From the opening of the 2nd half, I had frustration in watching due the officials controlling everything. I liked watching Iowa play some defense, particularly Marble and shoot pretty well. The step back shot by Oglesby was sweet. As I listened to the commentators and not seeing 1st half stats, I was absolutely befuddled as to why Iowa was losing by 8 points. Then they showed the FT's and while watching it all made sense.
Iowa was shooting over 50% and losing, while UNI wasn't shooting that well, yeah they were hitting some three's, but not enough to be winning. It is demoralizing watching a team playing the best game I have seen in recent memory, but is losing...so what was the X-Factor? It goes without saying.
The initial T that Fran got was not a problem; the other two did hurt, however, whatever happened, the mindset of the team changed. The team started shooting the next decent look and couldn't make a shot. As sweet as Oglesby shot was on the step back; he looked like a freshman when he took the deep three after the 8 FT's. Instead of continuing to attack the basket, they settled for the same poor looks that they got when they have lost.
Until Iowa gets a full roster of talented players, this is going to happen, adversity does reveal how fragile the mental toughness of this team is. After everything went down and 3T's later, they were still down by just 8 points. Not an insurmountable lead, the only thing that I wish would have happened was Iowa take a timeout after the 8th FT. Bring everyone back down to Earth and get out of what just happened, even though there were all those breaks, there wasn't a break because actions were still taking place. I have no issues with the T's, there is no time for a good one, but how a team responds is what matters, Iowa responded like they were scared. When all that happnes, teams that just come back and play like nothing happened come out of the situation and come back, Iowa didn't. The refs were quite the spectacle after the T's calling everything on Iowa even more; I like how Iowa got FT's when the game was 20pts and essentially over. I actually thought Gatens was going to get a T after one of the rediculous fouls he was called for.