Bulldogs answer every Hawkeyes effort

SEATTLE – After spending the first 20 minutes of Sunday’s NCAA tournament game against Gonzaga as chew toys for the Bulldogs, the Iowa Hawkeyes came out for the second half with some teeth of their own.

The seventh-seeded Hawkeyes executed their game plan. Their zone defense hustled the Bulldogs into seven second-half turnovers while the offense committed just four of its own. Forwards Aaron White and Jarrod Uthoff made their usual impact, combining to score 27 second-half points while shooting better than 50 percent from the field.

It was almost enough to cut into GU’s more-than-comfortable lead.

The Hawkeyes threw haymakers after halftime and the Bulldogs never flinched, responding to each challenge with stout defense or a timely shot to keep Iowa at bay.

Against a team that was too good to let another half pass without making a run, GU took everything Iowa had to offer and then came back with even more.

“We talked about that at halftime,” said coach Mark Few. “We also talked about just staying in absolute, full-on attack mode. We started the half 0-0 and we wanted to win the second half and we wanted to, again, just stay as aggressive with our defense and … the way we were attacking on offense.”

GU entered the second half with a 17-point lead and the Hawkeyes whittled it to 11 three times. At halftime, Iowa coach Fran McCaffery instructed his players to divide the remaining time into five distinct units and to focus on winning each four-minute segment.

“We made a run and in the first four minutes I think we outscored them by two or three,” Iowa forward Aaron Woodbury said. “That’s with some turnovers so it could have been even better.”

Guard Kevin Pangos was GU’s primary counterpuncher, scoring 10 points in the second half and only leaving the court for the final minute, with next week’s trip to the Sweet 16 well in hand.

The Hawkeyes opened the second half with a 6-2 run, so the Bulldogs, spurred by a Pangos 3-pointer, reeled off six consecutive points of their own. White, the No. 2 scorer in Iowa history, got hot for a stretch and the Hawkeyes pulled within 60-49. But GU came back with a 9-0 run.

The Bulldogs continually took their biggest leads whenever the Hawkeyes tried to turn the game into something other than a blowout.

“We felt if we could have gotten it to single digits, that might have been something that cooled them off as much as our defensive intensity,” McCaffery said. “It’s easy to shoot – when you’re up 15 it’s easy to make shots.”

The Bulldogs won the second half 41-39. It was a much more competitive period than the previous one, but clearing that hurdle hardly required a hop. GU had an easy perch to defend in the second half after staking a 46-29 halftime lead.

Iowa could probably collect royalties from the GU athletic department for playing the role of the nameless, inept opponent in a video of the first half that could be marketed and sold to teach young hoopers the virtues of holding one’s follow-through when taking wide-open 3-pointers.

Kyle Wiltjer was particularly unstoppable, making all five of his shots – three of them 3-pointers – as the Bulldogs shot a warmup-line like 7 of 10 from behind the arc and finished the half shooting a scalding 62.1 percent from the field.

“They got really comfortable at the beginning and that’s where we lost,” sophomore Iowa guard Peter Jok said. “They were really comfortable the whole game with their shooting.”