Sticking together has been a common theme for the Iowa basketball team this season and Friday they did it once again in their 79-72 victory over Cincinnati. Iowa had to weather an early 13 point deficit to go along with foul trouble for Tyler Cook, and still they fought back and prevailed in front of a clearly one-sided crowd in Columbus. Following the victory, we caught up with several of the heroes, including leading scorers Luka Garza and Joe Wieskamp. We also check in with Jordan Bohannon, Tyler Cook, and Nicholas Baer on how the Hawkeyes weathered several storms of Friday to get a win in the NCAA Tournament.
Q. When you were down 11 fairly early in the first half I think it was, what did you think was the feeling of your team and was there anything you wanted to accomplish personally to get your guys in a different mindset, because you ended up in a different mindset?
LUKA GARZA: I think the timeouts in that stretch when it was 18-5, those were key. And everyone was communicating. It was a great feeling in the timeout. We knew a couple of shots we missed. We missed a couple of chippies around the rim, and we needed to get back and get some stops and rebound. They started to get too many offensive rebounds. As a group individually I wanted to get inside and post up more and post deeper. I thought in the beginning some of those guys were pushing me out of the spots I wanted to get to. I think I did a better job of that through the course of the game to get deeper because it's easy for them to come double or poke me when I'm posting up 17 feet away. I tried to do a better job of that I thought as a collective group we all tried to focus and string together some shots.
Q. Would you both care to discuss the impact your zone had on them?
JORDAN BOHANNON: I think we did a good job of just kind of getting them a little hesitant. They're a really well-coached team and run a deliberate offense. We knew that coming in. We started out man to start out the game and they got a couple of easy baskets. We changed it up a little bit. I thought our press was really great tonight. They didn't know when to go or not to go. So we did a really good job changing the pace of the game controlling the tempo especially in the second half. LUKA GARZA: I thought we were communicating. They have terrific shooters in Jenifer and Cumberland. And they were trying to run Jenifer to the corners and try to get him some open looks. He hit a couple early when he was wide open. We tried to key in on that, and we did a great job just moving around, just making those shots tough for them.
Q. What did you do to regroup after the tough stretch to end the regular season?
JORDAN BOHANNON: We worked really hard. It wasn't a lot of fun during that stretch. We played really well in the beginning of the season, middle of the season. That's life in the Big Ten. That's why we got eight teams in the NCAA Tournament. I don't think we've lost a game in the NCAA Tournament as well. That shows how powerful and strong this conference was. So a lot of it was just playing really good teams. And we knew that. And it prepared us to get ready for the NCAA Tournament. LUKA GARZA: We just needed to stay confident with each other. We know what we're capable of. We keep saying that but it's true. We know what we can do when we play at our best. And it was great to see tonight even when they got up we stayed composed and were able to get to play better.
Q. Jordan, I'd like to ask you, what is it like for you guys to lean on Luka in those tough situations?
JORDAN BOHANNON: It's really easy to. He's come up big in a lot of games this year. He was dominant down low tonight, or this morning, I guess. And we know if we fed him the ball down low he was either going to get an easy basket, draw a foul or kick it out. I thought he did a really good job of doing all those three things when he did end up getting the ball.
