Iowa Hawkeyes Defeat Oral Roberts

Luka Garza knew that the Iowa Hawkeye basketball team need to bounce back from their home court loss to the DePaul Blue Demons.

Garza, already averaging a double-double on the year, helped to lead the Iowa basketball team to a win over the Oral Roberts Golden Eagles 87-74 on Friday night at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

Despite seeing multiple double teams, Garza dropped a career high 30 points on Oral Roberts.  Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery discussed working (on the double team) with Luka, "We did work on that.  He is one of those guys who has been getting doubled his whole life.  He typically goes quickly, we've got to maybe do a better job hitting cutter, getting to the weak side, and repost.  He is so crafty and quick with those moves a lot of times he can get there before the double team does."

In total, five Hawkeyes scored in double digit figures as well- Jordan Bohannon, Luka Garza, Connor McCaffery, Joe Wieskamp, and Jack Nunge- who recorded his first ever double-double as a Hawkeye.

Iowa, basically, led from start to finish (ORU did have an early :17 second lead) in the game and at one point had a 21 point lead.  The Hawks got 16 points from their bench and created 18 points from turnovers.

Oral Roberts did make the game interesting when they pulled with in 10 points with a little more than a minute to go but a J-Bo 3 pointer with :15 seconds left and no answer by Oral Roberts sealed the victory, the 12.5 spread, and the OVER (160.5).

Iowa returns to action next Thursday, hosting North Florida in a Las Vegas Invitational preliminary game. Tipoff is set for 6 p.m. (CT) on Mediacom Court at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Tickets are available for $15 for adults and $5 for youth & UI Students.

In other Iowa basketball news, freshman Patrick McCaffery did not dress for the game.

"Patrick has got some residual health issues as related to his previous illness.  Nothing life threatening, cancer is not back anything like that.  But there are a lot of changes in his body that we are working through.  We will take it day by day," said head coach Fran McCaffery.

In the idea of redshirting the freshman forward, "We aren't looking at that right now.  It's too early for that," said Coach McCaffery.