With 19-point comeback, Iowa beats Hoosiers

IOWA CITY, Iowa -- Interim head coach Mike Davis needed a moment to himself after IU's 71-66 loss to No. 17 Iowa Saturday. He just finished watching his team squander a 17-point halftime lead and fall to 3-4 in the Big Ten.\nThe second half was not a pretty sight for Davis.\nHe watched as junior guard Dane Fife committed his fourth foul with more than 17 minutes remaining and Iowa making its 20-4 run to gain the lead. Fife was guarding junior Luke Recker, former Hoosier player and Iowa's most powerful offensive weapon.\n"I knew Fife was going to have foul trouble because Recker is a really smart guy," Davis said. "He's does a lot of tricky things to cause fouls. But it really hurt from the leadership standpoint for him being out. We kind of fell apart.\n"Fife is the key guy defensively for us, but the other guys just kind of stood around, just kind of watched them."\nDavis watched Iowa (16-4, 5-2 Big Ten) outscore IU 45-23 in the second half. He watched IU make only nine fields. He watched Iowa out-rebound IU 28-12. He watched junior forward Kirk Haston and freshman forward Jared Jeffries combine for four points.\n"We threw them about four different presses at them in the second half and threw in some zone and just wanted to get Haston and Jeffries out of their comfort zone because they were incredible in the first half," Iowa coach Steve Alford said. "We made them quick-shoot a little bit. I don't think Haston touched the ball much in the second half, so that's an advantage to us."\nHaston dominated the first half. He scored 10 points to go with 10 rebounds, and Jeffries also had 10 points as IU built a 19-point lead with 5:34 remaining in the first half.\n"We just executed, and we only gave them one shot," sophomore guard Tom Coverdale said. "They only had two offensive rebounds before we only gave up one shot and that's what gave us the lead."\nBut the second half belonged to Recker, who played two seasons for IU (12-9, 3-4 Big Ten) before transferring to Arizona for a semester then to Iowa.\nWithin the first four minutes of the second half, Recker made a trio of three-pointers, scored 11 points and made one steal to help Iowa close IU's lead to four. He capped the game by making a pair of free throws with 20 seconds left to give Iowa a five-point lead.\n"I think they ran some different plays just for Luke in the second half," said Fife, who was roommates with Recker and sophomore guard Kyle Hornsby. "You know Luke works hard. He's a scorer and those were just plays they had set up for him."\nThe loss was IU's 11th consecutive outside the state of Indiana. They play Wednesday at Ohio State, at which time Coverdale expects that streak to end, and Saturday at Penn State.\n"We can definitely sweep the next two games," Coverdale said, "if we play defense. We've just got to keep working hard. We haven't been able to play sound defense on the road for an entire 40 minutes yet. \n"If we do that, we can beat anybody"