IU can’t stop Gatens, allows career night

For Iowa senior Matt Gatens, the start to Sunday night’s game with Indiana was anything but a career performance.

Iowa’s leading scorer missed six of his first seven shots, and it was his Hawkeyes teammates who helped build an 11-point halftime lead.

However, just as IU was mounting a second half charge, the Iowa City, Iowa, native knocked down five 3-pointers during the game’s final 7:17 en route to a career-high 30 points.

“He’s just been playing as well, if not better than anybody in this league,” Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery said. “Coaching is easy when you can start running some clock and then run something for him. We just kept going to him in a different way, and he just kept ringing the bell.”

The bulk of Gatens’s career night came after halftime as he made all six of his 3-pointers in the second half to lead the Hawkeyes (14-13, 6-8) to a 78-66 win against No. 18/20 Indiana (20-7, 8-7) at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

The 3-pointers came at crucial times for the Hawkeyes as IU went on a 9-0 run to cut the lead to 52-42 with 7:46 to play.

Coming out of the timeout, Gatens connected on the first of four 3-pointers during the next four minutes, and the Hoosiers never got within 12 points the rest of the way.

IU Coach Tom Crean said Gatens was the most determined player on the floor Sunday evening and credited his shot-making to halting any Hoosier’s comeback attempt.

“(Gatens hit shots) sometimes with guys on him and sometimes when we were a step late,” Crean said. “He got extremely hot. He broke our backs in the sense of coming back.”

The Hoosiers used the sophomore duo of Victor Oladipo and Will Sheehey on Gatens.

The two each finished the game with four fouls, and Oladipo’s fourth came at the 7:46 mark of the second half, the possession prior to Gatens’s five 3-pointers to end the game.

Before Gatens’s 3-point barrage, the Hawkeyes were approaching a five-minute scoring drought and had given the Hoosiers some late life.

“It was obviously a big sequence of plays,” senior guard Matt Roth said of Gatens’ 3-pointers. “We had done a great job to fight back into it, but he did what he was supposed to do: step up and hit some big shots.”

The scoring burden was even greater for Gatens on Sunday as Iowa played without two of its regular rotational players.

This marks the second time in the Big Ten this season that Gatens has scored more than 20 points in a game.

He scored 20 points on 9-of-13 shooting against the Hoosiers on Jan. 29, and Crean said he has taken notice of the senior Iowa captain.

“He’s not only one of the better shooters and guards in this league, he’s one of the better ones in the country,” Crean said.

Crean said he put his best two defenders on Gatens throughout the night.

Oladipo has been the man responsible for guarding the opponents’ leading scorers through much of the season, and Sunday night was no different.

However, the sophomore guard admitted he must be better as the Hoosiers head into their final three conference games.

“I don’t think I did a really good job of being a solid defender tonight,” Oladipo said. “I’ve got to go back and work on that because if I don’t, it’s just going to be a rough last couple of games.”