IOWA CITY — The clipboard was an innocent victim, caught up in the timeout tornado of wrath.
Iowa basketball coach Fran McCaffery was angry — really angry, actually — as his team, facing a chasm so early in the Big Ten race, had given up back-to-back 3-pointers in the first half to a Michigan team that was on what would prove to be a fatal run.
It had become a combination of disaster — missed shots at one end were contributing the Hawkeyes’ porous defense, pursuits that left someone open on the perimeter or had a toreador’s devotion to the driving lanes.
The clipboard was in McCaffery’s hands, and as the coach delivered the beginning of his tirade to his team, a hard right punch sent the clipboard clattering to the court.
A manager, standing to McCaffery’s right, tried to hand it back to him, and it received a second blow. More clatter that couldn’t mask the anger.
“Everybody’s open!” McCaffery screamed. “Everybody!”
The 75-68 loss to the Wolverines, a deceptive margin on Tuesday night at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, felt like so many of the defeats in the Hawkeyes’ season that has never stopped teetering.
The disconnect that was present in late November and early December was back. The Hawkeyes’ five-game winning streak that was snapped seemed so distant, even though the last win was last Friday.
Iowa is 9-7 overall, but 0-3 in the Big Ten, staring up at just about everyone in the league. Fifteen games remain in conference play, but unless the direction can be changed, that schedule feels like a two-month marathon to nowhere.
“It’s a long season, obviously,” sophomore guard Jordan Bohannon said. “You never know what’s going to happen in Big Ten play. But it’s going to take everyone to turn this thing around.”
The search for answers was empty.
“There’s nothing physically wrong,” sophomore forward Cordell Pemsl said. “It’s a mentality, and an attitude.”
“I just don’t think our energy and effort was there early,” said sophomore forward Tyler Cook, unstoppable on a 28-point night but without a lot of help from others. “I don’t think, as a unit, our mindset was there to come out and take the game. We weren’t mentally locked in as a group, and that affects us offensively and defensively.”
How, on the second day of January, a long way from the early October beginning of practice, does this happen?
“I wish I had an answer for you,” Cook said. “I’m not inside of every guy’s head. It’s not just a one-man job, everybody’s got to do it.”
There were moments early when everybody was doing it for the Hawkeyes. They had built a 10-7 lead, but that should have been larger because they couldn’t capitalize on five Michigan turnovers.
Then the Wolverines got open, and got confident.
A 22-4 run by Michigan (13-3, 2-1), the one that set off McCaffery, set the Hawkeyes on what McCaffery called “scramble mode.” The Wolverines made 7-of-8 field goals in one stretch during the run, and they would finish the first half shooting 18-of-29 (62.1 percent), including 8-of-15 (53.3 percent) in 3-pointers.
“If you break down in one area, they’ll find somebody (open),” McCaffery said of Michigan’s offense.
“Today,” Michigan coach John Beilein said, “we couldn’t miss. … If we miss those shots, then I might have a different story to tell right now. But we really played extraordinarily well as far as shooting the ball.”
Beilein knew that the Hawkeyes loved to pursue and pressure, and that those chases could be exploited.
“They’re always pressuring, always after you,” he said. “You have to be in attack mode, find the open man.”
The Wolverines, who had lost their five previous games to Iowa, would have just five turnovers the rest of the game after the early struggles. Zavier Simpson, who came into the game averaging 4.5 points, scored 15. Isaiah Livers, who averaged three points, scored 13.
The Hawkeyes understood the McCaffery volcano.
“We didn’t have that intensity,” freshman center Luka Garza said. “We kind of seemed lost out there. We didn’t look like what we needed to be. He was upset with that, and rightfully so.
“Our defensive rotation wasn’t what it needed to be. And that’s disappointing because of the work we put on that. We knew what they were trying to do. We can’t let teams get into so easily what they want to do. You’ve got to disrupt them. That’s what we didn’t do tonight. If we would have done that, we would have had a better chance of winning this game.”
“I think it was just effort,” Pemsl said. “It was one of those games where we knew what to do to win, we knew what the game plan was, we just didn’t execute it.”
“I think it was a variety of things,” McCaffery said. “It looked like it was our defense. We weren’t connected. But our offense was sputtering.”
Cook was 10-of-15 from the field — he started the game by bedeviling Michigan’s Moritz Wagner with an inside move that led to a thundering dunk — but outside of Bohannon’s 12 points, no other Hawkeye scored in double figures.
“It was like, ‘Go ahead, T.C., go ahead and score,’” McCaffery said.
The Hawkeyes have just one day to prepare for Thursday’s home game against Ohio State.
“We’ve got a lot of games left,” Garza said. “But at the same time, we can’t wait for something to happen.”
MICHIGAN (13-3, 2-1)
Moritz Wagner 2-6 0-0 4, Duncan Robinson 1-5 2-2 5, Charles Matthews 5-11 3-4 14, Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman 5-13 2-2 15, Eli Brooks 0-0 0-0 0, Jordan Poole 1-2 0-0 3, Zavier Simpson 6-9 1-2 15, Isaiah Livers 5-6 0-0 13, Jon Teske 3-5 0-0 6, Ibi Watson 0-0 0-0 0. Totals: 28-57 8-10 75.
IOWA (9-7, 0-3)
Jack Nunge 1-3 0-0 2, Tyler Cook 10-15 8-11 28, Nicholas Baer 1-1 0-2 3, Jordan Bohannon 4-11 0-0 12, Isaiah Moss 2-4 2-2 6, Ahmad Wagner 0-0 0-0 0, Maishe Dailey 2-4 0-0 5, Ryan Kriener 0-1 0-0 0, Brady Ellingson 0-2 0-0 0, Cordell Pemsl 2-3 2-2 6, Luka Garza 3-8 0-0 6. Totals: 25-52 12-17 68.
Halftime: Michigan 48, Iowa 36. Total fouls: Michigan 15, Iowa 14. Fouled out: None. 3-point goals: Michigan 11-25 (Livers 3-3, Abdur-Rahkman 3-8, Simpson 2-4, Poole 1-2, Robinson 1-3, Matthews 1-4, Wagner 0-1), Iowa 6-15 (Bohannon 4-7, Baer 1-1, Dailey 1-2, Ellingson 0-1, Nunge 0-2, Moss 0-2). Rebounds: Michigan 30 (Matthews, Abdur-Rahkman, Teske 7), Iowa 31 (Cook 8). Assists: Michigan 18 (Simpson 7), Iowa 16 (Bohannon 3). Blocks: Michigan 0, Iowa 4 (Cook, Baer, Moss, Garza 1). Turnovers: Michigan 10, Iowa 13. Attendance: 11,363.