By
Percy Allen
Seattle Times staff reporter
The red-hot shooting wasn’t going to last.
After converting nearly 77% of its shots in the first half, the Huskies cooled after the break and their offense sputtered, staggered and ultimately ran out of gas in the final minutes of an 84-74 loss against Iowa on Wednesday night.
A tale of two halves aptly sums up this game.
In the first 20 minutes, the Washington men’s basketball missed just six shots while staging its most efficient shooting spree in a half since at least 2012.
But something happened to the Huskies at halftime because after the break, they looked nothing like the home team that wore specialty white jerseys with pink trim that built a nine-point lead early in the second half.
After scoring 48 points in the first half, Washington inexplicably tallied just 26 in the second half in front of 6,904 at Alaska Airlines Arena that included an ample-sized gathering of Hawkeye fans.
Hannes Steinbach finished with 20 points, 12 rebounds and two blocks while Zoom Diallo had 16 points, six rebounds and a career-high 12 assists for UW. Wesley Yates III chipped in 15 points, Quimari Peterson had 11 and Bryson Tucker 10.
The loss dropped the Huskies to 12-11 and 4-8 in the Big Ten and cripples their hopes of nabbing an NCAA tournament at-large berth with eight regular-season games remaining.
Washington converted eight of its first 12 shots and used an 11-0 run to race out to an 18-10 lead thanks in large part to Diallo who had seven points on 3-for-3 shooting and two assists in the first eight minutes.
Minutes later, the Huskies gave up a 10-2 spurt that erased their 26-21 lead and fell behind 31-28 with 5:39 left in the first half.
At that point, UW was in the early stages of converting 11 straight shots — a sublime offensive display highlighted by a Diallo-to-Tucker alley-oop and capped by three straight three-pointers, including two from Yates that pushed Washington ahead 48-40 at halftime.
In the first half, the Huskies shot 76.9% (20 of 26) from the field, including 6 of 8 behind the arc, and 2 of 2 on free throws.
In the second half, Washington shot 36% from the field, including 1 of 8 on three-pointers and 7 of 8 at the line.
Iowa took control early in the second half with a 22-6 run that turned a 50-41 deficit into a 63-56 lead with 12:59 left.
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After Washington closed to within 67-66, the Hawkeyes put the game away with a 13-2 spurt to go up 80-68 with 3:30 remaining.
Bennett Stirtz scored a game-high 22 points on 8-for-13 shooting while Alvaro Folgueiras had 16 for Iowa, which improved to 17-5 and 7-4.
Washington plays at UCLA (16-7, 8-4) on Saturday.
Note
— Freshman guard JJ Mandaquit sat out due to an ankle/foot injury.BOX SCORE
Percy Allen: pallen@seattletimes.com. Percy Allen is a sports reporter for The Seattle Times, where he writes about the University of Washington Huskies men’s and women’s basketball teams and the Seattle Storm.
