Joe Wieskamp Bounces Back, Hawkeyes Take Down Terrapins

The sophomore guard scored 26 points in the 67-49 win.

Joe Wieskamp doesn't seethe.

The Iowa sophomore guard is too calm for that. He has a quiet motivation that goes with his personality.

It bothered him that he only made one of his 10 3-point attempts in Tuesday’s loss at Nebraska. That wasn’t going to happen again. Wieskamp said it, his teammates said it, his coach said it.

It didn't.

“He came back the next day in practice,” Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said, “and wore it out.”

Wieskamp wore out No. 12 Maryland on Friday night, scoring a career-high 26 points in a 67-49 win at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

Wieskamp was 9-of-16 from the field, 5-of-9 on threes.

Wieskamp wasn’t the only one missing shots in Tuesday’s 76-70 loss to the Huskers — the Hawkeyes went 4-of-33 from three, so there were clanks all around.

But he wasn’t going to let it happen again.

“There was a lot of emotion built up,” Wieskamp said.

There was a lot of emotion built up collectively among the Hawkeyes (11-5 overall, 2-3 Big Ten). They were on a two-game losing streak and they felt like a victory escaped them in Lincoln on Tuesday.

Iowa is down to eight scholarship players, with season-ending injuries and illness carving the Hawkeyes’ depth.

“We realized we had a decision to make,” Wieskamp said. “A lot of people are counting us out, realizing we’re missing some of our best players. We could either fold, listen to that, not compete as hard as we could, or we could go out there, band together and just focus on the seven, eight guys we have playing.”

All eight played in Friday’s game. Some contributions were big, some were just enough.

“That’s the way it has to be,” McCaffery said. “We have a lot of good players left. We have some who aren’t available. But the guys who come in have to do what they’re capable of doing — compete, and play mistake-free basketball. To a man, everybody who played was really good.”

“I think it shows how deep we are, and how comfortable we are playing multiple guys,” said junior forward Cordell Pemsl, whose first career three-pointer — he’s taken just three in 82 games — gave Iowa an 18-15 lead in the first half, one that the Hawkeyes would not surrender. “There are a bunch of guys on this team who can play multiple positions, and give us things when we need them to.

“We weren’t going to back down tonight.”

Joe Wieskamp knocks down his fourth 3-point shot. pic.twitter.com/Ag8V6YOY9B

— Iowa On BTN (@IowaOnBTN) January 11, 2020

McCaffery appreciated how Wieskamp still scored 21 points in Tuesday’s game, doing other things to keep the Hawkeyes close enough to have a chance to win.

“He doesn’t seem to rattle, one way or another,” McCaffery said. “He didn’t get down on himself the other night. He kept shooting. I think the thing that was impressive about his game the other night was, OK, the jumpers weren’t falling. But he still got 21 points.”

“When guys work as hard as Joe does, he has the respect of everybody in the locker room,” said center Luka Garza, the Big Ten’s leading scorer who had 21 points and 13 rebounds in this game for his 10th double-double of the season. “We all have confidence in him. It’s that next-shot mentality — the next one is going in, the next one is going in. He’ll shoot it a thousand times, Coach will tell him to shoot 1,001.”

Iowa’s defense was just as impressive, holding Maryland (13-3, 3-2) to its second-lowest point total and second-worst shooting percentage of the season.

Asked if this was Iowa’s best defensive performance of the season, Garza said, “It’s up there. Especially against a high-powered offense like this, it’s great for us, great for our team.”

The Terrapins’ wilt in this game bothered coach Mark Turgeon.

“We didn’t look like us,” Turgeon said. “I mean, I’m looking out there. ‘Who are those guys out there tonight?’ We tried to fix it. We could never fix it.”

Turgeon played 11 players in the first half, trying to find a solution after an early lead got away from the Terrapins.

“We were bad,” Turgeon said. “We were bad. We stunk. I’ve been doing this a long time, and that ranks up there as one of the worst one of my teams have played.

“We did good-cop bad-cop. We tried everything. We couldn’t get them motivated.”

Only one Terrapin scored in double figures — forward Jalen Smith, who had 13 points.

Turgeon tried to shrug it off, saying it was “January whatever” and there’s a lot of time left in the season.

But sometimes January whatevers can turn a season in a certain direction.

Iowa’s losing streak was gone, Wieskamp was making shots, Garza was still being Garza and everyone did something for the Hawkeyes.

“It’s one we knew we could win,” Wieskamp said. “And we went out and got it.”