You might watch an Iowa basketball game and expect to watch Luka Garza do his thing. Although, the story in last nights’ Top 25 matchup was Joe Wieskamp. The Junior from Muscatine put up 26 points on 9/14 shooting, including 5/7 from beyond the arch. After being “day-to-day” for the past 3 weeks, Sophomore Guard CJ Fredrick was back in the starting lineup, if you just look at the box score you might notice a goose egg in the scoring column. His impact was stronger than that, where he chipped in 2 important assists to Luka Garza down low, as the Scarlet Knights were closing the gap. 

As for Rutgers, they took a huge hit when Junior Myles Johnson had 3 first half fouls. They were forced to dig deep into the bench. Despite this, they could not seem to find the interior scorer that they needed. Another key in the loss for Rutgers was 3 point shooting, both on the offensive and defensive side of the ball. The Scarlet Knights shot just 6/28 (21.4%) from long range in the loss. Ron Harper Jr. went 0/4 from 3 in this ballgame. They allowed Iowa to shoot 11/23 (47.85%) from 3, including 5 of them coming from Joe Wieskamp, as stated earlier. 

As for Iowa, they look to carry some momentum from this win as they travel to the Breslin Center to take on the Michigan State Spartans this Saturday, winners of two straight. Iowa defeated the Spartans just last Tuesday 84-78 behind a 27 point performance from Luka Garza. You can catch this matchup on FOX at 1:30 PM CT.

For Rutgers, they return home to take on Northwestern who are losers of 10 straight. These two teams met on January 31st. Rutgers escaped Evanston with an 8 point victory behind a 19 point performance from Jacob Young. Rutgers needs a bounce back win this weekend if they want to continue to boost their NCAA Tournament resume. This game will take place on Big Ten Network at 4:00 PM CT on Saturday.