Brown’s Blog: White plays through pain; Basabe a no-show
Iowa's Aaron White
IOWA CITY, Ia. – Aaron White was in pain after the game Thursday.
He landed hard on his left hip when he got fouled driving to the basket in the first half of Thursday’s 79-73 loss to Nebraska at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
“It’s really bothering me,” White said after the game. “I’m not an excuse guy. I was able to play. That’s why I was out there. I told the coaching staff I could play.”
The 6-foot-8 freshman forward went 28 minutes, finishing with 11 points and nine rebounds.
Iowa was leading, 31-20, when White got an open look from 3. The ball came up a fraction short and kissed off the rim.
“I had a good look, and I shot it with confidence,” White said. “I didn’t hold the follow-through as long as I should have. Who knows? If that would have opened it up the game to 14 it might have jumped to 20. You can’t dwell on one play, because we were still in it at the end. Seventy-three points is plenty to win a game in this league. Seventy-nine is not a good number defensively.”
White also had a big-time tip dunk that gave Iowa a 54-48 lead with just under 10 minutes to play. It came two possessions after Devon Archie’s dunk had the crowd going crazy.
“The crowd was great,’ White said. “As coach (Fran McCaffery) said, they were ready to blow the room off the building. You would think that would energize us on the defensive end. Clearly it didn’t. That’s really disappointing.”
Iowa, now 3-5 in the Big Ten and 11-10 overall, was coming off a nine-day layoff. The defense didn’t make it to the starting lineups. Neither did sophomore forward Melsahn Basabe.
He didn’t attempt a field goal, made one of two free throws, had one rebound and three fouls in 13 minutes.
In the five games before Thursday, Basabe’s managed zero points at Minnesota, one point at Purdue, two points against Ohio State, seven points against Michigan and 10 points at Michigan State.
“He’s got to figure it out,” McCaffery said. “We’ve done everything we can do in terms of breaking it down on film, having discussions with him, working with him extra. He’s got to decide where this is going. I can’t make it any simpler than that.”
Category: Iowa Hawkeyes men's basketball
this is the result to powerhouse (har har) Nebraska, after a week off at home??
Like my old coach used to say: “*** are you thinkin numbnuts?”
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Your a class act-talldrinkavino
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What in the world is going on with Besabe? He has absolutely no enthusiasm at all. His demeanor on the court is so negative and he plays with zero energy. Anybody have any insight as to what is happening with him? You put last year’s Besabe on this team with his 10-15 points adn 6-10 boards a game and this is a totally different team. Anyone taking bets on whether he is back next year?
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He’s a confidence guy. Right now, he has no confidence in himself and his actions on the court show that. You can see his emotion when he messes up, he looks like he feels really bad about it, but he needs to learn to forget it and move on to the next play.
I would imagine (and hope) he’ll be back next year. He just needs to learn to move on from his mistakes and not beat himself up.
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