maly, too: Ex-Valley Standout Peter Jok Leads With 22 Points and 8 Rebounds As Hawkeyes Roll to 102-58 Victory In London

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Ex-Valley Standout Peter Jok Leads With 22 Points and 8 Rebounds As Hawkeyes Roll to 102-58 Victory In London

LONDON. ENGLAND -- Iowa's basketball team opened its European tour Tuesday with a 102-58 victory over the London Lions.. Both teams rested a number of their key personnel in preparation for Wednesday's rematch that is slated to be played in front of a sold out crowd.

Iowa’s two newcomers, Jarrod Uthoff and Peter Jok , combined for 36 points and 14 rebounds. Jok led all scorers with 22 points on 7-of-13 shooting from the field, including 4-of-8 from 3-point range. The rookie also pulled down eight rebounds and assisted on four baskets. Uthoff finished with 14 points and grabbed six rebounds.

“Jarrod and Peter were terrific,” said coach Fran McCaffery. “I wanted to get those two a lot of minutes in this game and let them play through any mistakes they may have made.”

“It felt good to play with my teammates in a game against another opponent,” said Jok, who was a standout at Valley High School in West Des Moines. “We’re an unselfish team and tonight we found the open person and executed on offense.”

Iowa jumped to an early advantage and never looked back, leading by as much as 49 points. Sophomore Adam Woodbury scored seven of his nine points in the first quarter.

Five Hawkeyes scored during a 15-5 scoring surge late in the second quarter that helped increase Iowa’s advantage to 51-33 at halftime. Senior Zach McCabe netted six of his 13 points in the second period. The forward was an efficient 5-of-7 from the floor, including 2-of-3 from 3-point territory, and was also collected with five assists, three steals and four rebounds.

London native Gabriel Olaseni was perfect from the floor the first 20 minutes of action, making all four field goals and one free throw, scoring nine first-half points. The sophomore, whose family was in attendance watching him in a Hawkeye uniform for the first time in person, finished with 11 points, two blocks and four boards.

“We really pushed the ball tonight,” McCaffery said. “We got the ball inside on the break to Gabe and Adam, in particular. Once we got it going with the break, then our offense was really smooth.”

The Hawkeyes continued their stellar play in the third, closing the third quarter on a 10-0 run with back-back buckets by Uthoff and consecutive triples by Josh Oglesby. Oglesby was 4-of-8 from the field, including 4-of-6 from behind the arc, finishing the contest with 12 points and six rebounds.

“We played well tonight,” said Oglesby. “We found our rhythm early and I’m glad I was able to knock down some shots and help my team.”

As a team, the Hawkeyes shot 42 percent from 3-point range, while Oglesby, Jok and McCabe were Iowa’s top sharp-shooters combining to shoot 10-of-17 (59 percent) from distance.

Hawkeye seniors Melsahn Basabe and Roy Devyn Marble, and junior Aaron White did not play in tonight’s 44-point win, but will tomorrow. Sophomore Anthony Clemmons had a game-high nine assists to go along with four points and seven rebounds. Junior Darius Stokes had nine points; redshirt freshman Kyle Meyer had five; while junior Kyle Denning contributed three points and four assists.

“Tomorrow will be a completely different kind of game in a totally different kind of atmosphere, so that’s what we have to get our guys ready for mentally,” said McCaffery. “Their top five guys did not play tonight because they have 6,000 fans coming tomorrow. They wanted to play their young guys tonight; we played our young guys.”

[This story was written for Ron Maly by Matt Weitzel of Iowa's sports information staff].

JOLTIN' JOE GOT IT STARTED

When Ron Maly was a kid in Cedar Rapids, he wanted to enter an essay contest, and he did. He wrote about Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees being his favorite baseball player. For finishing second in the contest, Ron won a Louisville Slugger baseball bat autographed by DiMaggio. Ron later wanted to be the first person in his family to attend college, and he was. He earned a degree in political science from the University of Iowa, and did what all political science majors do. He became a sportswriter. He had, after all, covered high school football, basketball and baseball games for the Cedar Rapids Gazette while he worked parttime during his university days. Ron wanted to sit in the press box and write about an Iowa-Minnesota football game, and he did. It happened while he was the sports editor at the Albert Lea [Minn.] Tribune, and the game was at Memorial Stadium in Minneapolis. Ron wanted to cover a World Series, and he did. Also when he was working for the Albert Lea newspaper. Ron wanted to cover Rose Bowls, Sugar Bowls, Orange Bowls, Cotton Bowls, Holiday Bowls, a Freedom Bowl, a Sun Bowl, a Super Bowl and NCAA basketball tournaments, and he did those things after he moved to Des Moines. Ron was a four-time sportswriter of the Year in the state of Iowa [the years were 1977, 1978, 1994 and 1996]. In 2006, he was named a charter member of the University of Iowa's media Wall of Fame in the Kinnick Stadium press box. A photo of the plaque that's displayed in the press box is displayed above this story. Following Ron's retirement from the newspaper business, a publisher asked him if he wanted to write a book about the rich football tradition at the University of Iowa, and he did. The hardback version of "Tales from the Iowa Sidelines" was a best-seller, and so was the revised, softback version. Now he's been asked by his publisher to update the book for a second time. He's in the process of doing that at the present time. Ron considers being asked to update a best-selling book for the second time to be the supreme compliment, considering the Hawkeyes won just four games in the 2012 season. When Ron isn't working on books, he's busy traveling and spending time with his family. Indeed, he attends the athletic, theatrical and musical [both vocal and instrumental] events in which his six grandchildren participate. He also writes about anything that interests him for his many websites. Every chance he gets, Ron proudly wears his America Needs Farmers T-shirt.

The Hawkeyes' Rich Football Tradition, Revisited

I mentioned a while back that I was in the process of updating my Tales from the Iowa Sidelines book. Updating it for the second time. The original hardback edition of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines [pictured at the right] was published in 2003, during the 10-3 season, when coach Kirk Ferentz and his Iowa football team had a 10-3 record that included a 37-17 victory over 15th-ranked Florida in the Outback Bowl and after the Hawkeyes went 11-2 in 2002. That book was a best-seller, so the publishers came to me again in 2005, a season that finished with a breathtaking 30-25 victory over No. 11 Louisiana State in the Capital One Bowl on New Year's Day, 2005. Because buyers had cleaned out the the shelves in the bookstores, the publishers wanted to know if I'd do an updated version of the book. I agreed, The revised, soft-cover edition [pictured at the left] was published in 2005. Warren Holloway, who teamed with quarterback Drew Tate on a miraculous 56-yard touchdown pass to win the Capital One Bowl, was featured on the cover. That book, too, turned into a best-seller, So I had reason to feel very good about my years as a published author. It's not every day that a the original version is a best-seller, and so is the updated version. Then, imagine my surprise when I received an e-mail from a senior editor at the publishing company last fall, wanting wanted to know if I was interested in doing a second updated version of the book. It came at a time when things weren't going well for the Hawkeyes in the 2012 season. They lost their last six games and finished with a 4-8 record. Frankly, the thought of doing a revised edition of the book during a 4-8 season seemed to be a stretch. "Maybe producing a revised edition in a year or two would be a better idea," I told the publishers. "We'd like to do it now," I was told. "Let me think about it," I said. After a few days of thought, I accepted the idea. I talked myself into the idea that this was the supreme compliment--being asked to do a second book update during a 4-8 season showed strong confidence by the publishers in me and in the Hawkeyes' football program. So I got back into the business of interviewing players and coaches again, going to postgame press conferences, weekly press conferences and a scrimmage in West Des Moines. After a press conference in Iowa City, I did a one-on-one interview with coach Kirk Ferentz, and mentioned to him that I was in the process of doing a revised edition of my two best-selling books. I congratulated him on the excellent things he had done for Iowa's football program--all of which contributed to the success of my books. "I think Coach Fry had more to do with it," he told me, bringing up the name of Hayden Fry, his one-time boss at Iowa and a man who brought Iowa's football program back from the dead in the 20th century. That's modest Kirk Ferentz for you. Even though the 2012 season wasn't something Hawkeye coaches, players and fans will recall with any special feeling, Ferentz has a 14-year record of 100-74 at Iowa that includes two 11-victory seasons [2002 smd 2009], two 10-victory seasons [2003 and 2004], plus he's been the Big Ten coach of year in 2002, 2004 and 2009, and national coach of the year in 2002. Indeed, Ferentz has done some wonderful things at Iowa City, and I fully expect his success to continue. I've concluded my writing for the second update of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines, and the senior editor has furnished me with an early look at the book. Not only are the Kirk Ferentz years included in the updated version, but so is the stuff I previously wrote about Howard Jones, Dr. Eddie Anderson, Heisman Trophy winner Nile Kinnick and the 1939 Hawkeye Ironmen, Ronald Reagan, Ozzie Simmons, Ossie Solem, Randy Duncan, Alex Karras and lots of other legends from Iowa's rich football history. I expect the book to be in stores soon. I hope you like it.