INDIANAPOLIS — Four days, four wins, for a crown.
Streamers fell, confetti rained, and everyone got a chance to cradle the silver trophy after Iowa’s 75-66 victory over Purdue on Sunday at Gainbridge Fieldhouse.
A Big Ten Tournament championship for the Hawkeyes, the first for the program since 2006.
It was quite the party.
As Tony Perkins dribbled out the final seconds, Connor McCaffery and Kris Murray jumped up and down, in sync with each other and the clock. Keegan Murray, the leader of this run that started back in November, clenched his hands above his head, just waiting for the horn to sound.
“It really is a dream,” said guard Jordan Bohannon, who came back for a sixth year to have a chance at a title that had eluded him.
It was the culmination of a chase that began in the summer, a pursuit to prove this was going to be a good team even after losing national player of the year Luka Garza and teammate Joe Wieskamp to the NBA, to prove that the questions everyone had were going to have answers that few expected.
"This team came together, from Day 1,” coach Fran McCaffery said in the post-game celebration. “Everybody knows who we lost. But this group never stopped believing."
“We knew we had something special here,” Bohannon said.
The Hawkeyes, who sputtered at times in December and January, have roared into March, and they’ve embraced the crucible of the college basketball calendar like few in the program’s recent history have.
Iowa is 12-2 since the beginning of February, and it was that second loss, at Illinois to end the regular season, that provided the fuel to what happened here.
The Hawkeyes negotiated every step of this bracket in different ways — a run that started with domination of Northwestern in the second round, followed by the gritty quarterfinal win over Rutgers, the Bohannon legendary last-second 3-pointer to beat Indiana in the semifinals, and then this victory, a vanquishing of a team that has given the Hawkeyes so many fits in the last few seasons.
“We’re playing unbelievable basketball right now,” Bohannon said.
It was the 178th game of Bohannon’s career. He has been witness to so much Iowa basketball in his career, so he knows what he’s seeing now.
“It’s an unbelievable team,” Bohannon said. “A once-in-a-lifetime team, for sure.”
Purdue had won six of the last seven against the Hawkeyes, including a sweep during this regular season. Iowa had often withered against the Boilermakers’ size and strength, but not in this game, not in this tournament.
This was going to have to be a game when Iowa’s depth was going to have to be a factor, and when Filip Rebraca and Kris Murray got into first-half foul trouble, all of the sudden this was all-hands-on-deck.
Every hand, it seemed, did something.
Payton Sandfort had 10 points in 15 minutes, including back-to-back 3-pointers in the second half that gave Iowa a lead it wouldn’t give up. Josh Ogundele had four points in 10 minutes — he scored his first points of the game in the first half after forcing a 3-second call on Purdue’s Zach Edey on the possession before. Even little-used center Riley Mulvey got in for 3 1/2 minutes in the first half.
And after Purdue got to within 63-62 with 3:09 to play, Connor McCaffery scored as he was fouled, and then after he made his free throw the Hawkeyes would not be threatened again.
“I felt like all of the guys had the championship mindset tonight,” said Keegan Murray, who had 19 points and 11 rebounds, setting a new tournament record with 103 points for the weekend on his way to winning the Most Outstanding Player award.
Murray provided the final punctuation with a breakaway dunk with 51 seconds left.
“I mean, it's kind of like everything just got put together for me, just all the hard work that we put in, just the offseason that it took to get here,” Murray said. “We struggled earlier on this year a little bit and now we're doing really well and it's just a great feeling.”
Fran McCaffery has never wavered going to his bench all season. He constantly challenged everyone to be ready, and everyone was in the biggest game so far on the biggest stage so far.
To last this long in this tournament required preparation, and the Hawkeyes answered.
“They couldn’t have done it any better,” McCaffery said.
Purdue (27-7) had a 48-30 rebounding edge, but the Boilermakers had 17 turnovers compared to just six for the Hawkeyes.
“We forced them to be uncomfortable,” Murray said.
The Hawkeyes did that to everyone in this tournament.
“A masterful job from a very mature group,” McCaffery said.
The masters had their championship.
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