After wild start, tourney settles down

Associated Press

SEATTLE

Peyton Aldridge’s first stint in the NCAA Tournament was cut short by a higher seed on Friday.

He had plenty of company.

The LaBrae High graduate and Davidson freshman scored a team-best 14 points but the 10th-seeded Wildcats had no answer for No. 7 seed Iowa’s size in a 83-52 defeat.

After a wild opening day of the NCAA Tournament, Friday’s outcomes seemed downright dull as higher seeds went 15-0 to start the day.

Against Iowa, Davidson started four guards — Aldridge was the lone forward in the starting lineup — and the Hawkeyes’ 6-foot-9 senior forward Aaron White took advantage. He scored 13 straight points as part of Iowa’s 18-3 run early in the second half.

It was a nearly flawless performance for the Hawkeyes. They used their length to frustrate Davidson at the defensive end and the Wildcats had no answers for Iowa’s superior size on offense.

The result was the biggest blowout win in Iowa’s NCAA Tournament history and the Hawkeyes’ first victory in the NCAAs since 2001.

“When he gets going like that, it becomes infectious to the rest of the team,” Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said. “When you’re playing at the energy level that he plays with, that’s what everybody else wants to do.”

White finished with 26 points and made 11 of 14 shots as the Hawkeyes shot 57 percent in the second half. Mike Gesell added 15 points and Peter Jok scored 12 for Iowa.

Iowa was a question entering the tournament after getting knocked out of the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals by Penn State, the 13th place team in the conference.

“I thought as a group we were real professional in how we approached the game, watching film, listening to the game plan from the coaches, and executing that on the floor,” White said. “It’s one thing to understand it and to know it, it’s another thing to turn that around and execute on the floor. We were able to do that.”

Iowa led by nine when White got hot. He scored on seven of eight Iowa possessions and did a little of everything. He worked on the post and scored inside, showed his explosiveness with a thunderous dunk and hit an open 3-pointer. In a span of 7 minutes, White scored 17 of Iowa’s 22 points. By the time Brian Sullivan hit a 3 for Davidson to slow the run, the Hawkeyes led by 18.

“There was a stretch there where I was just feeling confident, feeling good with my shot, with my hook shot and I was finishing around the basket,” White said. “But most of the credit goes to my teammates and the coach for running stuff for me.”

Jack Gibbs also scored 14 points for Davidson (24-8), but the Wildcats never overcame three early fouls on Tyler Kalinoski, the A-10 player of the year. Kalinoski went the final 35 minutes without scoring, and finished with five points, snapping a string of 21 straight games in double figures.

For the third straight game, Davidson trailed by at least nine points at halftime. They were able to overcome the deficit to beat La Salle in the A-10 quarterfinals, but were blown out by VCU in the semifinals after trailing by 16 at the half and again by the Hawkeyes.

“I definitely think they had an advantage with the size and it kind of affected us,” Kalinoski said.