Augustana hands Iowa first exhibition loss since 2002

Daniel Jansen was once an AAU teammate of Iowa’s Mike Gesell and Adam Woodbury. On Friday, he got the best of them.

The 6-foot-9 Jansen, a former MOC-Floyd Valley standout, hit a turnaround jumper at the buzzer to give Augustana of South Dakota a 76-74 exhibition victory over the Hawkeyes at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

The Vikings, returning five starters from a 31-win team and ranked No. 1 in NCAA Division II, had led the entire second half until Iowa’s Peter Jok tied the game at 74 on a 3-pointer with 28 seconds remaining. The Hawkeyes never had the lead for the final 30:30 of the game, and trailed by as many as 15 points in the second half.

"There's two ways to look at this game," Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said. "You can schedule it or not, OK? We could have found a team that won eight games last year very easily. We scheduled a team that won 31 games. Most teams won't play them, OK?  But I felt like we needed a game like this right here. When you look at our schedule, we play next Friday and Sunday. We got Marquette, Iowa State. You look at who we have, Florida State. The tournament in Orlando. We better play somebody good who is going to expose some of our weaknesses as opposed to you win by 25 and you don't really know where your weaknesses are yet."

Casey Schilling led the Vikings with 20 points and 11 rebounds. Jansen added 19 points as Iowa lost an exhibition game for the first time since a 79-76 defeat to the Harlem Globetrotters in 2002. The Hawkeyes are now 22-2 in exhibition games since the 1999-2000 season.

Jok led Iowa with 21 points, making three of seven 3-pointers. Gesell added 14 points and nine rebounds. Jarrod Uthoff was limited to 10 points on 5-for-12 shooting.

Adam Woodbury had a game-high 14 rebounds for the Hawkeyes, but Augustana won the battle of the boards, 42-35.

"That's where the game was lost," McCaffery said.

Jok made four of five free throws. No one else attempted one for Iowa. The Vikings were 7-for-10.

Dale Jones, a junior college transfer, was the only member of the six-man recruiting class who scored. He finished with eight points, making three 3-pointers on five attempts. Freshmen Ahmad Wagner, Andrew Fleming and Christian Williams played a combined 10 minutes in the first half, but didn’t see the floor in the second half. Two other rookies, Isaiah Moss and Brandon Hutton, did not play. McCaffery said after the game that Moss would redshirt this season.

And sophomore forward Dominique Uhl, expected to be part of the rotation, played just 2 first-half minutes.

"Ahmad, Dom, Christian, those guys are going to be fine," McCaffery said. "But I put Dom in, he didn't play well, I didn't go back to him. Would have been nice if I could have gotten back to him. Same with Ahmad. I went with the other guys because it was a close game."

Iowa opens the 2015-16 season with an 8:30 p.m. game against Gardner-Webb Friday at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.