NEW YORK— All week leading up to Temple’s opening round NCAA tournament game against the University of Iowa, Daniel Dingle was practicing free throws with his left hand.
The redshirt-junior guard/forward injured his right wrist in the team’s loss to Connecticut on March 12 and underwent treatment this week in order to play on Friday at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
With 22 seconds left in Temple’s 72-70 overtime loss to the No. 7 seed Hawkeyes, Dingle stepped to the free throw line with a chance to put the No. 10 seed Owls ahead.
Instead of shooting the ball with this right hand, which was wrapped in black medical tape, Dingle attempted the free throw left handed.
“My right hand couldn’t do it,” Dingle said. “I didn’t have the strength to shoot that far away. … I didn’t expect to play at all, to be honest.”
After Dingle’s miss, Iowa ran the clock down for the last shot of the game. Hawkeyes senior guard Mike Gesell put up a contested fadeaway midrange jump shot from the right baseline.
Adam Woodbury’s buzzer beater following Gesell’s miss lifted the Hawkeyes to the next round of the NCAA tournament.
Junior guard Josh Brown, who was defending Gesell, turned around following the shot to see Woodbury end the Owls’ season.
“I was busy trying to contest Giselle’s shot, trying to make sure he didn’t get a good look,” Brown said. “I saw the last second of it where it was just the ball went through the hoop.”
After Iowa junior guard Peter Jok split a pair of free throws to give Iowa a 63-60 lead with eight seconds left in regulation, Quenton DeCosey was fouled with two seconds remaining, sending the senior guard to the foul line for three free throws.
DeCosey converted all three free throws, sending the game into overtime. In his final game as an Owl, the senior finished with 26 points and eight rebounds.
“The only thing I was thinking was just let me take my time, make the first one, then make the second one, then make the last one,” DeCosey said. “And just my follow through.”
With 18:32 left in the second half and the Owls down by three points, DeCosey went to the bench with his third foul. He sat for more than five minutes as Iowa built up a 51-41 lead.
When the senior returned at the 13:25 mark, he scored 11 of Temple’s next 22 points, sending the game into overtime with his three free throws.
“When I got back in, I just wanted to do whatever I could to help my team get back in the game and give us the best chance at winning the game,” DeCosey said.
After starting 4-of-7 from the field in the first 9:46 of the game, including 2-of-4 from 3-point range, Iowa senior forward Jarrod Uthoff finished the game 3-of-14 from the field, scoring a team-high 23 points on 7-of-21 shooting.
As a team, the Hawkeyes scored 35 points in the final 30 minutes of regulation after scoring 28 in the first 10 minutes of the game.
“I thought our defense throughout was good,” coach Fran Dunphy said. “There were a couple of go byes that we could not give up that they scored on.”
Woodbury’s tipin at the end of the game was Iowa’s 12th offensive rebound of the game. The Hawkeyes tallied four offensive rebounds during the last six minutes of regulation and overtime.
“Coach always tells me get on the glass every possession,” Woodbury said. “So I knew that if Mike got a good look at it and it was a little long, I’d be able to get the offensive rebound.”
Temple faced a 12-point deficit in the first half before closing the gap to 38-37 at halftime. After a slow offensive start to the second half for the Owls, Temple fell behind double digits once again less than seven minutes in.
The Owls came back both times, something they’ve done on numerous occasions this year.
“That says a lot about the players we have and how much of a team we are,” sophomore forward Obi Enechionyia said. “Even today, we were down in the second half and forced it into overtime.”
Michael Guise can be reached at michael.guise@temple.edu or on Twitter @Michael_Guise
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