IOWA CITY, Iowa - When Illinois gave the Iowa basketball team a shot Saturday, the Hawkeyes missed. Then, they missed again.

A 1-of-9 finish from the field by Iowa was all the Fighting Illini needed to fight off the Hawkeyes' comeback bid and earn a 58-47 victory at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, struggling Illinois' second victory in eight games and equally struggling Iowa's sixth loss in its last seven.

"I joked all week that the first team to 40 would win, and that's about what happened," Illini coach Bruce Weber said.

Illinois managed just two field goals in the game's final 10 minutes itself, but a critical 3-pointer by Trent Meacham off a feed from Shaun Pruitt and a goaltending call on the Hawkeyes' Cyrus Tate allowed Illinois to answer on the two occasions Iowa inched within five points of the lead.

"When we were stuck on 43, part of me was like, 'Here we are again,' " Illini guard Calvin Brock said. "I just told my teammates that we've got to keep getting stops on defense and keep being aggressive on offense. We had to find a way to finish and we did."

Illinois finished off Iowa at the free-throw line, wrapping up a 16-of-19 game by hitting six straight over the final 1 minute, 2 seconds.

The Illini's best touch of the season at the line allowed them to pull away from the 52-45 lead it took when Pruitt was credited with the last of his team-high 18 points with 1:48 left after Tate swatted away a shot that didn't appear to be headed for the basket.

"I didn't think it was going down," said Iowa coach Todd Lickliter, whose opinion was shared by Weber. "That's the way things went."

That's the way things went throughout the game for the Hawkeyes, who followed their sharpest-shooting performance of the season during a game at Penn State on Wednesday with an icy 35.9 percent touch on Saturday.

Iowa was even worse from 3-point range, hitting just 3 of 16 attempts.

"They were more physical than we expected. They made it hard to get an open 3 or even set anything up," Hawkeye freshman Jake Kelly said.

Weber believed his team never allowed Iowa to get in a rhythm offensively, and Lickliter wasn't in any mood to disagree.

"I think that we're somewhat proving that if we're on top of our game, we're competitive," Lickliter said. "If we're not, if we miss assignments, it doesn't matter what the standings say, we won't be able to compete with any team."

Iowa (12-18, 5-12 Big Ten) fell behind seven minutes into the game, needed to score the final five points of the first half to trail by a 29-23 score at the break and trailed by a dozen before slicing into the Illinois lead during the final 10 minutes.

"I think we didn't think this would be tough. I think we thought that with it being senior day and all that the emotion from that would carry over. It didn't," Hawkeye forward Seth Gorney said.

Illinois (12-17, 4-12) distanced itself from Iowa shortly after Justin Johnson hit his only 3-pointer of the game to pull the Hawkeyes within a 15-14 score midway through the first half.

Calvin Brock answered from behind the arc on the Illini's next possession, fueling a 12-2 run that left Illinois in control.

"They came out and were the aggressor from the start," said Tony Freeman, who led all scorers with 21 points. "They were denying everything. They didn't give us a chance."

For once, Illinois players were more than happy to hear that.

"We talked a lot about playing with energy, playing hard and we did that all the way to the end," Meacham said. "Today, it made a difference."

Steve Batterson can be reached at (563) 383-2290 or sbatterson@qctimes.com.