EVANSTON-After Tuesday night’s early games, the Big Ten as a whole produced just six road wins in 38 conference games.

Unfortunately for Northwestern, two of them have happened at Welsh-Ryan Arena.

Iowa came into Evanston and laid a 75-62 loss on the Wildcats to drop their home record to 1-2 on the season. It was also Northwestern’s fifth loss in six conference games as the shorthanded Wildcats fell further into the Big Ten basement.

This was a game of tempo between Iowa, the top-scoring team in the Big Ten at 79.6 points per game, and Northwestern, the lowest scorers in the league at 66.8.

The Wildcats hung tough into the second half, but their legs got tired and Iowa big man Luka Garza took over as the Hawkeyes to coasted to the win.

The first half was to the Hawkeyes’ liking. They shot 54% from the floor and hit 8 of 15 3-pointers (53%) to take a 41-35 lead at the break.

Northwestern countered Iowa’s sharpshooting by crashing the glass. The Wildcats had a 22-11 edge in rebounds in the opening period and had a commanding 15-2 edge in second-chance points.

As a result, the teams went back-and-forth as the first 20 minutes featured 12 lead changes and five ties.

Iowa maintained their lead in the second half and Northwestern kept hanging around Garza caught fire.

The Big Ten scoring leader poured in 14 straight Iowa points midway through the period to give the Hawkeyes an insurmountable 65-50 lead with 7 minutes left. From that point on, the game was effectively over as Northwestern could only knock two points off of that lead by the final buzzer.

Garza wound up with 27 points to lead all scorers, while Joe Wieskamp and C.J. Frederick each scored 11.

Northwestern was led by Miller Kopp, who scored 15 points, just 1 of those in the second half. Pete Nance had 11 points and a game-high 10 rebounds to notch the game’s only double-double.

Here are our takeaways from the loss that dropped Northwestern to 6-10 overall and 1-5 in the Big Ten:

Garza had two stretches of dominance: Garza came in as the Big Ten’s leading scorer (22.0 ppg) and looked like it the early stages of the game, scoring 10 points by the four-minute mark.

At the first media timeout, Garza alone held a personal 1-point lead over Northwestern, 10-9. The 6-foot-11 center hit his first four shots from the floor: two 3-pointers from the wing, a layup and a jumper in the lane.

The big man then went silent for almost 25 minutes of game time, until scoring again with 11:06 remaining in the second half. That seemed to light a fire as he scored the next 14 Iowa points to push the lead to 15.

In one particularly brutal sequence for Northwestern, Robbie Beran missed a dunk on one end, and Iowa pushed the ball up to Garza who got a layup and a foul on the other end.

In all, Garza scored 17 points in the second half. “Garza is a terrific player,” said NU head coach Chris Collins.

The Cats picked their poison and Iowa made them pay: Collins said that Northwestern was most worried about Garza dominating in the paint, so the Wildcats doubled him in the post whenever they could and tried to pack in their zone defense.

As a result, they gave up some open looks from beyond the arc, and Iowa knocked them down.

Getting Frederick back from injury was key for the Hawkeyes, said Iowa head coach Fran McCaffrey. He, Garza, Connor McCaffrey and Bakari Evelyn combined to go 11 for 17 on 3-pointers. Iowa wound up with 30 points on 10 3-pointers, while Northwestern made just 5 of 17 for 15 total points.

Collins pointed out that the 15-point difference on 3-point shooting nearly matched the final 13-point margin.

The schedule caught up with NU: Collins thought his team ran out of gas in the second half, victims of a brutal stretch in the schedule.

This was Northwestern’s fourth game in 10 days, and two of the games were on the road. With just eight scholarship players available because of injuries, fatigue took a toll on the Wildcats in the second half.

Kopp, for example, went 5 for 11 from the floor in the first half and 0 for 6 in the second. Collins also thought tired legs was the biggest reason for his team’s poor shooting, the rebounding disparity and Garza’s offensive explosion in the second half.

“Energy in second half was not nearly what it was in first,” he said.

Collins called a couple timeouts early in the second, to no avail. He also credited Iowa’s pace of play and ball movement -- the Hawkeyes had 24 assists on 26 baskets -- with running his players ragged.