On a night when Iowa may have needed a win to earn an invitation to the NCAA tournament, they got it.

The Hawkeyes came back from an 11-point halftime deficit to beat Ohio State 76-66 in the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals on Friday night.

“This was a huge win for us,” said Iowa coach Steve Alford. “We thought the kids really battled back in the second half. In the first half, whether it was nerves or whatever it was, I don’t know. That was not typical of us.”

The Hawks, who finished the season with a overall record of 19-11and a conference record of 7-9, were led by freshman Glen Worley, who scored 18 points and senior Dean Oliver, who finished with 16.

“We came in here and we knew we had a fresh start,” said Oliver. “Our outlook coming in was that we wanted to win a championship. Now we’ve had a couple positive things happen and we want to keep it going.”

OSU co-captain Ken Johnson, who was in foul trouble halfway through the first half, was only able to play 16 minutes in the game. Johnson was not the only player in foul trouble; 57 fouls were called in the game, 36 of which came in the second half.

“I was trying to stay out of foul trouble,” said Johnson. “I didn’t do a good job of doing that and I wasn’t able to play well.”

The Buckeyes (20-10 overall, 11-6 Big Ten) came out hot at the beginning of the game and went into the locker room leading 33-22, but they were never able to get into any sort of rythym after halftime.

Iowa first took the lead with 7:29 remaining in the game on two Oliver free throws. They never trailed again, going on a 19-12 run to end the game.

Leading the Buckeyes were junior co-captain Brian Brown, with 18 points, and junior forward Boban Savovic who added 12.

Iowa will move on in the tournament and take on Penn State, who upset no. 3 Michigan State earlier in the evening, on Saturday afternoon. OSU will head home and wait until Sunday evening to find out where they will be heading for the NCAA tournament.

“I think we should be in the tournament, I’m just dissapointed by our performance tonight,” said OSU coach Jim O’Brien.