By JOHN BOHNENKAMP

IOWA CITY, Iowa — Drew Thelwell looked like he was ready to run up the Carver-Hawkeye Arena tunnel and into the frigid night.

Iowa took 21 3-point attempts in Tuesday’s 72-67 loss to Minnesota, making just three, and Thelwell’s shot from in front of the Hawkeyes’ bench was probably the most open of all of them.

Thelwell caught the ball in transition and shot. It missed, rolling off the rim to Minnesota’s Dawson Garcia, who was fouled on the play.

Thelwell, who was coming out of the game on the dead ball, threw up his hands in frustration as the substitution horn sounded, walking toward the tunnel before stopping to glare nowhere in particular, not believing what he had just seen.

It was that kind of night for the Hawkeyes, not the way to start a four-games-out-of-five home stretch that likely will go a long way toward determining their fate this season.

Iowa sits 12-7 overall, 3-5 in the Big Ten, but it is now moving time in the conference race, and this certainly isn’t progress for the Hawkeyes.

They’ve now dropped three consecutive games — the two games to USC and UCLA on their week-long stay in Los Angeles, and now this one — not the kind of streak to have in the 20-game, 18-team Big Ten schedule.

The Hawkeyes tried to convey confidence, their read on the calendar perhaps different from the outside world.

“Teams go through these funks in the year,” said Iowa senior forward Payton Sandfort. “The only thing that we can do is just stay together. I believe in everybody in that room. I believe in the coaching staff and myself, and there’s a lot of basketball left, a lot of opportunities. So we’ve got to stay together.”

Sophomore forward Owen Freeman sat next to Sandfort in the post-game press conference, head down with a voice that was even lower.

“I’m just frustrated,” said Freeman, who had 21 points on 10 of 14 shooting. “I want to win.”

The main funk for the Hawkeyes seems to be at the beginning of games. They sputtered at the beginning of what turned into a 97-87 win over Nebraska two weeks ago, then buried themselves with slow starts against USC and UCLA.

This one had the same look — Iowa was 1 of 7 from the field in the first 4 ½ minutes, and only the Gophers’ own struggles kept this game from really getting out of hand early. It was 8-8 before Minnesota went on a 13-2 run, giving the Gophers control that they would never surrender.

“There’s no excuse for a start like that,” Sandfort said. “That’s my responsibility. Can’t do that. Got to be better.”

“We played pretty good defense early,” Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said. “We got some stops. We were not scoring the ball.  

Iowa’s shooters had no room to roam, especially in the first half. Sandfort, who would finish with 21 points and 10 rebounds, was only finding shots near the rim in the first half, and many of those fell off. Josh Dix got only five shots in the game, and only one of those was a 3-pointer.

McCaffery wasn’t about to go into detail on why his shooters seemed to get hung up.

“There are some things that I would like to say with regard to that question,” said McCaffery, who brought up at one point during the West Coast swing the lack of calls against Sandfort’s defenders. “Unless you’re ready to start a GoFundMe, I will refrain.”

It was a long time before the Hawkeyes would make a 3-pointer — they missed their first 12 before Seydou Traore broke that skid with a three from the right side with 12:43 left in the game.

“I do think we quick-shot the ball again when we got behind,” McCaffery said. “We were forcing some threes. Some things might have been different with regard to those particular shots, but I would have preferred to see a little more ball movement there.”

Iowa shot 45.9% from the field overall, but it was the failure behind the 3-point arc that made a difference.

“I got fouled four or five times,” Sandfort said. “Pretty upset about that. Outside of that, we just didn’t get many good looks, which is just the way it goes. Sometimes when you have nights like that, you’ve got to find another way to win, which, of course, we couldn’t do.”

The Hawkeyes did rally, getting to within three points twice in the final margin. But, with a chance to get to within two or one in the final 10 seconds, Traore missed the front end of a one-and-bonus.

The Hawkeyes tried to show confidence.

“We’ll get it turned around,” McCaffery said. “It’s a good group. The league’s brutal. We’ve just got to learn from the losses, just like we learn from the wins.

“The guys in the locker room, we’ve got guys with great character, great basketball players,” Freeman said. “We’re going to build on this, and we’re going to come back stronger.”

“There’s not much to say,” Sandfort said. “A lot of guys are making big sacrifices. When things like that happen, it pays off in the end. You’ve just got to keep believing that.”

Photo: Iowa’s Seydou Traore tries for the tip-in in the first half of Tuesday’s game. (Stephen Mally/hawkeyesports.com)