By JOHN BOHNENKAMP

DES MOINES, Iowa — It has been clear, ever since seeing his team in practice, that Ben McCollum’s first Iowa men’s basketball team was going to be aggressive on defense.

There’s aggressiveness, and there’s the fury the Hawkeyes displayed in Saturday’s 94-39 win over Bucknell at the Casey’s Center.

Iowa (10-2) trailed the Bison 10-2 with 3 ½ minutes gone in the game, then went on a 26-3 run to take control of the game. The Hawkeyes followed that with a 19-0 run in the second half.

And it all came because of the defense. The points allowed were the lowest for a Hawkeye team since UNC-Wilmington scored 39 in 2013.

Iowa held Bucknell to just 36.6% shooting for the game, 30.4% in the second half. The Hawkeyes forced 25 turnovers, and recorded 19 steals, the most for the program since a 19-steal game against SIUE in 2013. Forty of Iowa’s points came off turnovers.

“I thought our hand activity was fantastic,” McCollum said. “That was the key to the game, making sure that we got deflections. And I thought that we did a good job of that. They run a lot of plays, and they run really good plays, and so we knew that we had to disrupt those.”

“We were not really trying to get steals,” said guard Isaia Howard, who had a career-high seven steals. “I would just say we were doing our defensive principles, staying together as a team. Just trying to keep heat on the ball, trying to get deflections.”

The Hawkeyes came into the game ranked eighth nationally in scoring defense at 61.8 points per game. They lead the Big Ten in turnovers forced at 14.8 per game and are second in turnover margin at plus-4.8.

The defensive improvement just in these first 12 games is noticeable to McCollum, and he expected it.

“About five, six years ago, I started noticing, early in seasons, defensively, we just weren’t as good as I wanted them to be,” McCollum said. But I noticed over time, as we guard more and more different types of teams, different types of actions, we stick with our same basic principles, and then we just tweak minor things. Like, maybe we’ll switch a back screen, or maybe we’ll get a little more active on this ball screen. Maybe we’ll trap this one. Maybe we’ll do that so our guys get more comfortable with those schemes, and then, because we don’t change very much, they can do those schemes, and they can execute the minor details, which is what you’re seeing now.”

“I would say it’s us staying together as a team, I think that’s the biggest thing,” said forward Alvaro Folgueiras, who led the Hawkeyes with 17 points. “Keeping our energy up on both sides of the floor, but mostly defensively — ball pressure, hand activity.”

Bucknell struck early, forcing McCollum to take a timeout to settle his team.

“They just probably hit us in the mouth to start,” McCollum said. “Kind of woke us up.”

What came next was Iowa’s defense just smothering the Bison.

Folgueiras had 10 consecutive points in that early run, but the Hawkeyes were swarming Bucknell on the other end. Iowa forced five turnovers in that run.

Howard provided the defensive lift off the bench.

“It’s just what he is, that’s who he is —  that energy and effort and kind of impose-your-will mentality,” McCollum said. “He is what our program is — it brings an edge to him, brings a fight. He doesn’t have bad days in practice. And he’s only a sophomore, so the sky’s the limit for his ability. But yeah, he brings a lot of juice off the bench for us, and he did tonight for sure.”

Tavion Banks had 16 points and a team-high nine rebounds for the Hawkeyes. Kael Combs had 13 points.

Attendance was listed as 8,177.

“It was dope,” Howard said. “We had a lot of fans come out. We really appreciate that. It was a lot of fun seeing all the fans out. And it just brings a lot of energy when we have fans in the arena.”

“I really thank the people for coming here in Des Moines,” Folgueiras said. “I know the Hawkeyes were everywhere, all over the state, and it’s really, really cool to feel it that way. And it was special when the game didn’t start in our way, but as soon as the things started to be good for the team, they were loud, they were there, and they showed up.”

“It was fun,” McCollum said. “I was just really pleased with the crowd, the turnout, for a game at five o’clock Saturday afternoon when there’s a lot of other games on. I was pleased with that. We need to get those same people to (Carver-Hawkeye Arena). I’m going to convince them to not sit down ever — get some major cheering going on, because it’s fun to watch. It’s fun to be a part of, and hopefully get Carver rocking.”

Photo: Iowa’s Cam Manyawu (left) and Tate Sage (right) block a shot from Bucknell’s Grgur Brcic in Saturday’s game. (Stephen Mally/hawkeyesports.com)