IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Iowa opened its final nonconference homestand by slogging its way to victory over a team that didn’t play like it came in with nine losses.

Tyler Cook scored 18 points, Luka Garza added 15 and No. 23 Iowa beat Western Carolina 78-60 on Tuesday for its third consecutive win.

Freshman Joe Wieskamp scored 10 points for the Hawkeyes (9-2), who forced 26 turnovers and led by as many as 27 points.

“I thought we fought,” Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said. “We had to fight.”

Iowa knew that Western Carolina could give it a game after the Catamounts took Furman — the team a spot below the Hawkeyes in this week’s AP Top 25 — to double overtime.

Iowa mostly dashed Western Carolina’s hopes early, using a 28-10 first-half run to go ahead 48-29 — even though the Catamounts shot 65 percent from the field. The Hawkeyes slowly pulled further ahead in the second half, as Maishe Dailey’s layup helped push the lead to 65-38. But the undersized Catamounts kept fighting to make the final score look closer than the game really was.

“They didn’t have enough size to guard all of us,” Cook said.

Marc Gosselin had 17 points for the Catamounts (3-10), the first team in the Southern conference to hit the 10-loss mark.

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Western Carolina plays at Bowling Green on Friday.

Iowa hosts Savannah State on Saturday.