Keeler: NCAA Tournament refs sure love them some Caitlin Clark. But that’s not why CU Buffs got smoked in Sweet 16.

ALBANY, N.Y. —  The flop was so brazen, so shameless, LeBron James winced.

In soccer, it’s a straight red for simulation. In boxing, it’s a dive in the fifth round.

In the NCAA Tournament?

It’s a ticket punched to the Elite Eight.

“We knew, going into it, (that) Number 00 was going to go full head of steam when she had a wide-open drive,” Iowa guard Kyle Feuerbach told me Saturday when I asked about her collision with CU Buffs standout Jaylyn Sherrod.

“So I was kind of going into it, expecting her to drive. And my goal was to take the charge.”

She got it. Even though, at game speed, Feuerbach appeared to start falling before Sherrod, who landed her third foul, had even touched her.

“I was out in the perimeter waiting to see if she was going to pass it to me or take the shot herself,” CU guard Frida Formann recalled of the incident, which came with 4:31 left in the third quarter of the Buffs’ 89-68 defeat.

“I don’t know if (Feuerbach) was in position. I didn’t even see it. But those type of calls can (be) kind of a momentum shift.”

This one shifted the Buffs straight from fifth gear to reverse. CU had been on a 10-4 run at the time, whittling a 19-point Hawkeyes lead down to 13, turning defense into run-outs the other way.

They were denied a bunny that would’ve cut that bad boy to 10 or 11, potentially. Call the blocking foul, and maybe we’ve got a ballgame. Maybe the Buffs (24-10) make the Hawks work for that LSU rematch on Monday, instead of coasting downhill to glory.

“Yeah, it would’ve been a nice, little, just momentum change to get an and-1 (for Sherrod) and just get to settle down and have a huddle,” sighed Formann, who finished with 12 points and three 3-pointers. “Instead, it was, ‘All right, go the other way, go play defense again.’

“Their offense is so good, we don’t want to play defense more than we have to. We don’t want to give them extra possessions on turnovers or on (offensive) boards.”

CU can play with Iowa (32-4) eight times out of 10. This turned into one of those other two times. Quickly. And yeah, the refs were all over the place. But they’re not why the Buffs got run out of MVP Arena.

Tough afternoon for Ralphie. Tougher one for conspiracy theorists. CU actually went to the charity stripe more times (14-13) than Iowa. Caitlin Clark was “held” to 29 points, yet didn’t shoot a single free throw.

CU’s predilection for missing layups (37.5% shooting) and foul shots (eight whiffs on those 14 tries) proved more culpable than the zebras, in hindsight.

Although ESPN gets Iowa-LSU on Monday. You’re telling me Mickey Mouse wouldn’t have given his left ear to show Clark dueling with Angel Reese again?

“Our little guards were doing so well on her,” Formann said of Clark. “But if you look at what they’re doing too long, all of a sudden, you’ve lost your man and they’re open. (Iowa is) just really good at running their offense, (and at) really exploiting every single thing they can every single matchup.”

For all the ink Clark gets, and deservedly, as a Steph Curry clone, she did the Buffs in with moves straight from The Gospel of Nikola Jokic.

When CU doubled her, she knew exactly where the help was coming from, shifting the rock to an open shooter. It was the kind of high-IQ, two-chess-moves-ahead stuff the Joker spoils us with routinely.

“She is (like Jokic),” Hawkeyes forward and former Grandview star Addison O’Grady told me after the game. “She’s got a super-high basketball IQ, higher than anyone I’ve ever played with or ever seen. She just knows where everyone’s going to be every single time. She knows when people can knock down open shots.”

Clark plays at one gear. Her brain works on another. If someone’s on her tight, she’ll either pop from distance with a line-drive laser from 25 feet or find a human shield, such as O’Grady, as a screener and drain an easy layup.

The Buffs’ Kindyll Wetta is as tenacious a defender as you’ll find in the Pac-12, or what’s left of it. But with four minutes until halftime, Clark turned the corner on her, keeping Wetta on stuck on her hip while leaving the other hand free for a lay-in that extended Iowa’s lead to 40-26.

Four minutes into the second half, Clark sensed a CU double team coming at the top of the arc, waited for the second defender to close, and swung the ball to an open teammate in Kate Martin. The Hawkeye guard drained a triple that put the top-seeded Hawks up 54-35, giving Clark one of her 15 assists on the day. On the sideline, Buffs coach JR Payne clapped her hands together in frustration, whispered a “dang it” to herself — although we’d expect the language was a lot stronger than that — and called for a timeout.

“(The Hawkeyes) spread the floor with shooters,” explained Formann, who passed Bianca Smith (2006-10) as CU’s all-time leader in 3-pointers. “I don’t think it’s unbeatable. I just think that we weren’t as disciplined as we wanted to be. With this game I think we were super ready. We believed in ourselves. But they just played a better game.”

Cripes, Iowa’s good. Dang good. Smart. Quick. Tough. Poised. And, occasionally, a little sneaky.

“Could be a hit or a miss,” Feuerbach said of her flop. Then she smiled. Knowingly. “I’m glad it went that way.”