hawkeyecub

The play-by-play guy absolutely will not stop.

Your team usually has to be, you know, good to win Big Ten POY. Usually. He's top 2 in two of them and top six in the other. I don't know when the last time someone was that high in all three but I would venture a guess its been awhile. Did Andre Woolrdige win BTPOY? I know he is the last guy to lead the conference in assists annd points. No he was robbed by Bobby Jackson from Minnesota. Iowa also finished 2nd to Minnesota that year. Of course Minnesota later had that title stripped for massive academic fraud which I believe Jackson was involved in. Iowa should have had the POTY and their first regular season basketball title in 18 years. That team really got hosed all around. They were 22-9, 12-6 in the Big Ten but got stuck with an 8 seed somehow. Beat Virginia in the first round and lost a close game to eventual national champion Kentucky in the 2nd round. Tied at halftime, led late in the second half, lost by 6. After the championship Pitino said their toughest game of the tournament was Iowa. Dre was such a stud.

Well they weren't awful last year and did return 84% of their minutes so an improvement to a winning record and around .500 in the Big East was expected. Also you have to look at their Big East schedule thus far. They're 3-0 against DePaul, St. John's and Seton Hall who are a combined 3-20. They've also got two wins over Cincinnati who is probably about a 10th place team. The Syracuse win was nice. They still have 3 games left against Rutgers and South Florida so that should be enough to get them to .500 on it's own. The other 7 games are beastly though.

I may be certifiably insane but I watched the entire 2nd half of the Northwestern/IU game and it was strangely entertaining. Crazy amount of turnovers but they both shot really well. Always funny to hear the clearly audible airball chants toward a Northwestern player at home. What a horrible foul by Dumes at the end. What's the over/under on "pepperpot" references to Moore if Lavin ever does an IU game?

Ugh Cyrus Tate will likely be out at least the next two games, Michigan State on Thursday and at Illinois on Sunday. MSU will absolutely abuse us inside. Anyways, someone just youtubed the entire Michigan @ Iowa game from Super Bowl Sunday in '93. First home game after Chris Street died. Sophomore year of the Fab Five. Awesome, loud, memorable game that I hadn't seen since then. At the end of the game you can see the beginning of one of the coolest Iowa moments ever.

No points in the last 3 minutes. Same as the Ohio State game where we win if we can hit a shot or two in the last couple minutes. Only 2 buckets in the last 8 minutes I think. Ugh. As bad as this team has looked at times they're an eyelash from 14-6, 4-3 if they close the deal in either of those games. I know that's loser talk and whining. Just frustrated.

That's just a sickening loss. We completely controlled that game for 34 minutes. Then they have a 9-0 run in 1:05. Defense went to sleep, offense got frazzled, PSU couldn't miss and when they did they got the offensive rebound. That really, really sucks. They played so well.

he gets that treatment against most teams, but that's more because he's stronger than everyone. not that it does him any good since he's a bricklayer at the free throw line. that's not exactly what happened but it should've been a no call. I think it's fairly accurate. He was leaning and they were both in contact with each other. Then Pringle threw a shoulder and hip into him and knocked Davis to the floor. Yet Jermain gets the foul? That was an awful call and an automatic two.

First time all year I've complained about officiating but Iowa is getting homered by Penn State and still up 29-22. Apparently it's illegal to breathe on Jamelle Cornley. He got the same treatment out there last year. Jermain Davis is running for a loose ball, gets hip-checked to the floor by Pringle yet gets called for the foul and 2 free throws for Stanley. Gatens, Palmer and Peterson all had to play more limited minutes because of foul trouble. We're playing great d and they're missing some shots but I don't know if we can win this game if the calls don't turn around.

During the Senior Bowl coverage on NFL Network, Mayock was also saying that he likes Pettigrew more than Gresham because Pettigrew is much more complete as a blocker. Anyone here see UNC much this year? Mel has Hakeem Nicks going to the Vikings at 22. I saw him play twice this year (against Notre Dame and their bowl against WVU) and he was a monster in both games. Apparently speed is the knock on him.

Zach is on fire

That was a really rewarding win. It was fun to see them actually play good basketball again and beat a decent team without being at full strength. That's what can happen when they take care of the ball. Fuller's Tayshaun Prince-like play and the technical it resulted in was huge. We finally hit some shots late after missing a ton of open 3's. Defense was outstanding. Lickliter said they wanted to foul on that last play but then there was too much separation and not enough time to give the foul before the 3. Gatens or Peterson could have iced it if either had made both free throws at the end. The David Palmer saga is just so odd.

Go to hell. I'm getting the itch already and am relegated to hitting up the simulator for another 2 months at least.

Anthony Tucker was ruled academically ineligible today and will miss the rest of the season. He was an honor roll kid at a decent school in high school who apparently just got lazy. He was still Iowa's leading scorer despite getting limited minutes since coming down with mono. This is in addition to Cyrus Tate's high ankle sprain that's caused him to miss the last 3 games plus at least tonight, Jake Kelly's broken middle finger on his shooting hand (and shin splints) and Jeff Peterson's broken bone in his wrist. My entire outlook has gone up in flames the last two weeks. Trouble.

Weaker than Nick Smith? Not trash talk, serious question.

I wish we would stop getting worse.

I don't want the rules changed to make the tournament "better." I just don't want them changed to make the tournament worse. We'll agree to disagree. I agree that it stinks for that team, it just doesn't bother me much. At least not enough to want one of the best 40 teams in the country (who could do some damage) removed.

This is fine with me, but a better idea is to cut the # of at-large bids to 33. I would much rather see a team like Villanova (last year) get in than some sacrificial 16th seed that's going to lose by 30 in the first round. They were possibly the last team in last year and got to the Sweet 16. Changing it so the play-in game is between bubble teams just means a team that was a 16 seed will now be a 15 seed. Plus it would be more difficult to determine the seed and how they would fit in the bracket with the rules they have in place. as I said, make two bubble teams play-in for a #12 or #11 seed. It's pretty crappy to tell two schools who earned their way into the tourney "sorry, we know you won, but really, you suck, so go play in Dayton" Too often, the bubble teams earned their way into the tourney far more than the play-in winners, normally middle of the road (at best) teams in their always-crappy conference that got hot for three days. tough. if winning your conference tournament is an automatic berth to the tourney, they shouldn't have to win an extra game to get to the weekend. it's crap. In most cases, the bubble teams are on the bubble because they lost some games they shouldn't have. It doesn't really make a difference to me whether the Big East gets 8 teams in instead of 9. And often the teams playing in the play-in game are below or slightly above AND coming from an awful conference. I have no idea why you would rather see a team that's going to lose by 30 points get in the tournament rather than a team that could legitimately get to the Sweet 16 or further. How does that make the tournament better? So we can all be happy that they won their conference tourney, play up the David vs. Goliath angle and talk about what a thrill it is for them to be there before they get absolutely drubbed?

This is fine with me, but a better idea is to cut the # of at-large bids to 33. I would much rather see a team like Villanova (last year) get in than some sacrificial 16th seed that's going to lose by 30 in the first round. They were possibly the last team in last year and got to the Sweet 16. Changing it so the play-in game is between bubble teams just means a team that was a 16 seed will now be a 15 seed. Plus it would be more difficult to determine the seed and how they would fit in the bracket with the rules they have in place.

You cannot make this stuff up. You just can't.

I can't remember seeing a Wisconsin team make so many mental errors and struggle with the press like they did down the stretch. They even got bailed out (like usual) with some weak foul calls in the last 3-4 minutes. Westbrook just took that thing over.

He called it on the dude defending in the post who gave a little shove to the back before the ball arrived. The only problem with that was he waited to call it a full second and a half later once Moore came down and stripped the ball. Weak. Chris Kramer is such a tool. The way they react after every foul is so annoying. If you want to play that style of defense, great. Just realize that you could be called for a foul every possession. Usually at least 2 guys.

he'll say go Pro. they interviewed him before the Rose Bowl and he more or less said that he encourages his kids to go pro if their draft stock is high. yeah and this is the perfect time for him to go. it's a weak qb class and he probably projects to be the #2 qb selected, behind stafford. next year he'd be picked behind mccoy, bradford, and possibly a couple other guys. Really? I would think he'd be a better pro than both of those guys. i guess you might think that, but consensus around the league does not agree with you. Bradford maybe, but not McCoy. Maybe I'm wrong but I think the NFL thinks and will think more highly of Sanchez than Colt.

He is..... not good. Neither is anyone else in the OVC. It's a mediocre I-AA, excuse me, FCS conference. Change of scenery and playing at a lower level could do him a lot of good. He has a very strong arm, decent mobility and current players still rave about his leadership, even off the record. '07 just completely shot his confidence and changed him as a QB. He took 46 sacks (more than a few were his fault, but the line could not protect) and became totally gun-shy. He got happy feet and extremely indecisive. Could not execute touch throws and had poor accuracy. Still I think the tools are there for him to be a good 1-AA QB if he gets his confidence back.

So we're going to have the exact same Heisman finalists next year.