JonDMiller
Publisher/Founder
Iowa's game against #6 Ohio State on Saturday is the most important or significant Iowa basketball game since March 17th, 2006.
That's the day Iowa entered the 2006 NCAA tournament as a #3 seed. Iowa had just won the Big Ten tournament, beating regular season champion Ohio State for the second time in three tries that year. The Hawkeyes were flying high, it was Iowa's second straight NCAA tournament appearance under Steve Alford and the program was finally showing signs that it had found its legs.
Then Iowa went out and blew a 17-point lead with eight and a half minutes to play and 14th seed Northwestern State hit a three-pointer at the buzzer to pull the 64-64 upset.
Since that loss and up to the start of this year, Iowa has averaged just 13.2 wins per season to go along with 18.4 losses. Prior to the start of the 2007-2008 season, Iowa had never lost more than 16 games in a season. Since then, they have lost 17 or more four straight years, including 20 or more the past two seasons.
Iowa fans have lived through the worst five year stretch in Iowa basketball history over these past five campaigns, which makes Saturday's game at home against Ohio State so significant.
The Hawkeyes have won two consecutive Big Ten road games leading into this contest. This, after an out of conference stretch that saw Iowa lose by 16 points to Campbell and where Iowa was buried by Creighton, Iowa State and Northern Iowa.
Iowa fans came into this season with some optimism, but it rode out of town on back of a Camel...a Campbell Fighting Camel, to be precise.
Then something amazing happened, or at least amazing by recent Iowa basketball standards. Iowa fought to the end in a three-point Big Ten opening loss against Purdue, only to bounce back one week ago to beat Wisconsin at the Kohl Center. That's a place where the Badgers had been 59-1 against unranked teams in that building's existence and a place Iowa had not won in since 2000.
That win raised a few eyebrows in Hawkeye Nation, but some wrote it off as a fluke; Wisconsin hit just 3-28 three-point shots.
Everyone has a bad game, right?
However, some Iowa fans made an appointment to tune in to watch Iowa play at Minnesota this past Wednesday due to that win. They were rewarded with another Hawkeye road win, the first such back to back road winning streak in years as Iowa beat the Gophers by two in The Barn.
Wisconsin was ranked 11th in the nation at the time and is a better team than Minnesota, but the win against the Gophers was just as important as the win against the Badgers and in some ways more so; people tuned in to check out the Iowa basketball team and for the first time in a long time, they delivered.
That's the kind of thing that can signal a program's return to relevance, or at the very least, a sign that the program has directions to that road.
Which is why Saturday's game against Ohio State is the biggest game for the Iowa basketball program in nearly six years.
Every Iowa fan I know is going to be watching this one. A lot of fans I know are going to be at this game. As of Friday evening, less than 1,000 tickets remained for this contest and with a good walk up effort, the game may reach sellout status.
I have a hunch that the environment in the arena to start the game will be unlike anything an Iowa fan has experienced since that 2006-2006 season.
It's human nature to take things for granted, to assume that since things have always been a certain way, they will always be a certain way. Iowa basketball fans know better.
Time was when less than 15,500 in Carver-Hawkeye was a cause for a column in a newspaper. Now, whenever Iowa gets near 15,500, that's the cause for the column, or several items in the paper as we have seen this week.
There is another bit of human nature at play here, too. When we lose something we have taken for granted, we are desperate to get it back. We are not guaranteed reunions, but when we get them, when the 'Prodigal's Son' returns home, we roll out the fatted calf and have a party with more excitement and exuberance than ever before.
THAT is exactly what I expect to witness on Saturday inside of Carver Hawkeye. I think the fans are going to create an amazing environment, one this team can definitely feed off of.
These are the reasons why this game is so important; the entire Hawkeye Nation will be watching, waiting and wailing at 2pm on Saturday.
When is the last time you adjusted your Saturday schedule in early January to watch an Iowa basketball game? Thought so.
Let me make one distinction here; I am not saying this is a MUST WIN game. It would be foolish to write such a thing when the #6 ranked team is coming to town and the Iowa program is still a long ways away from hanging with the big boys game in and game out, or at least that is what I believe. Should Iowa lose this game, it's not the end of the world and it does not suggest things aren't headed in the right direction, because they most definitely are.
I do think it's important for Iowa to be in the game in the second half, to give the fans in attendance a real reason to want to come back and experience that environment again and again and again.
A good showing on Saturday would be far more valuable to future ticket sales than any six-figure advertising schedule could ever be.
And what if the Hawks win?
If that happens, I may just storm the court right along with everyone else, but let's wait for that to take place before we get too far ahead of ourselves.
This Iowa team needs to fight as hard as they have ever fought and they need to give the fans something to take home with them. The fans are going to show up to do their part and if the team responds in kind, it's going to be a very special day in the old arena.
If that happens, it will be a day you can circle and look back on in a few years and say 'This was when things changed. This was when teams began to fear coming into Carver Hawkeye Arena again. This was when Iowa fans really began to believe again.'
I'll be there and I can't wait for the game to start. After thinking about it, I don't believe I have felt this much excitement about attending an Iowa basketball game in more than 25 years.
That circles back around to taking things for granted. I took Iowa basketball for granted, as I grew up in a golden era of Hawkeye hoops. We've all had that scrubbed clean out of our systems, but we are beginning to sense the beginnings of a grand return.
See you at 2.
That's the day Iowa entered the 2006 NCAA tournament as a #3 seed. Iowa had just won the Big Ten tournament, beating regular season champion Ohio State for the second time in three tries that year. The Hawkeyes were flying high, it was Iowa's second straight NCAA tournament appearance under Steve Alford and the program was finally showing signs that it had found its legs.
Then Iowa went out and blew a 17-point lead with eight and a half minutes to play and 14th seed Northwestern State hit a three-pointer at the buzzer to pull the 64-64 upset.
Since that loss and up to the start of this year, Iowa has averaged just 13.2 wins per season to go along with 18.4 losses. Prior to the start of the 2007-2008 season, Iowa had never lost more than 16 games in a season. Since then, they have lost 17 or more four straight years, including 20 or more the past two seasons.
Iowa fans have lived through the worst five year stretch in Iowa basketball history over these past five campaigns, which makes Saturday's game at home against Ohio State so significant.
The Hawkeyes have won two consecutive Big Ten road games leading into this contest. This, after an out of conference stretch that saw Iowa lose by 16 points to Campbell and where Iowa was buried by Creighton, Iowa State and Northern Iowa.
Iowa fans came into this season with some optimism, but it rode out of town on back of a Camel...a Campbell Fighting Camel, to be precise.
Then something amazing happened, or at least amazing by recent Iowa basketball standards. Iowa fought to the end in a three-point Big Ten opening loss against Purdue, only to bounce back one week ago to beat Wisconsin at the Kohl Center. That's a place where the Badgers had been 59-1 against unranked teams in that building's existence and a place Iowa had not won in since 2000.
That win raised a few eyebrows in Hawkeye Nation, but some wrote it off as a fluke; Wisconsin hit just 3-28 three-point shots.
Everyone has a bad game, right?
However, some Iowa fans made an appointment to tune in to watch Iowa play at Minnesota this past Wednesday due to that win. They were rewarded with another Hawkeye road win, the first such back to back road winning streak in years as Iowa beat the Gophers by two in The Barn.
Wisconsin was ranked 11th in the nation at the time and is a better team than Minnesota, but the win against the Gophers was just as important as the win against the Badgers and in some ways more so; people tuned in to check out the Iowa basketball team and for the first time in a long time, they delivered.
That's the kind of thing that can signal a program's return to relevance, or at the very least, a sign that the program has directions to that road.
Which is why Saturday's game against Ohio State is the biggest game for the Iowa basketball program in nearly six years.
Every Iowa fan I know is going to be watching this one. A lot of fans I know are going to be at this game. As of Friday evening, less than 1,000 tickets remained for this contest and with a good walk up effort, the game may reach sellout status.
I have a hunch that the environment in the arena to start the game will be unlike anything an Iowa fan has experienced since that 2006-2006 season.
It's human nature to take things for granted, to assume that since things have always been a certain way, they will always be a certain way. Iowa basketball fans know better.
Time was when less than 15,500 in Carver-Hawkeye was a cause for a column in a newspaper. Now, whenever Iowa gets near 15,500, that's the cause for the column, or several items in the paper as we have seen this week.
There is another bit of human nature at play here, too. When we lose something we have taken for granted, we are desperate to get it back. We are not guaranteed reunions, but when we get them, when the 'Prodigal's Son' returns home, we roll out the fatted calf and have a party with more excitement and exuberance than ever before.
THAT is exactly what I expect to witness on Saturday inside of Carver Hawkeye. I think the fans are going to create an amazing environment, one this team can definitely feed off of.
These are the reasons why this game is so important; the entire Hawkeye Nation will be watching, waiting and wailing at 2pm on Saturday.
When is the last time you adjusted your Saturday schedule in early January to watch an Iowa basketball game? Thought so.
Let me make one distinction here; I am not saying this is a MUST WIN game. It would be foolish to write such a thing when the #6 ranked team is coming to town and the Iowa program is still a long ways away from hanging with the big boys game in and game out, or at least that is what I believe. Should Iowa lose this game, it's not the end of the world and it does not suggest things aren't headed in the right direction, because they most definitely are.
I do think it's important for Iowa to be in the game in the second half, to give the fans in attendance a real reason to want to come back and experience that environment again and again and again.
A good showing on Saturday would be far more valuable to future ticket sales than any six-figure advertising schedule could ever be.
And what if the Hawks win?
If that happens, I may just storm the court right along with everyone else, but let's wait for that to take place before we get too far ahead of ourselves.
This Iowa team needs to fight as hard as they have ever fought and they need to give the fans something to take home with them. The fans are going to show up to do their part and if the team responds in kind, it's going to be a very special day in the old arena.
If that happens, it will be a day you can circle and look back on in a few years and say 'This was when things changed. This was when teams began to fear coming into Carver Hawkeye Arena again. This was when Iowa fans really began to believe again.'
I'll be there and I can't wait for the game to start. After thinking about it, I don't believe I have felt this much excitement about attending an Iowa basketball game in more than 25 years.
That circles back around to taking things for granted. I took Iowa basketball for granted, as I grew up in a golden era of Hawkeye hoops. We've all had that scrubbed clean out of our systems, but we are beginning to sense the beginnings of a grand return.
See you at 2.
