Did fatigue really do in Iowa’s basketball team?

The word Iowa men's basketball players are using to describe their late-season swoon is 'fatigue.”

I want to get this out there first: If there's anyone in college sports who deserve to be cut some slack, it's the players. My rule of thumb is to not knock a college player unless he or she does something knuckle-headed. They aren't getting paid.

And the following isn't a rip on the players who made these comments or their teammates. It isn't. I just don't understand how or why Iowa's team was any more worn down than the teams it played, or the other 67 teams in the NCAA tournament.

In interviews that The Gazette's Scott Dochterman recorded Thursday night, the following things were said:

'I think it hit us at the wrong time, the fatigue factor,” Iowa center Gabe Olaseni said. 'Everybody wanted to win. Sometimes your legs can't do what your brain tells you to do.”

'I hate excuses,” Hawkeye forward Aaron White said. 'Obviously, what I went through (playing with Team USA last summer and then being on the Iowa team's summer trip to England and France) is going to wear on you, whether it's physical, whether it's mental. I've kind of had some time to step back from the season and realize maybe I didn't have as much in the tank as I wanted to. But that doesn't mean when I was on the floor I didn't give everything I ever had for the basketball team.”

Now, White wouldn't have been human if he wasn't worn down by last March. It was an intense year for him with all the summer activity. Two years, actually, since the team played into early April the season last year by reaching the NIT final.

But the Iowa team as a whole? It didn't play any more or practice any more than any other team that reached the NCAAs or NIT last season.

As for playing so deep into the 2012-13 season, an interesting contrast is provided by the team Iowa lost to in the 2013 NIT final, Baylor. The Bears struggled mightily during the season, and were 2-8 at one point in the Big 12. But they finished 9-9, won three times in three days to reach the final of the Big 12 tourney, and beat Nebraska by 14 points and Creighton by 30 in the NCAA tournament.

None of the teams that advanced all the way to the 2013 NCAA Final Four - Louisville, Michigan, Syracuse and Wichita State - seemed adversely affected by fatigue the following season.

And as for taking foreign trips, which the NCAA allows teams to do once every four years? As this story in SportingNews.com details, Teams that traveled in the summer of 2010 averaged 23.3 wins in the 2010-11 season, compared to 21.1 the season before.

Plus, those foreign trips aren't anything resembling intense.

Last summer, Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery acknowledged the potential of a draining year ahead for his team on the heels of the deep NIT run followed by an overseas trip three months later. He said the coaches had to be smart about giving the players time off and not wearing them down and expressed confidence it wouldn't be a concern.

Here's what's more taxing on the body and mind than fatigue: Adversity.

I'd bet the Miami Heat felt a lot more run down than the San Antonio Spurs entering Game 5 of the NBA Finals.

Iowa was a very good team over its first 25 games. But then the Hawkeyes had the crazy postponement at Indiana followed by a hugely disappointing home loss against Wisconsin. Had they won that night, one can only wonder where things would have gone from there.

Instead, they spiraled, finishing with seven losses in their last eight games.

The Hawkeyes clearly did hit a wall in late February, and never were the same afterward. Players know themselves better than anyone, and if they say they didn't have as much in the tank in March, they didn't have as much in the tank.

But were the reasons really more physical than otherwise? We'll probably never know. Maybe the Hawkeyes won't, either.