Hawkeye basketball team was No. 1 in the nation last Saturday

No. 1 in fewest points scored. More on that in a moment.

My mind is still reeling from Iowa's 63-40 men's basketball loss at Purdue Saturday in West Lafayette, Ind.

The road loss to a Big Ten title-contender was to be expected, of course. Iowa was a 19.5-point underdog. But 40 points? Really?

As has been noted, it was the Hawkeyes' lowest scoring output since a game in 1949. There was no 35-second shot clock then.

In 1980, Michigan State came to the Iowa Field House to play a Hawkeyes team that would go on to the Final Four. Jud Heathcote, for reasons I can't remember (I said it was 1980), had his team stall the entire first-half. Again, no shot clock.

Iowa took an 8-6 lead to the locker room for halftime, and those of us in the gym knew we were witnessing something highly abnormal.

Heathcote had his Spartans play basketball in the second half. The game went to overtime, and Iowa prevailed, 44-39. Jud never tried a tactic like that again to my knowledge. Maybe he knew the karma of disrespecting the game like that couldn't be overcome.

But my point is, Iowa still scored more than 40 points despite barely touching the ball in the first halfl!

That thing at Purdue, that wasn't good. How not-good was it? Well, there were 139 games Saturday that involved Division I teams. That's 278 teams. Number One in fewest points scored was, you guessed it, Iowa.

I kid you not. Ten teams besides the Hawkeyes scored in the 40s. Next-lowest to Iowa was Bryant University of Smithfield, R.I., which dropped a 52-42 decision to Robert Morris. Bryant had a second-half lead in that game. Was Robert Morris a team, or someone going one-on-five against the Bulldogs?

Bryant is 0-26. You may remember the Bulldogs, Hawkeye fans. They played at Iowa last season, Bryant's first in Division I. The Hawkeyes prevailed, 61-36.

Bless the Bulldogs' hearts. They scored just 34 points in two of their last four games.

On the other side of the coin Saturday, Cal State Fullerton defeated Cal State Northridge 113-112 in triple-overtime. What kind of crazy basketball are they playing in southern California? Running, and shooting, and (gasp!) scoring?

Do players actually enjoy being part of something like that? How do fans sit through it? It's so hard to follow, with the ball and the athletes moving around constantly.

As of the latest NCAA statistics (through last Thursday), six of of the top eight teams in Division I in scoring offense were Villanova, Kansas, Texas, BYU, Syracuse and Kentucky. They have a combined record of 137-14.

Do you see a pattern there?