Hawkeye hoops' long, short off-season is over

If it seems like this was the shortest off-season ever for the Iowa men's basketball team, it's because it was. Easily.

This is the first time the Hawkeyes have started a season as early as Nov. 8. That's coming off a season that ended on April 4 in the NIT championship game. The latest Iowa had played before that was March 25, in 1983 and 1988.

Yet, this probably felt like a long gap between basketball games for Hawkeye fans, who started expressing enthusiasm for the coming season about three minutes after Iowa's loss to Baylor in that NIT final.

The hype around here for this season's Hawkeyes is unlike any since 2001, when the team was coming off a Big Ten tournament title in Steve Alford's second season as Iowa's coach.

The Hawkeyes proceeded to go 5-11 in the Big Ten. That won't happen this season, and not just because the league has 18 conference games now.

But the realities that will at least occasionally pop up between now and March are these: Iowa isn't a perfect squad, and the Big Ten still has several excellent teams and coaches. Still, this is an NCAA team on paper, and its ceiling isn't low.

This isn't Michigan State, Ohio State or Wisconsin, where first-division Big Ten finishes and NCAA runs are yearly events. So, as Al McGuire liked to say, right now it's all seashells and balloons, and it starts Friday night in Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

Hawkeyes Coach Fran McCaffery guested on “On Iowa Live” Monday night and sold his team's nonconference schedule as a big glob of goodness. But like just about every other major-college team, it has a bunch of bunnies.

Starting with North-Carolina Wilmington, Nebraska-Omaha, Maryland Eastern Shore, Abilene Christian and Pennsylvania are what you would call opening slowly. It's the stuff of November college basketball, and it helps put a bigger number in the wins column of the big boys.

Those five teams had a combined record of 46-102 last season. Abilene Christian's 12-14 was the best of the bunch, but the Wildcats were a Division II team that now is transitioning into D-I. Nebraska-Omaha is coming off its first season in D-I. After a slow start last season, it won six of its last 10 games.

Maryland Eastern Shore was 2-26. The best record the team has had in the last decade is 11-21.

UNC-Wilmington has been to the NCAAs four times since 2000, but is 43-84 over the last four seasons.

Penn has a rich basketball history. It was only 9-22 last year, but was picked to finish second in the Ivy League this year by a media panel.

The Quakers have a senior forward named Fran Dougherty, who averaged 13.8 points last season. In 1982, Penn had a tall senior point guard named Fran McCaffery. He led the Ivy League in steals and assists, and his team went to the NCAAs.

Two, maybe three Iowa's first five opponents will put up fights, but the Hawkeyes will be 5-0 when they head to the Caribbean to face Xavier, either Tennessee or UTEP, and then maybe Kansas.

So this long-awaited season officially starts Friday in Iowa City. Unofficially, though, it begins Nov. 28 in Nassau.