Hlas: Will Iowa’s season be defined Friday?

SEATTLE - Teams that play on Friday in the first week of the NCAA tournament have an advantage. They saw Thursday's games.

Iowa State, a third-seed, was stunned by 14th-seed UAB 60-59 Thursday. One and done and son of a … gun.

Then No. 3-seed Baylor lost to No. 14 Georgia State, and No. 6-seed SMU fell to No. 11 UCLA, both on crazy late-game happenings. And those who are favored to win their NCAA games today were put on notice.

'I don't think anybody should be surprised,” Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery said Thursday at a KeyArena press conference. His seventh-seeded Hawkeyes play 10th-seed Davidson. Many 'experts” are picking the Wildcats to get the 'upset.”

'Anybody in this tournament somehow won their way here,” McCaffery said. 'They won their conference tournament, won their regular-season championship, or they won enough in a difficult league to be here.

'Everybody has great players. And we're playing a team that has the Atlantic 10 Player of the year. It's got other all-conference players.”

That said, will Iowa's season be deemed less than successful if it is beaten today?

'That's a good question,” Hawkeye guard Mike Gesell said. 'I'll have to think about that.”

'That's a tough question,” Iowa senior forward Aaron White replied. 'In one word, no.”

'This tournament is the culmination of a season,” said Hawkeye junior forward Jarrod Uthoff, 'so I don't think too much is put on this. You work all year to get to this tournament. The end result is, this is it. … This is a huge part of the season.”

How will Iowa State be remembered, for reaching the Top Ten, going 12-6 in the Big 12, winning its league's tournament? Or for a balky performance in a first-round NCAA flameout?

The 2000-01 Cyclones won the Big 12's regular-season title. Is that remembered more than them losing as a No. 2 seed to 15th-seed Hampton in the first round of the NCAAs? Definitely not.

In 2006, Iowa tied for second in the Big Ten regular-season, won the league's tourney, and lost in the first round of the NCAAs to 14th-seed Northwestern State. You know which part of that resume has burned the brightest in Hawkeye minds since then.

To whom much is expected, much is criticized when things go awry. Iowa State and Northern Iowa got a lot of favorable national attention this week. Iowa is just a face in the 68-team crowd, something that can be changed with wins over Davidson and, presumably, Gonzaga.

After saying a defeat today won't define the season, White added the following:

'We've had a lot of success to get here. We've had a good year. Had a lot of ups, a couple downs. I think we've gotten better as the season's gone on.

'Obviously, you want to cap off the season and do well in the postseason. It's extremely important to me and our team that we do well in this tournament. I'll be disappointed in the season if we don't play well and make something happen.”

Iowa is 21-11. It went 12-6 and tied for third in the Big Ten, its best finish in nine years. It won six straight conference games for the first time in 28 years.

But if the Hawkeyes follow their opening-round Big Ten tourney loss to Penn State with an opening-round NCAA defeat to Davidson? Wouldn't this be viewed as a hollow season?

'That's other peoples' opinions,” said Iowa center Adam Woodbury. 'That's not the opinion of our locker room. We look at the whole body of work, what we've done over the whole course of the season.”

But they know. They need a win today.

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