Sunday Reading Room: Hawkeyes and Cyclones basketball headed in right direction. Like Iowa, Missouri is a tight end mecca.

It has been a long time since I watched an Iowa State-Iowa men's basketball game as entertaining as Friday's.

Look, those two teams are flawed. If they weren't, they would still have Greg McDermott and Todd Lickliter coaching them. But, they're a lot easier on the eyes this year.

Iowa, besides moving to a more-palatable style to watch, has more talent. Melsahn Basabe had the most-dominant half of ball from a Hawkeye frontline player I can remember in eons. It was Reggie Evans on the glass, Acie Earl blocking shots, and pick whoever you want putting the ball in the basket.

That kind of dried up in the second half, but still, what a game for a freshman.

ISU guard Scott Christopherson had a shooting night that made me think of a former Cyclone on one of his best nights, and he had a lot of "best nights." That would be Hoiberg.

But here's who I really enjoyed watching: Point guard Diante Garrett. That man was horrible shooting the ball. He was 5-of-24, and I think he was 1-of-13 in the first half. Yet, he never went into a shell, and kept doing the other things his team needed from him. His dribbling is as good as I've seen from a point guard in this state in a while, and I rate Northern Iowa's Kwadzo Ahelegbe very high in that department.

Speaking of Lickliter and McDermott, their sons were playing in the state last year and now play in Indiana and Nebraska, respectively.

John Lickliter was a walk-on point guard at Iowa last season. He played in 21 games, most of them in the second half of the season because the Hawkeyes were player-thin. He had nine points in a game against Minnesota, and played 24 minutes at Michigan. He was put in a difficult position, and I thought showed a lot of guts in taking on the challenge he met.

But he didn't belong in Big Ten games. Young Lickliter is now on the team of Division III school Marian University in Indianapolis. He has played in seven of the Knights' (6-3) games, and has played a total of 45 minutes. He has scored nine points.

Creighton has a freshman forward named Doug McDermott who was a senior last year for the state-champion Ames High basketball team. McDermott was committed to play collegiately at Northern Iowa, but was released by UNI to play for his dad at Creighton.

McDermott is the second-leading scorer and rebounder for the 5-4 Bluejays, averaging 12.9 and 5.8, respectively. That is awfully good for a first-year player. Oh, what could have been at UNI, with McDermott and Jake Koch together for three years on the frontline.

The news of last week in Iowa City (you may have heard, a wide receiver, an arrest) took attention away from the Iowa-Missouri Insight Bowl matchup. So here's a little Mizzou stuff for you:

Iowa has been a tight end factory, with all of the Hawkeyes' starting tight ends drafted by NFL teams since Dallas Clark. Well, Missouri is doing pretty well at that position, too.

Mizzou tight end Michael Egnew was named first-team All-America by the Walter Camp Football Association last week. As Vahe Gregorian's St. Louis Post-Dispatch story on the Tigers tells us, it was the third time in four years MU had produced an All-America at the position.

Egnew leads all FBS tight ends in catches with 83. He was voted his team's MVP by his teammates. He was one of 17 Tigers to, pardon the pun, receive votes. He was one of the three finalists for the John Mackey Award, given to the nation's top tight end.

Former Tiger Chase Coffman was the tight end on the all-time All-Big 12 team that was selected two weeks ago. Coffman was an All-America in 2008. He plays for the Cincinnati Bengals.

Martin Rucker, Missouri's All-America tight end in 2007, is now a Dallas Cowboy.

One of several interesting tidbits from Gregorian's story: The Tigers had 16 interceptions, but no player had more than two.

Dan and Matt Hoch of the Missouri team are from Harlan, Iowa. They'll probably be popular interview subjects of the Iowa press in Arizona for the Dec. 28 Insight Bowl. Dan starts at offensive tackle. Matt is a freshman tight end.

Dave Matter of the Columbia Tribune wrote about the Hochs in Sunday's edition. An excerpt:

For a while, Matt Hoch was staunchly pro-Iowa. The summer before his senior season at Harlan High School, he pledged a verbal commitment to Kirk Ferentz's Hawkeyes, picking the home-state school over Missouri, where Dan was about to join the starting lineup as a true sophomore. Last December, though, Matt changed his mind, turning down a chance to play defensive end at Iowa in favor of catching passes at MU.

“I just wanted to have the opportunity to play on offense and make plays,” he said. “Missouri gave me that opportunity here.”