Hlas column: A healthy victory for Hawkeyes and Lickliter

IOWA CITY - No one on the Iowa men's basketball team has hoisted a white flag. Least of all its coach.

You come back from what Todd Lickliter has dealt with in the last few weeks, you can brush off chirping from the outside world about a green team and a program that's still trying to push forward in its third year.

Coaching a high-profile Hawkeyes squad is stressful enough. But factor in all the criticism that's always at your fingertips if you choose to find it, and it doesn't rank among life's healthiest endeavors.

Lickliter's wellness was in serious danger early this month. He went from bad headaches to a neurologist to the university's hospital. On Dec. 5, the same day his team played a home game and virtually no one in Carver-Hawkeye Arena knew what was going on with the coach, he had surgery for the start of a tear in the carotid artery.

That's the blood vessel that carries oxygenated blood from the heart to the neck and head. A rather vital vessel.

As sudden diagnoses go, they don't get much scarier.

So Lickliter missed three games as he recovered from the procedure. His team, off to a shaky enough start this season, got whomped at Northern Iowa and Iowa State. And the world didn't end.

Saturday, with the coach back on the sideline, the Hawkeyes held off Drake in Carver, 71-67. It was a very satisfying win for coach and team.

No, Drake isn't Duke. No, Iowa still isn't an upper-division Big Ten team and probably won't be this season barring one of the greatest surprise stories in Hawkeye history.

But there was no cave-in from Iowa's players Saturday against a Bulldogs team that came to play. Iowa had a 10-point lead get whittled to two with as late as 19 seconds left, and didn't panic or choke.

It was something. It was progress.

"I'm appreciative," Lickliter said. "It was a good win."

It really was. Several of his freshmen and sophomores - the core of his club - had good games and looked like major-college players. Sophomore Anthony Tucker stuck five 3-pointers and had three assists. Freshman forward Eric May had 10 points in the final 11 minutes. Point guard Cully Payne played 35 poised minutes.

Sophomore guard Matt Gatens was terrific, with 18 points, 9 rebounds, 5 assists, and 40 minutes played.

"I like being out there," Gatens said, and it showed Saturday.

Someone else enjoyed being in the arena. His coach.

"I missed being here, being with the guys," Lickliter said. "You know, what's good about it is it just makes you thankful.

"I'm thankful my prayers were answered and I had a medical team that was so good, that they found it and that there was a way to correct it."

Lickliter isn't walking away from further stress, though. This building project he's involved with has bumps and lumps ahead. There could be plenty of figurative headaches once Big Ten play begins in nine days, with a league that looks as good as it's been in a while.

But after you've had a stent successfully inserted in your carotid artery and are once again a 54-year-old person working a job that requires vitality? It might make building and coping seem a bit less like, well, life and death.

"Maybe things that seemed very important or very disturbing maybe aren't quite as important or disturbing," Lickliter said.

Saturday, for a change, was about smiles after a Hawkeyes game. Healthy smiles.