Iowa to officially retire Luka Garza’s number during Michigan State game

What was announced before Luka Garza’s Iowa men’s basketball playing career had even ended will become a formality this month. University of Iowa Athletics will officially retire the National Player of the Year’s No. 55 during a halftime ceremony at the Feb. 22 Michigan State-Iowa game at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

Iowa announced it will also retire the jerseys of the late Roy Marble, Murray Wier and Chuck Darling, with the family members of Marble and Wier in attendance for recognition about 15 minutes before the 6 p.m. game.

Iowa said those jerseys, as well as all other retired numbers and jerseys from the Iowa basketball programs, will join Megan Gustafson’s in the Carver-Hawkeye Arena rafters. Gustafson’s No. 10 has been displayed since a Jan. 26, 2020 ceremony retiring her number, less than a year after her Iowa women’s basketball career ended with National Player of the Year honors.

Gustafson joined Michelle Edwards (30) as Iowa women’s basketball retired number honorees. The other retired Iowa men’s basketball numbers: Ronnie Lester (12), Carl Cain (21), Bill Seaberg (22), Bill Logan (31), Bill Schoof (33), Chris Street (40), Greg Stokes (41) and Sharm Scheuerman (46). B.J. Armstrong’s No. 10 jersey is retired.

“Congratulations to Luka, Murray, Chuck and Roy. Their accomplishments are well documented, and this recognition is well deserved,” Iowa athletics director Gary Barta said in a statement. “This conversation reemerged with the incredible success of Megan and Luka. I’m pleased we took the opportunity to look back at our history, and moving forward all of men’s and women’s honorees will be recognized in the rafters of Carver-Hawkeye Arena.”

Barta announced Garza’s number retirement following the Hawkeyes’ win over Wisconsin on March 7 of last year, the final game of the regular season.

“This is an honor my family and I will never forget,” Garza said in a statement. “I want to thank Mr. Barta, Coach McCaffery and the entire coaching staff, all my teammates, my family, and all of Hawkeye Nation because without them this would not have been possible. It’s a dream come true to have my name and number in the rafters among all of the other Hawkeye greats.”

Garza, now with the NBA’s Detroit Pistons, is the program’s only consensus National Player of the Year and unanimous first-team two-time All-American. He became the program’s career scoring leader with 2,306 points, passing Marble (2,116 from 1986-89) in February of last season.

“We look forward to honoring Luka Garza and his family,” Iowa head coach Fran McCaffery said in a statement. “Luka epitomizes everything that you want in your program. Not just Hawkeye fans, but college basketball fans across the country appreciated his achievements on and off the court for four years, and the way he pursued his dreams.

“It will be great seeing all the retired numbers and jerseys, including the additions of Chuck Darling, Roy Marble, and Murray Weir, hanging in Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Chuck and Murray were our first consensus first-team All-Americans, while Roy was the program’s leading scorer for three decades and won nearly 100 games as a Hawkeye.”

The process of retiring the jerseys of Darling, Marble and Weir comes less than a year after Marble’s son, former Hawkeye Devyn Marble, said in a tweet that he was “in no way affiliated or connected to the university” because of “the amount of disrespect that school has shown me and my family.”

Barta apologized publicly and privately to the Marble family. He said at that time that those three jerseys “through our university process, do not meet the criteria for those retirement requirements,” but that he would “sit down with some of our former players, some of our longtime staff members, historians that have been around here a long time, and really go through and discuss and finalize how we can honor those three, and then make sure there's not somebody else that we're leaving out.”

Here is what Iowa released as its criteria for retiring numbers and jerseys:

Current men’s basketball retired number criteria

Men’s basketball retired jersey criteria:

Women’s basketball retired number criteria:

Women’s basketball retired jersey criteria: