Hlas column: Same old ending for Hawkeyes didn't have same old feel

INDIANAPOLIS -- There will come a day in the not-so-distant future when Iowa comes to the Big Ten men's basketball tournament with a team that is called talented, not scrappy.

Scrappy only feeds the bulldog a small part of the time in major-college ball, and scrappy has to be at its scrappiest to knock off the big boys. Talent is what puts a team in the first division of the Big Ten, what wins conference-tourney games, what advances you to the NCAA tournament after your conference-tourney is over.

The mountains, prairies and urban jungles have plenty of scrappy.  Talent, when accompanied by a willingness to work, always has and always will stand out.

The days of being considered talented will come for Fran McCaffery's teams, and perhaps sooner than we think. It may only take the addition of a couple of big-time players to turn this year's 11-20 record on its head, to take the seven games this season that were lost by five points or less and make many of them Iowa's games.

McCaffery got a little sentimental after Iowa's 66-61 Big Ten first-round loss to Michigan State Thursday at Conseco Fieldhouse, saying "how much I love these guys." But sentimentality won't transform 11-20 into 20-11, and it certainly isn't involved as McCaffery and his staff are recruiting with dogged determination these March days.

McCaffery didn't lift three mid-major programs from mediocrity to the NCAA tourney by proceeding slowly. It required teaching and player-development, of course. But it doesn't matter if you're North Carolina-Greensboro or North Carolina-Chapel Hill, you either have the horses or you don't.

Don't even think about what this Hawkeyes club would have looked like this season had McCaffery and staff not dug up junior college point guard Bryce Cartwright, or had it not persuaded prep Melsahn Basabe to switch his college choice from McCaffery's previous employer (Siena) to his current one. It's too gruesome to consider.

Yes, Basabe was lost in the Conseco lights Thursday against the bulkier, more-experienced Spartans frontline. But he's a player, and everyone in the Big Ten knows it.

"I really take this one personally," Basabe said. "I didn't come out and do what I was supposed to do.

"I'm going to think about this one a lot in the offseason."

Iowa didn't resemble a Big Ten tourney semifinalist here. But it clearly wasn't the same sad-sack outfit that endured first-round beatings from Michigan in each of Todd Lickliter's three seasons as coach.

"I'd say we grew," said Hawkeye senior Jarryd Cole. "The last three years, we started out and that's pretty much how we stayed. We stayed real stagnant. But this year the fellows grew. You saw a lot of guys blossom, you saw a lot of guys develop."

So that's a step forward, and it isn't a baby step even if the Hawkeyes' 10th-place finish and 20 losses are statistics that signify forward strides.

When this season began, 10th-place, 11-20, and a first-round Big Ten ouster seemed like realistic projections for this squad. What wasn't projected, but what came to fruition, is the team beating Purdue and then pushing Michigan State to the limit in Games 30 and 31.

Jim Jackson, the former Ohio State great who now offers analysis for the Big Ten Network, said this Thursday on Twitter:

"They play uptempo, hard and with passion. This program will be back among the elite shortly."

Does this seem all Pollyanna-ish, predicting future success on what some might term modest improvement? Maybe. But there isn't a team among the Big Ten's current elite that Iowa didn't either beat or push hard this season, and that includes national-title contender Ohio State.

Asked what has to happen to put a record like this season behind him and what has already been done in that regard, McCaffery shared no secrets.

"My answer to that is the same as it's always been," he said. "We just keep trying to get better. Our team got better, our players got better, and we'll be better next year."

This season ended Thursday for Iowa, but not really. The recruiting season -- a big recruiting season -- is still in progress.