A needed win: For Hawkeye men and their coach, Saturday satisfied

IOWA CITY — The contrasts between successive Saturday afternoons in Carver-Hawkeye Arena were stark.

Last weekend, a sellout crowd of 14,998 brought a pregame buzz to match the one the Iowa women’s basketball team puts on the court. Fans and players were in happy harmony and the No. 4 Hawkeyes rolled over Minnesota.

A week later, I was starting to wonder if I got the game time wrong until I got close to Carver. The late-arriving crowd was announced as 9,273 for the Rutgers-Iowa men’s game. It’s singing another version of tired refrain, I know, but the thought of a four-digit crowd for an Iowa weekend Big Ten home game was once unimaginable.

The men aren’t must-see. That’s not my opinion, that’s people saying so with their money.

The women are must-see, the definition of it. In what could be Caitlin Clark’s farewell lap around the Big Ten on the heels of a national-championship appearance, all the basketball oxygen in River City this winter belongs to them.

Clark and her team have given the UI a sports story as captivating as any it has ever had, and that isn’t hyperbole in the slightest.

Which, perhaps unfairly, has helped make the men’s team seem a bit mundane. The men can score points and so forth, but like every other men’s team in America, they don’t have the player that’s doing national TV commercials and showing up on a Times Square billboard.

Those who did attend Saturday’s men’s game, though, were in good cheer and also were in sync with their team. The Hawkeyes rolled over Rutgers, 86-77, doing what they do best when they’re in form. Which was get up and go, spread the ball around, and make a defensive-minded opponent look leaky.

These Hawkeyes, unlike the really good Iowa teams of the last four seasons, don’t have an NBA player-in-waiting. They got plenty of national pub themselves with Luka Garza and Keegan Murray, so they ought to be able to handle a season in the shadows.

These Hawkeyes are 1-3 in the Big Ten and must do a lot more than beat Rutgers at home to convince the masses this will be a memorable season. But there’s a lot of season and a lot of winnable games left, and Fran McCaffery does have some good players.

Now, about McCaffery. He got his 127th Big Ten win, becoming Iowa’s all-time leader. He discussed it only because he got asked about it.

“I’d prefer not to really make a big deal out of what my won-lost record is,” McCaffery said, “because I came here to coach the University of Iowa.

“You want to be truthful, I think the most important thing was getting the team ready to play today and beating a really good team in our first Big Ten win this year.

“But you guys know me, I don’t really think too much about wins. I always kind of find it interesting. You talk about I have this many wins. I didn’t play anybody. Iowa won those games.”

Iowa’s players played hard and had fun, its fans who were here cheered hard and had fun, and the result was exactly what both groups wanted. Sometimes, that should be all you need.

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com