For Hawkeyes, a rose is a Big Ten road win is a rose

Much of it was hard to watch from a basketball-aesthetic point of view. Iowa's 62-53 triumph at Nebraska Wednesday night won't earn much of a place in college basketball's annals. But the Hawkeyes at least temporarily stopped their problematic little habit of losing to bad teams, including at home against the Cornhuskers.

Iowa is 8-9 in the Big Ten, with a good chance of closing at 9-9. Its conference-finale is Saturday afternoon at home against Northwestern, a team that has to be emotionally aching after coming so close but losing at home to Ohio State Wednesday, on a Jared Sullinger shot with :03 left.

Of course, the Wildcats pounded Iowa in Evanston on Feb. 9, 83-64. But that may mean no more on Saturday than did Iowa's home loss to Nebraska on Jan. 26 did in Lincoln Wednesday evening.

At any rate, three league road wins and eight victories overall are marked improvement for a team that couldn't have been asked to realistically do much more than that. Iowa will get the No. 7 seed in the Big Ten tourney if it defeats Northwestern. Win or lose that game, Iowa's first-round tourney foe will probably be either Illinois or Minnesota.

I'd say Minnesota (5-12 in the conference) is a dead team, but it gets to play Nebraska at home Saturday and will probably ride the wave of a 1-game winning streak to Indianapolis next week.

Illinois plays Michigan at home Thursday night, then plays at Wisconsin on Sunday. It will be interesting to see if its home win over Iowa in the Sunday just past will be the Illini's last hurrah.

Iowa has not clinched a winning season, by the way. The Hawkeyes are 16-14. If they lose to Northwestern, lose in the first-round of the Big Ten Tournament, and get invited to a lower-tier postseason tourney and lose their first-round game, they'll be 16-17. But that scenario won't play out. I have spoken.

As for Iowa State, it led for most of its game against Missouri before the Tigers took command in the final minutes and won, 78-72.

The Cyclones clearly were playing to win, but as losses go, it's far from a killer. You play Missouri that tough in Columbia, and your status with the NCAA tournament's selection committee won't be hurt. If ISU (21-9 overall, 11-6 in the Big 12) beats Baylor in Ames on Saturday night and wins a quarterfinal at the Big 12 tourney, it's going to have a good seed at the NCAAs.

A month ago, this Iowa State team might have gotten rocked at Missouri. I thought ISU competed considerably better against Mizzou this time than it did when the Tigers beat the Cyclones in Ames on Jan. 11, 76-69. I'm guessing the Tigers would be happy to avoid a third matchup with the Cyclones come time for the Big 12 tourney in Kansas City.

And so ends February, a day later than most years for some odd reason.

March hath arrived. How will we remember this month in college basketball by the time it's over? Your thoughts, please.