Iowa Basketball -- Know Your Tomato Cans: Chicago State

Iowa men's basketball coach Fran McCaffery has told us his program's nonconference schedules will be beefed up in years to come, as his team is more-equipped to handle primo competiton.

This season? McCaffery wanted to build confidence (and a stack of wins). I get that. It makes total sense. You never want to have anything resembling 11-20 again. And I can't imagine McCaffery will. If you want a big-time program, you play big-time nonconference teams, and McCaffery said Iowa will do that. I fully believe that, and look forward to it.

But that doesn't change the fact Iowa has six teams on its home schedule that were in the bottom third of the RPI standings at the end of last season. Six. Which is fine. If you want to pay to see those teams, that's great. It's your money, you like the experience of going to a game, it's the night before an Iowa football game and you see it as a good way to add to your weekend in Iowa City ... beautiful.

Just don't say you weren't warned about this and some of these other opponents. I call them "tomato cans." It's an old-time term, for boxers who weren't very good and routinely got bloodied and beaten.

We start with Friday's season-opener, against Chicago State.

Chicago State is the fourth-best college basketball team in Chicago. If you count Northwestern in nearby Evanston, it's No. 5.

Chicago State finished last season as 339th out of the 345 Division I team in the RPI rankings.

In 1972, the Hawkeyes beat the Cougars, 101-44. Things haven't gotten much better for Chicago State.

Last season, the Cougars opened the season with a 114-81 loss to DePaul. The next two games were losses of 40 points to Notre Dame and 49 to BYU. Next up was St. Mary's. That score: Gaels 121, Cougars 52.

"It wasn't something we were trying to do," St. Mary's head coach Randy Bennett said about his team setting a school scoring record. "It just happened."

Chicago State lost at Stephen F. Austin, 94-38. It lost at Iowa State, 104-63. It lost at Drake, 102-51. Drake was 13-18 last season.

The Cougars lost by 32 points to both South Dakota and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. They lost at home to Olivet Nazarene.

But Chicago State did split two games with Houston Baptist. That team was 345th in the RPI standings.