Hawkeye men almost recaptured some buzz, but Cyclones are No. 3 for many reasons

lOWA CITY — The men’s team of Iowa State hosts Omaha (4-7 and 279th in the NCAA’s NET rankings through Wednesday) at noon Sunday.

The men’s team of Iowa hosts New Orleans (2-6 and 318th in the NET) Sunday at 1 p.m.

Guess which game will have a crowd and which won’t. The T-shirt cannon-operator at Carver-Hawkeye Arena may need keen aim to avoid hitting empty seats.

The Hawkeyes had a chance to restore some fan love Thursday at Carver, to create good feelings that might have lingered for a while. They played truly fine ball for 34 minutes or so, withstanding response after response from the third-ranked Cyclones with response after response of their own.

After that, Iowa State played like a team that is ranked No. 3 in America. Iowa, meanwhile, hit a wall and stopped hitting shots. The Cyclones won, 89-80.

For Iowa, this was a chance for its biggest win over Iowa State since, oh, maybe ever? ISU has never been ranked higher than third, and hadn’t been that high since 1957.

Instead, it was an opportunity the Cyclones denied the Hawkeyes, and it means Iowa will need to do a lot of Big Ten winning in January and February to acquire some buzz.

Iowa has a good team. The clubs it has lost to — Utah State, Michigan and now Iowa State — are three very good ones, with a combined record 25-3. The Hawkeyes are better than they were last season, and can’t be ruled out as an NCAA contender.

They don’t, however, have people clamoring to snap up tickets for their home games.

Thursday’s affair had 2,000 unsold tickets. Iowa State fans prevented that number from being 5,000, perhaps more. Those were the people who were making all the noise in the arena down the stretch.

This season’s attendance numbers don’t lie. The spirit Hawkeyeland has for this program has diminished, and this result in a game that matters to Iowa fans doesn’t help.

Fourth-year Cyclones Coach T.J. Otzelberger led teams to NCAA Sweet 16s in 2022 and 2024. The ISU men have gotten that deep five times since 2000, under four different coaches. Iowa’s last Sweet 16 was 1999.

It would be a large and well-received surprise to Hawkeye fans if Iowa could snap that string this season. If Iowa State doesn’t again reach the Sweet 16 come March, the surprise will be one of disappointment.

Hey, this was a terrific, highly entertaining game. Talent, fire, resilience and resolve were displayed by both sides. Otzelberger could afford to be generous in his assessment of the Hawkeyes afterward, but he isn’t a smoke-blower.

“Iowa, they came out and they were ready to play,” he said. “They were focused. They were locked in. … They backed us up time and time again.

“As you move forward for their team, they’re really good. They can play big, they can play small.

“They can really space you and shoot the ball. That’s a big game, and those guys showed that they can make big shots.”

Except when they went 0-for 10 from the 6:17 mark of the second half until 13 seconds remained and the issue was settled.

Still, people may be missing out if they choose to ignore the Hawkeyes the rest of the way. Payton Sandfort, Josh Dix, Owen Freeman, Brock Harding, Drew Thelwell — these are really good players. Maybe I’ve come down with a bad case of naivete, but I think Iowa will be a handful in many more Big Ten games than it won’t.

What the Hawkeyes know is that the team that beat them Thursday is really good. Most Big Ten teams would have buckled here the way the Hawkeyes played for so much of this game. The Cyclones did not.

“It just kind of speaks for itself,” said Sandfort. “The way that they have energy the whole game. They’ve got a bunch of guys that can play. They’ve got shotmakers, they’ve got rebounders, they can defend, they do all the little things.

“They’re going to win a lot of games, and we’re going to win a lot of games. It was a good basketball game, and we’ve got a good team.”

Will that declaration get fans to fill vast swaths of empty seats at Carver Sunday? Probably not, even with a great chance for spectators to catch a free T-shirt.

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