Hlas: Hawkeyes hit a wall of Zags

SEATTLE - Few want to view the big picture in the gloom of a disappointing moment, but this was as far as it was fair to ask Iowa to go.

You saw what I saw. The Hawkeyes aren't the equals of the Gonzaga Bulldogs. Neither were 33 of the Zags' first 35 foes.

In fact, the list of Gonzaga's equals is shorter than a Seattle streak of sunny days in March. Nonetheless, Gonzaga's 87-68 Round-of-32 NCAA tournament win over Iowa was jarring. Iowa's big boys of the Big Ten seemed not-so-large against Gonzaga's NBA-bound goliaths from Poland and Lithuania, Przemek Karnowski and Domantas Sabonis. That tag team won by a squash over Iowa's Adam Woodbury and Gabe Olaseni.

'They established the post position early,” Olaseni said. 'They consistently tried to go at us and their guards did a good job getting them the ball.”

Gonzaga's point guard, Kevin Pangos, somewhat reminds one of how fellow Canadian Steve Nash played when he was a collegian at Santa Clara. A Zags fan sitting directly behind me in KeyArena proudly waved Canada's flag and agreed with me, though Pangos doesn't pass as well as Nash did. But who does?

And what do you do with 6-foot-10 forward Kyle Wiltjer, when he's feeling it from 3-point range like he was in the first half (3-of-3 when he scored 13 of his 24 points)? What do you do with all of that if you're Iowa?

Here's what: You state the obvious and say you lost to a better team, you note you came as far in the postseason as the tournament seeding and nearly all the experts suggested you could, and you proclaim this season was an unqualified success.

'We lost two games in a row, we lost an overtime game in the Big Ten (to Northwestern), and you would have thought we lost 20 in a row,” said Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery.

'It takes tremendous confidence and belief in one another to turn around and win six in a row. In this league you don't do that without tremendous character.”

One more thing you might say if you're the Hawkeyes: This is the fifth-straight year of progress under McCaffery, and a sixth is very possible.

Well, this last-season run was fun for Iowa while it lasted. Until Sunday's game was nine minutes old, anyway. Gonzaga kept making shots, good shots, easy shots. You never heard so many fans cheer for a layup drill. Of course, even the Zags' 3-point tries (7-of-10 in the first half) felt like layups.

Gonzaga shot a wicked 61.5 percent from the field, made 10 of 16 threes, and had 12 more rebounds than Iowa. Any more analysis would only be redundant.

It was 46-29 at halftime, and the question wasn't so much if Iowa could come back if the Zags were the team most likely to take down the giant's giant of the tournament, Kentucky.

But that's a story for someone else, somewhere else. Meanwhile, the Hawkeyes' tale of this season isn't one of woe. The well-documented list of achievements, of streaks broken, of road toughness - it all raised the bar for a program and fan base that were hungry to have it raised.

Aaron White was nothing short of wonderful the last month, yet his departure as a senior isn't a signal that a downturn is imminent.

With Jarrod Uthoff, Mike Gesell, Woodbury, Peter Jok and Anthony Clemmons, McCaffery has well-tested vets to anchor next season's team, players who have accomplished things and will accomplish more.

McCaffery and his assistants speak highly of the 5-player recruiting class secured for this fall, and say the freshmen will bring a lot of competitive edge.

But Sunday night wasn't the time to dwell on that. The careers of White, Olaseni and Josh Oglesby are done, and that was a difficult reality for the Hawkeyes to accept.

Next season, Woodbury said, 'is tough to look at now. We respect the seniors we lost, and it's about them today.”

'It's well-documented we weren't very good when we first got here,” said White.

It's also well-documented that over the last month and long before that, he helped lift this program to heights it hadn't seen in almost a decade.

Big picture: Real good season.

Twitter: @Hlas

Facebook: 'Mike Hlas - The Gazette”