Hlas: Some year, Hawkeyes should try showing up at a Big Ten tourney

INDIANAPOLIS — Ignominy, thy name is Iowa in the Big Ten men's basketball tournament.

The Hawkeyes lost to 11th-seed Northwestern here two years ago, fell to 13th-seed Penn State last year in Chicago, and now have been eliminated by 12th-seed Illinois here Thursday afternoon, 68-66.

What kind of operation is it when you can't nudge your way past a double-digit seed into your league's tournament quarterfinals? When it happens once, it's an upset. Upsets happen. When it happens three years in a row? It's an embarrassment.

If you hadn't known Iowa was 12-6 and Illinois 5-13 in conference play, you sure wouldn't have dreamed it watching this game. The Fighting Illini were the ones with more bounce in their steps and hunger in their actions.

The Hawkeyes didn't protect the ball or defend against the 3-point shot. They got 2-of-20 shooting with nine turnovers from the three starting seniors who weren't Jarrod Uthoff.

Simply playing poorly is one thing. The flatness by the team at the game's start — the same flatness that haunted its previous two Big Ten tourney games — is the maddening part.

'I don't know,' Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery said when asked why his team was so lacking for too long in both halves. 'It's disappointing to say the least.'

'I have no idea,' said Hawkeye junior guard Peter Jok, a burning bright light as he kept his team afloat with one of the greatest scoring sprees a Hawkeye has ever registered, 25 points in a stretch of 10:15 that stretched over both halves.

The non-answers formed an answer in themselves.

The reality, as little as anyone wants to hear it right now, is this: If Iowa regains its mojo long enough to win a couple times in next week's NCAA tourney, this loss will quickly and forever be glossed over.

'It's March, the NCAA tournament now,' Jok said. 'It's do or die, kill or be killed. If that doesn't motivate guys, nothing will. I'm trying to stay positive, me and everybody stay positive.'

Many is the team that went into NCAA tourneys like lambs and left like lions. Hey, maybe surrendering an NCAA placement in Des Moines will be a blessing in disguise. Get sent to some outpost like Spokane, ride in as tall strangers.

Maybe the Hawkeyes just need to be unfamiliar to their next opponent. Because the teams that know them best have caught and passed them.

Iowa was superior to almost everyone in the Big Ten from Dec. 29 through Feb. 7. Then it wasn't. And isn't.

This veteran group maximized its potential in the first two-thirds of the conference season, and that's the opposite of an insult. It's still possible to remember how terrific the Hawkeyes were in that stretch. Top five-terrific. Sports Illustrated cover-terrific.

However, most of the rest of the Big Ten's teams have grown since then. Michigan State and Purdue, two fine teams Iowa beat decisively twice in the first half of the Big Ten season, are considerably better (and in MSU's case, healthier) now than they were then. Iowa, on the other hand, isn't even as good as it was.

While on the postgame press conference podium, McCaffery wouldn't even allow a question directed at one of his players about what Iowa had called for its last offensive play.

That was a Gesell inbounds pass from the baseline with 4.8 seconds left that went about 30 feet out to Dom Uhl. The ball was deflected out of bounds, with a video review showing it was touched last by Uhl for the last of the Hawkeyes' 18 turnovers.

'It's none of your business what the play-call was,' McCaffery snapped. Then he repeated himself.

Wow. Seriously? OK, whatever. Let's move forward to the NCAAs. That's the be-all and end-all of the season, especially if the regular season and conference tourney didn't end well.

'We're about to peak again,' Uthoff insisted. 'I've got confidence in all these guys in the locker room. All we've worked for this whole season was the NCAA tournament, and it starts now for us.'

Why couldn't it have started a few hours earlier? Maybe that's none of our business, either.

Comments: mike.hlas@thegazette.com

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