Again, the Hawkeyes take a bad loss, this time at the hands of the Fighting Illini. Again, they look destined for an early out, just as they did two years ago. This is the third year in a row that the Hawkeyes have lost in the first game they played in the Big Ten Tournament, and the twelfth time in the last twenty-one years! What the crap? That is terrible! At least we're not Rutgers, but, at least that dumpster fire sucks the whole year, instead of falling apart at the end.
Iowa got down early by 11, and they crawled their way into a lead, but trailed at halftime by two. Then the Fighting Illni got on fire, led by freshman Jalen Coleman-Lands, and led by eleven with about four minutes left, and it looked like it was all over. But, Iowa went on an 11-0 run and tied it up with over a minute left. It looked like the Hawkeyes might be able to pull it off.
Oh wait, Iowa can't play late in a close game. That's right. So of course they didn't pull it off. Illinois got up by two and Iowa got back control of the ball. They called timeout(!!) with fifteen seconds left in the game. At five seconds, they are forced to take a timeout, and with three seconds left, Mike Gesell turned it over. Fifteen seconds. No shots. (Inserts crying Jordan meme.)
Ok, I think that is enough sarcasm. The Hawkeyes have some serious problems, folks. Jarrod Uthoff had twenty-one, and Peter Jok had twenty-nine, but fouled out on an awful double technical foul. Nick Baer had eight points. The rest of the team had EIGHT total points. EIGHT. You won't be winning very many games doing that. Jok was on fire, going 4 for 6 from downtown, and five for five from the free throw line. Uthoff was 2 for 5 from deep and 9 for 16 overall. But, those were the only two that could be relied on in this game.
Another big problem? The coaching. I think that Fran McCaffery gets outcoached a lot. He is a poor in-game manager. He almost always ends up with two or three timeouts in his pocket. That includes those games where the fourth timeout disappears at halftime. Instead of setting something up at the end of a half, they'll just go. What is he saving those timeouts for? They don't carry over from game to game, so you might as well use most or all of them. He has the philosophy that he lets the players play the last possession and to let them figure it out, but that has not worked too well with this team. With how bad Mike Gesell and Anthony Clemmons have played, there is no reason for them to take important shots, and they can't figure that out.
At the beginning of the season, I said they would go 12-6 in conference and be a 6 or 7 seed. So, I was right, but with the way it started, it turned out to be a huge disappointment. It'll be like two years ago when the motto was "Rising", but they ended up having the same conference record and barely sneaking into the tournament as an eleven seed in Dayton in the First Four with a game against Tennessee. The same would happen now, around the same seed and the same conference record, with a late season swoon again.
This loss will most likely make them a 6-8 seed. My guess is that they will be a 6 or 7 because of all of those quality wins they had in January. It might not even matter, because with how they're playing, it'll be one and done.
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