The Iowa Men’s basketball team scored just 40 points on Wednesday night in their 67-40 loss at Wisconsin.  It was the third straight road game where Iowa failed to score more than 19 points in the first half, and it was the third straight road game that was pretty much over by halftime.

Iowa trailed Wisconsin 36-16 at the break Wednesday night.  It trailed at Northwestern 39-19 last week and at Purdue 34-15.  The bottom line; Iowa has not been a competitive Big Ten basketball team in those three games, at the least.  There have been more.

The Hawks trailed 12-10 with 13:03 to play in the first half last night.  That’s when Wisconsin went on a 20-0 run over the next 06:57 of the game.  Here is another way to look at it.  I turned my car radio off at that point to go in to a church to pick my daughter up from her usual Wednesday night activities.  When I came out 15 real minutes later, Iowa had just made its first field goal since I had left the car.

And with that, I turned off the radio, had some ice cream and a nice talk with my daughter, took her home and got her to bed and I went to sleep myself around 8:45.

I feel refreshed today, so I guess I have Todd Lickliter to thank for that good night of sleep…because I could not come up with one reason to watch the second half.  It’s getting harder to care about something when you don’t really believe it has much chance to be successful, and Iowa on the road this year, with the exception of the 15 point win at Indiana, has not been all that competitive.

There are probably a few NAIA teams that could score more first half points against Big Ten competition than Iowa has in its last three games.

No, I haven’t forgotten that I picked this team to win between nine and eleven games this year, and between three and five in the Big Ten.  They are just where I felt they would be, which also meant they would lose more games than any Iowa team in history.  Expecting something is one thing, but actually seeing it play out in cold reality is another.

I kept wondering last night ‘how will four freshman make THAT big of a turnaround next year?’

What should we expect, as Iowa is at its all time low point for losses in a season (20, with 21 coming up this weekend at Minnesota)?

We’ll have plenty of time to get to that, as this season will likely end in the first round of the Big Ten tournament next week with another loss to Michigan.

Tags: Hawkeye Basketball, Hawkeye Nation, hawkeyenation.com