March 28, 2024

March Madness, I missed you

My favorite time of the year is here.

March Madness.

There is no better sports weekend than the opening two rounds of the NCAA Tournament. If I could petition to make it a national holiday I would.

Before I was married and had my adorable 2-year-old daughter, I would sit on my couch and do nothing but watch basketball games for 10-plus hours.

There is so much drama to the first couple of rounds of the tournament that I didn’t want to miss anything.

And the drama intensifies this year as three teams from the state of Iowa are likely headed to the Big Dance.

Iowa State and Iowa still have to play in their respective conference tournaments, but I see the Cyclones as a three seed, Northern Iowa as a five seed and the Hawkeyes could move up as high as a six seed with a pair of wins in the Big Ten tourney.

Iowa State will try to win its second consecutive Big 12 title in front of what should be another pro-Iowa State crowd in Kansas City. The Cyclones did not finish how they wanted to (they had the Big 12 regular season title in their grasp), but they are one of about five teams in the league that could hoist the tournament trophy on Sunday.

The Cyclones won’t have an easy opening-round game. Texas, which should beat Texas Tech in their opener, is fighting for an NCAA berth, which will motivate the Longhorns to get as far as they can.

Fred Hoiberg’s squad is good enough to win it all but is inconsistent enough to lose to Texas in the quarterfinals, too. It will be interesting to see which Cyclones team shows up.

Iowa could not get into the double bye for the Big Ten tourney despite winning its sixth game in a row on Saturday.

The Hawkeyes’ RPI is at 39 right now and with the road wins they have collected, it is hard to think the committee will still put them on the 8-9 line.

I like the position they are in for the Big Ten tourney. Avoiding Wisconsin until the championship game would have been ideal, but playing Penn State or Nebraska in the second round and Purdue in the quarterfinals is about as good as it gets.

Aaron White was injured in the only meeting against the Boilermakers this year. Iowa let that game slip away so it will be fun watching that rematch, hopefully.

Northern Iowa continues to impress. Just when you think the team is down and out, they rally from a huge first-half deficit to win the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament championship.

The Panthers are experienced, deep and built for a strong postseason run.

And as we know, anything can happen in March.

Iowa State fans continue to show its displeasure on social networking.

First, the fans thought the Cyclones were getting slighted because Northern Iowa was ranked ahead of them.

Now, Iowa State fans thought their team got hosed when it came to the all-Big 12 selections.

Georges Niang made the first team, and that was expected. But many thought Monte Morris should have joined him instead of landing on the second team.

I don’t think Cyclone fans want to be happy. The rankings don’t mean anything at this point. Or at any point in the season really.

And the Big 12 is the best conference in college basketball. There are going to be other good players getting recognition. Morris is great and could have been a first-teamer, but does the co-runner-up in the league deserve two-first team selections?

Iowa fans are elated that White made the all-Big Ten first team. And Jarrod Uthoff landing on the third team also was received well. Gabe Olaseni deserved the sixth man of the year award and got it.

White’s Senior Day couldn’t have gone any better. He scored 25 points and had a boat load of dunks and big plays to keep a sell-out crowd on their feet.

The only negative that came away from the day was the how Iowa handled the Roy Marble recognition.

I don’t know what goes into retiring jerseys and such, but if any Hawkeye deserves to have his jersey retired, it’s Roy Marble, the school’s all-time leading scorer by a mile.

And to top it off, Iowa Athletic Director Gary Barta apparently gave Marble an old Doug Thomas No. 23 jersey and not a Marble jersey.

I haven’t heard a single Iowa fan say they don’t want to see Marble’s jersey retired. It’s something that needed to be done.

And unfortunately, Marble probably won’t be around much longer to enjoy it when and if it eventually happens. Saturday was the perfect day, but the school blew it.