***Official 2026 NCAA Tournament Thread***

alright Hawk fan, chill…. Nebraska lost 6 of their last 11 games to finish the season. Had some bad losses in there as well like getting spanked against ucla by 20. They lost to Purdue in the conference tourney by 20. They fell flat after their spectacular start and couldn’t rebound. Iowa matches up phenomenal with Nebraska. It was a pretty easy to Pick Iowa to win last night. Plus you factor in the coach who’s coaching Nebraska. It was pretty clear why the 4 seed was ONLY a 1.5 point favorite. You guys caught Florida at a perfect time, they thought they could sleepwalk Iowa and they couldn’t. That’s how upsets happen!
Sorry if your Cyclone fan self image doesn’t permit acknowledging reality, and minimizes Iowa’s performance at all costs. Even the name-calling to boot!
My Cyclone fandom is not that fragile.
 
I've seen two trains of thought on this board regarding our Cyclones and Iowa both being in the top tier of college football. One is, "I'm glad we're not like Nebraska where we are the only "huge" team in state." The other is, "Both fan bases want the other school's team to drop to the level of UNI." I personally think a Cy-Hawk game that is regularly competitive to be a good watch.

Yes…. now I’ll let the raw Iowa fan in me out. So people can understand I’m not a robot and I had to get were in at emotionallly & fandom wise through a lot of heartaches in my sporting life. But I don’t like playing Iowa State and I don’t like losing to Iowa State in football…. Honestly in basketball when you play 30 games a year it’s really not that big of a deal to… I didn’t even watch the Iowa/Iowa State, Iowa men’s basketball game this year.

But in football, it is still way better to play and beat or lose to for that matter, a good rival than a piss poor one. And you’d have to be a really sharp cat and readily capable of articulating your point to convince me otherwise.
 
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Being that Illinois seems focused on Eastern Europe for recruiting, I don't. We were competing with Iowa, for in-state guys mostly, well before their run in the Tourney. And Purdue's been good for quite a few years. Glad they got Cluff, Buchanan's a better fit for our system.

With the portal now, there are plenty of guys available to go around. We'll be fine regardless of what those teams do/accomplish.

Bingo
 
Relative to his role on the team is part of the problem. When you have a PG essentially that isn’t a shooter, doesn’t score a ton, and doesn’t create tons of scoring opportunities for teammates, and he’s playing 35+ a game, you are baking in a weakness in your team.

He is a decent player but without a stud guard beside him that guard court is a weakness offensively.
I just don’t agree this year. He’s the assist leader, third leading rebounder, steals leader, 9.3 ppg, just below Sandfort on efg, 38% from 3. He’s first for ORtg at 131.7 and DRtg is 96.5. Numbers hold up in conference play as well.
 
Iowa winning by 4 coming up.

Credit to Iowa but my thinking that college basketball was bsck with such a loaded top end has kind of dissolved.

I didn't think Illinois or Purdue were really that good but here they are.

I’m still not overly impressed with Purdue, but that’s probably partially because I just have never liked them very much. But they lost to the three best Big Ten teams, Michigan, Michigan State, and Illinois all at home if I’m not mistaken.

As for Illinois, I read more about men’s basketball this year than I watched, but I don’t think there were very many people, I guess outside of here and maybe other big 12 fans that didn’t think Illinois was really good.

They along with Michigan State, Michigan, Arizona, Iowa State, Houston I guess Duke, and then the flavor of the week in the SEC have been considered pretty strong all year long.
 
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Funny how that only comes up when Iowa does something good, and not ISU.

Only true in your mind…. in fact, I know way more Iowa fans that have this attitude than Iowa State. Don’t give me wrong plenty of Iowa State fans they’ll similar to me, but it’s out there and you really don’t have to look very hard.
 
I just don’t agree this year. He’s the assist leader, third leading rebounder, steals leader, 9.3 ppg, just below Sandfort on efg, 38% from 3. He’s first for ORtg at 131.7 and DRtg is 96.5. Numbers hold up in conference play as well.
I’m surprised but numbers don’t lie. I think I’ve been unfortunate to have watched him on some unproductive games where he was playing more like a bench role guy. But he’s definitely better than I thought.
 
A fun thought experiment, they can only keep 1…

These 3 tournament wins or the the entire CC 4 years.

Well, obviously, we don’t live in a vacuum and it doesn’t work that way… And I suppose we could ask most any fan base the same sort of question but it wouldn’t be a hard decision for me…

But as a thought experiment, That’s CC all the way…. she literally changed the dynamics of how Iowa was viewed in many capacities and if I’m not certain, I believe I saw a graph that suggested the Iowa women’s basketball team might’ve had top five viewership this year may be higher than that.

As far as that goes, I believe the same was true of Iowa State.

More importantly, obviously, Iowa didn’t win it all… But the list of teams that have made it to two straight championship games in any sport is very, very small.

I run into rival fans, (and not Iowa State fans, in fact, out here most Iowa State fans I run into like CC) but rival fans that like to try and shade her… and I always have the same answer, no problem, but if she wasn’t relevant and hadn’t done things, you wouldn’t even be here complaining about her :eek:

That’s what she did for Iowa… This Iowa men’s basketball team is really just a feel good story at this point in time.

I, however, am in no way indicative of a typical Iowa fan, at least I don’t think, I don’t interact with that many of them anymore
 
It’s already bad. A lot of McCollum made an Elite 8 before TJ. Gotta win today, or I’m gonna have to just shutdown social media

Well, I guess if that’s how you view it, one fan base is always gonna be a nightmare to the other one. That’s not how I would look at it, but I realize many do.
 
If I were them, entire 4 years of CC

Didn’t Iowa lose in their first big 10 tournament game to Ohio State? And was something like 3-7 in their 10 games heading into the NCAA tournament? It seems they simply got hot at the perfect time. That will be hard to replicate for future years IMO

Edit: in fact, if it wasn’t for this tourney run, Iowa’s season would had been largely viewed as a “meh” season. Amazing what 3 games can do to change perceived perception

3-7 and then the elite 8… Yes, I would imagine that scenario of events would be very hard to replicate. I doubt that’s what they’re going for…
 
If you told me Ben McCollum would make an elite 8 before TJ I would of laughed in your face

That is 100% the reason why I don’t talk **** about Teams pretty much anymore… The blowback is awful. After 40+ years of sports watching I generally expect the unexpected and then if I am just a ******** and constantly talking trash about my rival, it is eventually going to come back on me.

It always does… Much easier to live this way. Be happy.
 
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I've seen a lot of people twisting themselves into knots trying to put down Iowa being in the Elite 8. Go back a couple weeks in some of these threads, and there were people saying they would rather face Duke or Michigan than Florida.

Do I wish Iowa had lost in the first round, yes. Do I worry about ISU losing tonight, and the season being over, yes. Do I care about Iowa making it farther in the bracket, no (as long as they don't win a championship).

The last 15 seasons, ISU has made more NCAA's, and usually lasted longer once there. The world is not ending because Iowa

It’s awesome seeing someone put reality in front of hope
 
3-7 and then the elite 8… Yes, I would imagine that scenario of events would be very hard to replicate. I doubt that’s what they’re going for…
3-7 is actually more indicative of the season than ncaa tournament

The tournament is a crapshoot. One game, winner moves on events are exciting for fans, but can lead to highly misleading results

Which is why next season will be very interesting for Iowa: do they revert back to the middle of the conference like they did all season, or can they demonstrate they are in the top tier of the conference?

Time will tell. The last 3 games have given Iowa fans optimism, but it’s only been 3 games out of 36. So if I were an Iowa fan, I would be enjoying this run, but being cautiously optimistic about next season
 
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