No. 18 Hawkeyes routed at home by Purdue

Boilermakers take the lead early and pour it on against a Hawkeye team that offers no support for star center Luka Garza.

Who feels worse about the way the final score turned out than the members of the Iowa men's basketball team than those who are in the locker room?

Answer: no one.

Iowa needed to win last night in order to slip into the number one seed in the Big Ten Tournament that starts a week from tomorrow. Instead, they limped to a loss.

Why?

I don't know. This article about the game includes this nugget of insight:

"Maybe this is something we needed toward the end of the year to just kind of re-focus and be more motivated," Iowa center Luka Garza said after a record-setting night for him that was anything but festive.

I don't know what the players on the team could feel more motivated about than

1. avenging an earlier loss to the same team by an embarassing blowout
2. improving their seed in the Big Ten Tournament
3. playing for the three seniors - Tuesday’s game marked Senior Night for Hawkeye center Ryan Kriener, guard Bakari Evelyn and forward Riley Till. 

To quote the same article:

So Iowa should have been ready. And the Hawkeyes clearly weren’t.

Iowa coach Fran McCaffery must have sensed this early, because he lit into his players during the first media timeout, after his son, Connor, had airballed a 3-point attempt and Purdue already owned an 11-4 lead. Fran McCaffery has not had many moments like that this season as his No. 18 Hawkeyes (20-10, 11-8) climbed up the national rankings and secured a second consecutive NCAA berth.

"We didn't execute the things that we had talked about executing. You're going to miss shots. They're going to make shots. They give scholarships, too," McCaffery said.

"So there were four or five things that happened that were very uncharacteristic of our team. I felt like, 'OK, I’ve got to jump them here to get them to focus a little bit better and to lock in.'"

But it didn't work.

Sigh.

Iowa travels to IL to play a team that likely wants to pile on the pain that this Iowa team already feels. Their game is in the twilight of the day - 6 PM - which is when I like to eat supper because I'm hungry.

My hope is that Iowa is hungry on Sunday as well!