We’re nearing the home stretch of the college basketball season, and with Selection Sunday now under one month away, here are five college hoops stories to follow for the state of Iowa:
1. The Hawkeye men finally have their “signature win” in Ben McCollum’s first year in Iowa City. After a few close calls and even some blowout losses to the top teams in the Big Ten, the Hawkeyes used their defense to shut down No. 9 Nebraska 57-52 at Carver-Hawkeye Arena on Tuesday night. Neither team shot the ball well, with the Huskers actually shooting better than the Hawks on the night (40.9% to 33.3% for the game), but 25 points from Bennett Stirtz and winning the rebounding margin 37-24 — fueled by 10 huge boards from Tavion Banks — helped Iowa score their first win over a ranked team in two years, and their first victory over a top-10 team since 2022. There’s still plenty of work to do for this team, especially on the offensive side with the team still needing consistent scoring beyond just Stirtz, but this was a huge piece of evidence to the growth of the program this season.
The win over Nebraska is Iowa’s third “Quad 1” win of the season, and it solidifies their NCAA Tournament resume even more. Most projections have Iowa as either an eight or nine seed with room left to possibly improve on that number. The key, of course, is to keep winning games — and avoid a bad loss — with a game at last place Penn State still to come this month.
2. The Hawkeye women seemingly have righted the ship after a three-game skid that saw them drop both games of their West Coast road trip to USC and UCLA and get blitzed at home by Minnesota. Jan Jensen’s bunch buckled down on defense and held off a talented Washington squad last Wednesday, then started off this week by blowing out Nebraska on the road to complete the season sweep of the Huskers. A pair of sensational sophomores led the way for the Hawks in Monday’s win, with Ava Heiden scoring 27 points and Taylor Stremlow chipping in a career-high 17. Jensen’s move to shift Stremlow into the starting lineup after the loss to Minnesota has paid off, as her experience has been a stabilizing force for the team.
The good news for the Hawkeyes is that they likely solidified themselves as a first-round regional host for the NCAA Tournament next month. The NCAA women’s selection committee ranked Iowa 11th in their first top-16 reveal of the season, which came out last weekend, putting them firmly on the three-seed line if the season ended today. It seems it would take a major collapse for Iowa to drop out of the top four seeds, and with challenging, but winnable games coming up with Illinois and Wisconsin, and another test against one of the top teams in the league in Michigan, Iowa should be in good shape if they take care of business and avoid a losing streak to end the regular season.
3. The resilience of T.J. Otzelberger’s Cyclones is an undeniable part of their success this season. When the Iowa State men turned in their worst performance of the season in a loss at TCU last Tuesday, what did they do? They responded with a blowout win over Kansas and used a little Hilton Magic to rally from a 10-point deficit to beat a talented Houston team on Monday night. When you talk about Iowa State, you’ll undoubtedly will mention Tamin Lipsey, Milan Momcilovic and Joshua Jefferson, but you need to notice guys like Dom Pleta, Jamarion Bateman and Nate Heise, too, the latter of whom made the go-ahead three-pointer late in the win over Houston. This is a talented team that’s getting contributions from players up and down their lineup. Can they keep that consistency up as the calendar flips to March?
4. It was great to see former Northern Iowa star A.J. Green get his jersey retired over the weekend in Cedar Falls. The former Panther and current Milwaukee Buck became the first player in UNI men’s basketball history to have their jersey hang in the rafters at the McLeod Center. Green’s presence served as motivation for this year’s Panther squad to take care of business against in-state rival Drake, and they did it by dominating the Bulldogs 86-62. A five-game losing streak in January derailed what had been a solid start to the season but the Panthers have rebounded, winning four out of their last five as of this writing and are pushing for a top-five seed in the Missouri Valley Tournament next month. Going on a run to win the conference’s auto bid to the NCAA Tournament is the only way they’ll get in the field, but some sort of postseason play might not be out of the question for Ben Jacobson’s team.
5. Which conference will get the most teams into the NCAA Tournament field next month? Most bracketologists think the Big Ten and the SEC will be neck-and-neck for the most teams, with ESPN’s Joe Lunardi projecting 10 teams from both leagues making it, with the Big 12 and the ACC each sending eight. The Big Ten may get an 11th team in, with Ohio State being listed by many as a team on the bubble. To me, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the Big Ten get more teams into the field than say, the Big 12, considering the Big Ten has more depth of quality teams while the Big 12 definitely feels more top heavy, with the top six standing out, and not much else beyond that.
What stories are you following the closest as the college hoops season starts to wind down? Listen every day at 4 to join the conversation on 1600 ESPN!
Spencer Wagen is the host of “Spencer on Sports,” weekdays from 4-6 p.m. on 1600 ESPN. You can follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @SWOnTheRadio.
