Iowa Begins Their Quest For A B1G Championship Today Against Penn State

Here we go!  B1G Tournament second round starts today and that means 5th seeded Iowa is taking the floor in Chicago.  Big day.  It feels like the start of something.  Which is the exact opposite of how I felt headed into last year’s tournament.  Iowa was a broken team last year at this time and there was no salvaging it.  That was evident when they got knocked out by a lower-seeded Northwestern.  This year?  The sky is the limit.  The Hawkeyes couldn’t be playing better.  They’re currently riding a 6-game win streak and are coming off an impressive Senior day win.  College basketball in March isn’t always about who’s the better team, it can be about who’s playing the best at that given time.  In today’s game Iowa is both the better team and are playing their best basketball so they should run through Penn State like a miter saw.

Aaron White is the key to this game and every game going forward until he’s forced to hang up his Iowa jersey for good.  As he goes, the Hawkeyes go.  He’s the leader.  He needs to set the tone early.  The last thing we need is for Iowa to play down to Penn State and end up with a close game late.  Combine solid play from White with the much-better-than-when-the-season-started guard play of Mike Gesell, the silky jumper of Jarrod Uthoff, the non-eye poking Adam Woodbury and B1G 6th Man of the Year Gabe Olaseni and we might have ourselves a contender.  WE WANT WISCONSIN (ya know, if we get that far).