Iowa State 59, Iowa 46

Let's just get this one over with. This game was strictly unwatchable. Iowa State, as evidenced by their murderation at Drake just three nights prior, is not good at basketball. At all. Fortunately for the Clones, they were back at Hilton and facing an Iowa team that had neither Tony Freeman nor a snowball's prayer in hell. Iowa was bad, bad, bad in all facets of the game; they completed just six of 21 three-pointers, which is good for 0.86 points per shot. Now, that sucks. Worse, though, is the debacle that transpired inside the arc, where Iowa made 12 of 35 attempts. Yeah. It was so bad that eventually, ISU head coach Greg McDermott sat down and started playing with string instead.

"No, you're right, I should stop playing Cat's Cradle and watch this totally uninspired farce instead."

The Beyonce ads

Make no mistake, Beyonce is one of my future wives (when it comes to marrying gorgeous women, I'm totally Mormon). I'll stick with her through thick and thin, like when those pictures of her giving Jay-Z some dome came out. Sure, I spent three days straight looking at them, not eating, sleeping or going to work. Sure, it cost me my wife, house, and job. Sure, the tears of shame are poor lubricants, doubly so when a man's Sampson has been chafed raw. But I got through it. No; we got through it.

So it's been a shame, really, to see the latest bombardment of DirecTV ads. She looks great, as usual, but holy smoking hell is that song awful. I don't know if it's a real song or just something they whipped together for the commercial [It's a real song. I know that because I took three seconds to look it up. Get your shit together. -ed], but it's no less than an unimpeachable sign that you should not buy the DVD she's also pimping in the commercial.

And get that necklace out of your mouth. You don't know where that's been. My three-year-old nephew isn't even allowed to behave like that.

Back to the Iowa thing

Iowa's RPI right now is 241. That's not a typo; you can check here. For a frame of reference, last year's #241 RPI team was Georgia Southern, who cruised to a 13-16 record in that season's  26th toughest conference, the Southland. But no, this season, it's Iowa City that's giving birth to the blues; despite facing a schedule that has featured literally no tougher foes than Louisiana-Monroe (RPI: 72), Iowa has limped to a 6-5 record.

The good news is that there's a small, if unsatisfying at the light of this tunnel: Iowa's RPI can almost assuredly not get any worse. Not since 2005 has there been a team in the top five conferences by RPI to finish with an RPI below 240; that was 2005 Baylor, who won all of one game in the Big XII en route to a 9-19 campaign and the stunningly poor RPI of 251.

Please come back, Tony Freeman. And Tyler Smith. And Jared Reiner. And Ryan Luehrsmann. We'll take anything.