From basketball-reference.com:
"Over the past 31 years, Iowa has rarely been a great, dominant team (just 7 top-10 SRS finishes, none since 1996), but the secret to their high ranking is that -- with the exception of their 3 most recent seasons -- they've hardly ever been bad, either. Between 1980 and 1999, they ranked better than 10th only 5 times and worse than 40th only 4 times, through the tenures of 3 different coaches (Lute Olson, George Raveling, & Tom Davis). Their most dominant seasons came in the 1980s, including a Final Four in 1980 and 9 NCAA berths in 10 years from '80-'89, and Davis also consistently engineered a top-20 program during the 90s. However, while Steve Alford followed Davis with a decent run of his own, the Hawkeyes were no longer a perennial top-40 team by the time he resigned in 2007, and the team bottomed out under his successor, Todd Lickliter. Unless new coach Fran McCaffery can right the ship and restore Iowa's ability to avoid bad seasons, their days in this list's Top 20 could be numbered."