The Iowa Women's Basketball Team Are Cunning Linguists

Let's switch gears a bit [yes, let's.--ed.] for this afternoon. Before the women's basketball season, the quiet consensus among fans was that if there was going to be "the year" for Iowa, this was it. The team featured five seniors, three of them starting, and the two starting juniors are the best scorers on the team.

But once the season rolled around, Iowa looked merely mediocre. They don't have any bad losses, per se; they haven't lost to anybody outside the Top 50 in the RPI. They just weren't beating anybody of merit. By the time the conference season rolled around, they were just 7-4, and expectations were, well, diminished. Starting the conference season 2-3 didn't help.

Fast-forward five wins later, and all of a sudden, Iowa's 14-7 (7-3), which puts them in a three-way tie for the Big 10. The other two teams, Purdue and Ohio State, loom large in the Hawkeyes' schedule--Iowa must play both on the road in the span of a week.

Anyway, the excitement around the program is at a fever pitch, to the point that the O.E.D. is incapable of expressing it. To that end, the team has resorted to creating their own words:

The Iowa women's basketball team was so elated to move into a tie for first place that the Hawkeyes found a new word for the emotion following Thursday's 70-55 victory at Northwestern.

"We were very bluded," guard Jenee Graham said of hearing the news. "That's a word that we made up. It's in honor of coach (Lisa) Bluder. It means we're extremely happy."

Bluded! We like it. In honor of Bluder and her charges, we'll make up a new word, too: Brewsted. It's a state of extreme disappointment and nausea, like when you get your child's 3rd grade report card, and it's nothing but Ds, Fs, and misdemeanor charges. Try it: "I was very Brewsted when my team went 1-11." Gopher fans, rejoice!