Allow me, if you will, to step outside the double-third second person or whatever it's called when I speak on behalf of JHC and HS. This is about the best game that I've ever been to, and if I find out if they too were at the game, that narrows down the field of who they could be to 15,498, and we've all agreed that identification is dangerous to the integrity of BHGP. We write this site on condition of anonymity and penalty of death. We're like the Fight Club of sodomy jokes.
Anyhoo. The best game I've ever been to. It's not Iowa taking out a Top 10 team or anything like that. No, no, although I've seen those, they don't speak to my sense of victory. I like inhumanely lopsided fistfights, and Northwestern at Iowa on January 4, 1998 was most certainly that. I was a junior in high school, fresh off a breakup with a young lady who--well, I won't bore you with specifics, but I thought I'd met gravity's greatest enemy. Let's continue.
I lived in Des Moines, a lifelong Hawkeye fan. That proximity afforded my father and me about three Iowa games a year: one football, and two basketball. Sure, people can claim more, but to me, it was the coolest shit in the world, so thanks for that, Old Man. Our judgment had been poor in years past; we had watched Matt Sherman throw four picks to the Illini in 1995, and we'd witnessed Darnell Autry perform a cold, brutal murderation to the Iowa defense in Kinnick in 1996. So the decision to go to a Northwestern basketball game was, uh, measured.
And what a fortunate decision it was. Both teams were dry out of the gates; with 8 minutes left in the first half, it was just 17-7 Iowa (which is more than the football team can say since 2002, ba-ziiiing). Then all hell broke loose.
First, it was the full-court press. Then it was the inside game. Fucking Guy Rucker was killing them. Life As A G himself. He had like 11 points in the first half. So at the break, bam, 41-17.
In the second half, It didn't matter who shot the ball. It went in. Always. Everything that came out of Kyle Galloway's hands was Pure Staple Sisters AM Gold; he went 4-4 from downtown, and he was scarcely the only offender that night. Ricky Davis, Ryan Bowen, and Ryan Luerhsmann were knocking them down. By the end of the game, they started trotting out the worst of the backups to see what happened when they jacked threes up. Someone named "Kerry Koberg" splashed one down. Greg Helmers, a legendary stiff unmatched in Hawkeye history, stepped behind the arc and hoisted a shot up. Boomshanka. The crowd was in hysterics.
The end result? Iowa went 15-20 from downtown; both the volume and efficiency are team records. Oh, and they won in a 91-57 squeaker.
Best of all was the ensuing radio show. As my father and I sat in an Iowa City parking ramp (parking at the UIHC: not so sneaky), the host asked Tom Davis about the wild, insane, lose-your-job-worthy decision to have Helmers take the shot from behind the arc. Davis responded that yes, we're looking for more contribution from Helmers from long range, and this was the first step in that measure of progress. Greg Helmers' final 3-point stat line for his entire career: 1-1.
Then there's Kyle Galloway. I had run static on Kyle for years, being that he was a walkon who looked like this and specialized in jump shots. Take your voice and raise it an octave and a half. That's the way my friends and I treated Galloway, because we liked to believe that he got unnecessarily fired up for "getting in the paint!" or "crashing the boards!" Say those in your Galloway voice. It's fun.
As we soon found out during the radio show, Kyle does not, in fact, speak like a 12-year-old wrought by puberty; his voice was (and presumably still is) pretty low. Needless to say, that made the deliberate mischaracterization all the more hilarious.
Let's stop the story before it spirals completely out of control now. What's your favorite Iowa game you've ever been to? Basketball, football, whatever. Let's talk about anything instead of that unconscionable hatchet job the refs pulled on Iowa last night.