Good news, everyone! Iowa has won their sixth game of the season by the count of 67-62. By our count, that makes them eligible for the Insight Bowl or something. The game was played in front of a packed... almost packed... half-full... okay, so attendance was a tad sparse. Scott Dochterman shows just how close Iowa came to selling the game out (hint: not very at all):
Doc put his estimate at 3,000; we trust his judgment. For what it's worth, there isn't a listed attendance on ESPN, but we can't imagine Iowa let the "official" figure fall below half capacity. Still, look at the video. That is fucking sparse. We had guessed a total of 6,000 people would watch the game live in the preview; if only 3,000 were in the house, there's just no way 3,000 more paid $2.99 to watch online. No damn way. There are teams in the SWAC with better exposure these days.
Bohnenkamp even provided this surreal tweet during the second half:
Random Fan has wandered onto press row with his son and sat down. Efficient Per Mar says nothing.
And when we read that, we can't help but think of anything but this:
James Gund of "American Theater Magazine" writes: "True story: I fell asleep during the production, and when I woke up was so convinced that I was still dreaming, I got up onstage and walked around. The odd thing is the show is such an ugly mess that no one seemed to notice or care."
Yes, Iowa basketball is the Red Ships of Spain of the Big Ten. Don't you dare dispute it.
As mentioned in our preview, Iowa didn't tip off until 8:05, which almost certainly depressed attendance; there's no reason for a father to come from even Cedar Rapids to take his son to the game, considering that they wouldn't walk back in the door until 11. The reason for the late tipoff was OSU and Purdue's game on ESPN, forbidding any games from being televised between 6 and 8 p.m. And yet--the game wasn't televised at all; even in Iowa City, Mediacom opted to run Drake-Missouri State on their local channel. That middle finger to the Iowa fans? The school's doing it as hard as it can.
The man of the match was undoubtedly Aaron Fuller, who poured in a career high 24 points (on only 15 shots and 4 FTs!) and 10 rebounds. While you'd rather have Fuller save his 20-point performances for a team that isn't 1-5 in the Ohio Valley Conference, the larger issue is that he did it at all; the when, where, and why are, at this point, immaterial luxuries. Matt Gatens went for 12-6-5 and Cully Payne scored his 11th point with a go-ahead 3 as the shot clock expired with under 2 minutes to play. Just to reiterate: this is against 4-13 Tennessee State.
Next up is Saturday's epic pillow fight at Carver against Penn State. I would suggest the final score would be something comical like 24-23 or 21-10, but considering how bad each team is at defense, it'll probably be something pedestrian and boring like 64-59. Who wins? Nobody. At all.