The NBA Finals wasn’t the only thing to end within the last week. Let’s get to it.

Iowa Olympic Sport Roundup

The Hawkeyes had a solid performance in Eugene, OR for the NCAA Track Championships. While the individual events merited a handful of top 8 finishes, the young 4x400 relay team was the high point with a 3rd place finish and school record. The men finished in 17th place finish while the women tied for 48th. With the new digs on the way and many returning athletes, things are trending up for Joey Woody.

While they fell in the regionals, Hawkeye baseball had a couple All-American honors.

Now we’ll wait to see who might go in the draft this week.

Their performance in a rebuilding year was unexpected. Hopefully football can mirror what Fran and Heller did with limited expectations.

Thomas Gilman ran through Tony Ramos after an impressive showing in the challenger tournament. Ross had a great recap on Gilman’s campaign to Paris.

(It is a 100% non-story but bears mentioning: Gilman inadvertently used a “insensitive remark” when discussing one his potential competitors at Worlds. He’s since apologized. Carry on.)

Football

The University announced there would be some midfield artwork with this new installation of field turf. Funny how fun, exciting news comes out on a Monday while bad news comes out on a Friday. Beltway Hawk mentioned in the comments how College Football Reddit got a hold of it and determined it was against Iowa’s brand standards:

Personally, I like it more than the “redesign” adhering to those standards. Good job by the university to make an exception - if they even realized it was an exception - in this case.

I also have a take for a later day:

Kirk Ferentz joined Chad Leistikow for a podcast last week. I haven’t gotten a chance to listen yet, but it touched on a wide range topics including the Twitter ban which included some surprising feedback from the players. From Ferentz:

They all were unanimous, quite frankly, that it was a good idea to refrain [from Twitter.] ... I think the understanding is that everything our guys put out there, whether you want it to or not, it represents our program in some way.

Whether this is the truth or just Ferentz’s version of the truth, is obviously tough to discern. My guess is the culture’s he’s cultivated has found kids who are 100% behind this “sacrifice.” While I don’t necessarily like it, I understand his stance on it. You can’t tweet anything dumb if you’re not on Twitter.

Basketball

The incoming freshmen received their numbers. My favorite is Luka Garza at 55, the largest possible number a college basketball player can have.

Jack Nunge participated with the Indiana All-Stars over the last week. The festivities include two junior vs. senior games and a home-and-home with Kentucy seniors. In games Nunge played - he missed the fourth traveling to Iowa - they went 2-1. He averaged 18 points and 10 rebounds. His best game came without Indiana’s Mr. Basketball - Kris Wilkes was suspended with one other boy and two girl all-stars - against the juniors where Nunge had 28 points and 13 boards.

My sense on Nunge is he is an ultimate team player who will come right in and do what is asked of him.

The Prime Time League had to delay their draft to get more players involved. Pat Harty has an interesting piece on its genesis, which dates 30 years back to the transition between George Raveling and Tom Davis. One of many interesting tidbits, is how the most reluctance of any coach regarding the PTL is Todd Lickliter.

Aaron White has signed with BC Zalgiris Kaunas of the EuroLeague while Mike Gessell was seen around Iowa’s dirt racing tracks.

A 20-game schedule has been floated for the Big Ten. I’m all for it if it means the elimination of a couple cupcakes in December. I expect the moved-up conference games this year because of the tournament in Madison Square Garden to serve as a test case. Tom Izzo goes out of his way to complain about it, though, hoping that every Power 5 conference also does it. Such a schedule would mean tripling up in the Big 12, who already has a clean home-and-home round robin schedule.

Mini ‘Croot Loops

Pat McCaffery remains Iowa’s biggest recruiter for the 2019 class despite not officially committing. Michael Moreno’s visit is detailed in the above link, and includes a 2v2 game between him/McCaffery and their much younger brothers. It was not pretty.

Big things are happening for him and Joe Wieskamp.

Other Stuff

The Wall Street Journal ($) ventured to this year’s location to get a full backstory of the man who went broke building the golf course.

There is a lot of hyperbole from our future Vox colleagues at The Ringer. Zach Lowe takes a more measured approach.

Kevin Durant’s weak arms finally come back to bite him:

Our Ben Ross wrote a cool piece about the mixture of music, food, and drink.

Enjoy your Tuesday.