Minnesota 86, Iowa 74

The lead for the QC Times story read, “Point guard Cully Payne and the rest of the Iowa basketball team found themselves tangled in a Gopher trap Saturday.”

Boy, did they ever. The final score doesn’t do justice to the 40-minute ass pounding. Just about the best thing about the game was the dance team (especially the chick pictured way in the back on the left).

I went to today’s game with my uncle, cousin (the beer giving cousin), and my old man. We sat in the 14th row behind the scorer’s table. They were awesome seats to watch an absolute disaster: five minutes after tip, the Hawks had used two timeouts and were down 21-4. When it all said and done, the Gophers had scored 45 points off 25 Iowa turnovers. It was, hands down, the worst Iowa men’s basketball games I’ve ever seen. The silver lining is that it was a very hard learning experience for a young team.

Let me revise my prediction about the Big Ten season. No road wins, and maybe one or two hard fought home wins. It’ll be a long, hard season, but I’ll still be there in the end. With five minutes left to go in the game, I looked over to my uncle. He turned to me and said, “Don’t you dare think about leaving early.” I wasn’t. I was going to stay ‘til the final whistle no matter how ugly it got (we did make it look respectable in the end). Later on, during an after-game dinner at The Airliner, he said, “I’d rather have a five win season under Lickliter than a 20-win season under Alford.” No doubt.