Big Ten Basketball: Conference tournament preview and predictions

5. Iowa Hawkeyes

Another team that has strangely faded down the stretch has been the Iowa Hawkeyes. Iowa seemed poised to take the Big Ten title, possibly outright, when they jumped out to a 10-2 conference record with sweeps of Michigan State and Purdue.

They finished the season 2-4 with confusing road losses to Penn State and Ohio State. They find themselves now playing the winner of Minnesota/Illinois and then the 4-seeded Purdue Boilermakers on Friday afternoon. The Hawkeyes and Boilers had interesting match-ups this season, let’s look at a quick breakdown.

In their first match-up in January at Purdue, the Boilers came out and blitzed Iowa in the first half for a 47-30 halftime lead. It was one of the most dominant and best-looking halves of basketball Purdue played all season. The second half belonged entirely to Iowa. The Hawkeyes surprised the Boilermakers and implemented a full-court press and Purdue turned the ball over in droves.

Purdue’s guards accounted for eight of their 14 turnovers and Iowa outscored Purdue 50-26 in the second-half for a 70-63 shocker in West Lafayette, IN. It was Purdue’s only home loss of the season.

The second match-up in Iowa City again saw Purdue jump out front, albeit holding a slimmer 35-33 halftime lead. Iowa’s seniors were patient and Jarrod Uthoff and Peter Jok combined for 35 points on 13-25 shooting. The Hawkeyes again scored 50 second-half points and defeated the Boilermakers 83-71.

What makes this match-up any different? I think the old adage of “it is not who you play, but when you play them” applies here. Both games were played relatively early on in the Big Ten season during Iowa’s blistering start.

That has flipped some over the last four games with Purdue winning three of four and Iowa dropping three of four. Iowa still poses some match-up problems for Purdue, but a team that relies so much on their starting five will be playing on consecutive days while Purdue last played on Sunday.

It is also just difficult to beat a team three times, especially a top-15 type team in Purdue. For all of those reasons and more, I am going with the Boilers in this match-up.

Next: 4. Wisconsin Badgers