…is what I’d say to the experts who were pointing to Iowa as a hot pick during the last week or so. I can say it safely now, since Cincinnati just trounced them, 76-64.
Leaving aside my non-hatred of Cincinnati, which many people seem to find inexplicable, I’ll just note that as a devout fan of the Gophers, I am sworn to hate their most reviled rivals, the Wisconsin Badgers and the Iowa Hawkeyes. That doesn’t keep me from being able to evaluate those teams semi-objectively, though, and Iowa just wasn’t a very good team this year. A nice little run at the end of the season propelled them into an undeserved NCAA berth (I don’t think Indiana deserved to go to the tournament either, but to pick Iowa ahead of them was just an insult by the committee), but anyone who’d really been paying attention could see that their brief momentum wasn’t going to last. And it didn’t. Therefore, ha!
So semi-objectively, what’s your take
on the Badgers? I’m still surprised
that Gopher fans despise Wisconsin in
anything but hockey. As a lifelong
Badger fan I always viewed UW vs. UM as
a friendly rivalry — the teams I grew
up hating were Ohio State and Michigan
in football, Indiana in basketball and
Illinois in everything.
I dunno, I’m not a native Minnesotan, of course, so maybe my Badger hatred is misplaced; after all, a ton of Minnesota kids go to Madison for college. (The Hawkeye hatred is right on target, though.) In case it makes any difference, I’ve never disliked the Badgers as much as the Hawkeyes.
And Wisconsin has produced some NBA players whom I admire, most recently Michael Finley, of course.
Semi-objectively, though, I think Wisconsin is good but not good enough this year. I don’t see them having any trouble with Northern Iowa, and I think they’ll play KU hard in the second round, but that’s as far as they’ll get. If Wilkinson, Chambliss, and Nixon all play at their peak, they could really challenge KU, but that seems unlikely. (It’s a pity that those three have had such mixed seasons, because I think they’ve all got a ton of talent.) It just seems like Wisconsin wilted in a lot of its big games this season (like when the Gophers beat them, heh), and I suspect that will happen on Sunday, too.