Wednesday Hawkeyes Reading Room — Iowa Basketball. Uhhhhh, not so good.

Posted on Nov 17, 2009 by Mike Hlas.

As I’ve said here, I have a hard time getting interested in basketball in November. But what’s a sportswriting boy to do when Iowa State plays Drake and Iowa is on TV an hour later?

Watch, that’s what. At least some of it.

Iowa State looks like a hungry, aggressive, pretty talented team. Drake doesn’t. The Cyclones tore into the Bulldogs like pit bulls in their 90-70 win.

Craig Brackins is all man, as his 22-point, 10-rebound effort would indicate. I don’t look for Lucca Staiger to sink 10 three-pointers in a game too many more times, but he certainly appears to have shed the tentativeness he had last season.

Marquis Gilstrap and Diante Garrett also looked very good. Garrett had 11 assists. And Marquette transfer Scott Christopherson played very well with 15 points and five assists.

As for Iowa’s 52-50 loss to Duquesne, whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

As Andy Hamilton of the Iowa City Press-Citizen asked me this afternoon, what will draw more fans in Iowa City Friday: The Iowa City Duals (the Hawkeyes have duals against Coe,

Tom Brands - now that's excitement

Cornell, Iowa Lakes, North Carolina-Pembroke and Southern Illinois-Edwardsville) from 10:30 a.m. to a final dual start-time of 5 p.m. in Carver, or the Iowa men’s basketball game against Bowling Green that night?

That isn’t meant to be an insult to Tom Brands’ NCAA-champion wrestling team, by the way.

It’s the first time Iowa has lost its first two games since the 1931-32 season. But I’m confident the Hawkeyes can beat Bowling Green. The Falcons lost 101-57 to Xavier Tuesday night. So figure Iowa to win by, oh, 53-49.

Enough of that dreariness. I — and a slew of others who covered the Iowa-Ohio State football game last Saturday — made it into Deadspin Tuesday.

Life just gets better and better.

Anyway, Deadspin (how many plugs can I give a site that has more traffic than the New Jersey Turnpike?) ran a list of many different people who used the word “poise” with the words “James Vandenberg” after the Iowa-Ohio State football game. I was one of those credited/victimized.

Deadspin’s Tommy Craggs wrote this on this post:

It was his first collegiate start, and he somehow managed not to piddle on the 50-yard line, and that was all anyone needed to bestow upon Vandenberg’s competence a favorite bit of light praise.

Hey, the kid showed poise. If he’d showed panic, we’d have used the word “panic.” That’s how it works.

If Deadspin wants to pick up on this and hammer me some more, please, please, please do. As long as it links the Hlog.

In the meantime, you can go to other Deadline news bulletins of this week like “Michelle Wie’s Life Is No Longer Worthless.”

Let’s move on to something else. Like …

Kent Youngblood of the Minneapolis Star Tribune looks at what it will take for Minnesota to upset Iowa in football Saturday in Iowa City. He writes:

What will it take? A lot.

It will take a turnover-free offense and at least two take-aways by the defense. It will take a scheme that gives Weber protection, which will be difficult given Iowa’s fantastic front four. The Gophers will have to find a way to slow down Adrian Clayborn. Minnesota’s tackles have made a number of defensive ends look good; Clayborn doesn’t need the help.

So, what else?

–It will take an Adam Weber channeling the Michigan State game. Difficult, considering how much better Iowa’s pass defense is.

–I don’t think the gophers will be able to run the ball very well Saturday, but they have to try, and have to do it often enough to enable the play-pass.

–And, finally, the Gophers need the kind of special teams play they got earlier in the season and less of the version they got against South Dakota State and Illinois.

Gophers Coach Tim Brewster is putting a positive spin on his team having to travel to Iowa City by bus instead of plane to save about $70,000.

“You know what? I think it’s refreshing,” Brewster said. “To get on a bus — and we’re going to go about 2 1/2 hours, stop have a sandwich, walk around a little bit, get back on the bus and go 2 1/2 more hours to the stadium and work out — I think it’s great.”

It worked for Cal when it bussed six hours to Pasadena, where it beat UCLA. It worked for Miami when it bussed four hours to Orlando, where it beat Central Florida. Of course, Cal was better than UCLA and Miami was better than Central Florida . . .

Jim Souhan of the Star Tribune had a funny column about the Gophers’ “stirring” game-winning drive that beat South Dakota State 16-13 last Saturday.

Beating the Jackrabbits by three points at home gave the Gophers a victory over a smaller school, producing a chance for a 6-6 finish and an invitation to the Insight Bowl.

Under Coach Brew, the Gophers barely resemble the program that, three years ago

Tim Brewster

under Glen Mason, beat a smaller school (North Dakota State) by a smaller margin (one point) on their way to a 6-6 finish and an invitation to the Insight Bowl.

On the giddy avenues of Gopher Nation, this is called “progress.”

An Auburn-Iowa State Independence Bowl would be a treat for Alabama and Iowa sportswriters, with Auburn Coach Gene Chizik having fled Ames for Auburn, and ISU Coach Paul Rhoads having come from Auburn to briefly out-of-work to Ames. But it won’t happen, says Paul Gattis of the Huntsville Times. He writes:

But that won’t happen for the same reason Alabama never got matched with Texas A&M in a bowl game when Dennis Franchione was crashing and burning the Aggies program.

The bowl games for SEC teams are carefully put together with strong influence from the SEC office. And neither Chizik nor Iowa State, I’m certain, want to get to the end-of-the-year reward of a bowl game and see each other there.

Finally, at his Tuesday press conference Kirk Ferentz said he thought New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichick made “a great call” in going for a first-down on 4th-and-2 from the Pats’ 28 with 2:08 left and New England ahead of the Indianapolis Colts Sunday night, 34-28.

The play didn’t get the first down, the Colts drove 30 yards for a game-winning touchdown, and Belichick was widely villified. Although, as the week has progressed, some like Nolan Nawrocki of Yahoo Sports say it was no blunder, just a bold gamble.

Bill Belichick

Anyway, here’s a 2008 Boston Globe story by Kevin Paul Dupont on Belichick that has an interesting passage on Ferentz recounting the interviewing process Belichick put him through before Ferentz became an assistant coach for Belichick with the Cleveland Browns in the 1990s. A passage:

“These interviews are usually short and sweet,” said Ferentz. “But, boy, did I ever get beat up. I mean, you talk about getting worked over. Wow! Right from the start, he was asking me details . . . ‘What about this, and what about that’ . . . boom, boom, boom. You have to understand, he is the king of not giving you feedback. He’d ask a question, and I’d be there talking, and talking, and all he gives you is this blank stare. Nothing else. Just a stare. So he’s staring, and I’m there thinking, ‘Am I doing OK here, or am I getting killed?’ ” . . .

A week later, Ferentz was called back for another two-hour interrogation, and when it was over, Belichick offered him the job.

“It was painful,” said Ferentz. “But it all worked out, and I’m glad it did. What an opportunity it was, to land on that staff. I never went to grad school, but I liken my time there as having gone to grad school.”

Belichick wasn’t regarded as a coaching genius when Ferentz got the Iowa job 11 years ago. Nor was Ferentz. Time has passed. Belichick has three Super Bowl rings, and Ferentz likely will soon be the Big Ten’s Coach of the Year for the third time.