Broward County tournament this weekend. Both of his boys already in the semifinals. One at 160 is a 7th grade. The other at 195 is a freshman. They are good. Real good.

John is a FOX College Basketball play x play guy and reporter. He appears on @TheFieldof68

The full text of his tweet:

One high major coach to me on the state of college basketball:

“It’s a f#%king disaster. For us veteran coaches, this is not what we signed up for. I am not mad at the kids one bit. They’re seeking their value and earning money, and I think they should. It’s your right to get paid. I would do the same thing that they’re doing. Anybody mad at the kids is foolish. But shame on the NCAA for not seeing this coming years ago and being proactive. Not having a boundary or a system in place at all, having no regulations to even attempt to find a common playing field is a major miss. These collectives will get coaches fired. We have had no break. Not one coach in the country has had a single day to sit down and breathe. It’s unhealthy. The other issue is you get attrition when you get commitments. Another kid sees someone commit, dislikes the idea of fighting for their role on a team and wants to bolt elsewhere. We can’t do this every single year. Kids should make big dollars. But the way this is set up right now with no contracts or regulations makes it impossible to sustain anything in this sport.”

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Western Iowa looks to be under the gun for supercells today. Early on there may be a tornado threat before a transition to a more linear storm mode. High winds and large hail will be a threat into the evening hours.

Good shot the DSM Metro may be under the gun this evening.

Storms may make it all the way to the 380 corridor later this evening. Possibly still severe.

Iowa baseball (24-17, 10-8) avoided a sweep at Nebraska (27-14, 10-5) last weekend, dropping the first two games in the series 7-4 and 12-2 before a Brody Brecht gem gave Iowa a Sunday win, 4-1. Brecht went seven innings, striking out eleven batters while allowing just two hits and a single run when the team needed him most. His performance earned him a second straight Big Ten Pitcher of the Week Award.

Elsewhere, Iowa track and field competed in the Drake Relays, Iowa rowing earned multiple wins against top-25 competition and Hawkeye golf and tennis competed in Big Ten Conference Championships. You can follow along with all things Hawkeye Olympic sports here.

The New Ivies: As Employers Sour On The Super-Elite, These 20 Colleges Shine​

The Ivy League is losing its standing as America’s producer of great talent. Here are the schools producing the hard-working high achievers that employers crave.

Americans aren’t having enough babies. Ironically, pro-life politicians might be making the problem worse.
U.S. fertility rates hit a record low in 2023, the federal government reported last week. The average American woman is now expected to have just 1.6 births over her lifetime, based on age-specific birthrates last year — well below the fertility rate needed for the native-born U.S. population to replace itself (2.1 lifetime births per woman). That’s been the case consistently since 2007, but it’s only getting worse.



Why should you care about the baby bust? A couple of reasons. First, Americans’ own preferences: They’re having fewer kids than they say they want.

Recent Gallup polling data shows that Americans believe the “ideal” number of kids for a family to have is 2.7. In fact, last year, the share of respondents who said three or more kids is ideal reached its highest level since 1971 (45 percent).



Even asked about their own specific family desires, American teenage and adult women have for decades reported a number of kids much higher than actual fertility rates.

Policymakers track other measures indicating whether Americans are meeting their life goals (e.g., homeownership, financial security, physical health). Desired family size certainly belongs on the list, too. That is, the objective should never be forcing more women to become moms or to have more kids, but rather helping them achieve the family size they want.

The second reason: cold-hard economics.
As other countries have discovered, a population that fails to replace itself can face serious challenges. For instance, all else being equal, a shrinking workforce can lead to stagnant or declining living standards, because workers power the economy.


Likewise, a shrinking contingent of young people means fewer workers are available to care for the growing elderly population and pay for its retirement benefits. Already, the typical American senior receives more Social Security and Medicare payments than they paid into the system. As the ratio of retirees to working-age Americans grows, this problem will worsen.



In fact, the problem is already worse than government numbers suggest. The standard actuarial forecasts for Social Security assume a higher U.S. fertility rate than we’re on track to have; they project we’ll revert to near-replacement-level fertility rates in the years ahead, despite decades of data well below that. In other words, those dire forecasts for when Social Security might go broke are likely too optimistic.
Declining birthrates are not a U.S.-specific phenomenon. We’re actually doing a little better than most other high-income countries, which have tried all sorts of measures to boost baby-making. Some have adopted generous family-leave policies or expanded child care. Others have basically paid women to have more kids or tried to encourage more equitable gender roles.


For the most part, these policies have had little success at boosting birthrates, including in countries with more egalitarian gender norms. They’re still worth adopting, in my view, to improve the lives of those who have or wish to have children. (Some might also prove more effective with better design.)

In any event, the United States fares terribly on almost all family-friendly measures. For instance, we’re one of just three countries globally without mandatory paid maternity leave.
So maybe there’s more low-hanging fruit here, fertility-wise, than in a place such as Finland. One idea: Slash the tax burden for families with young kids, a traditionally bipartisan policy that a few Republican senators are currently blocking.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...tid=mc_magnet-opabortion_inline_collection_19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...tid=mc_magnet-opabortion_inline_collection_20

Another option: Provide better access to reproductive care. Unfortunately, some hospitals are now winding down in vitro fertilization programs because of continued “litigation risk,” thanks to Alabama’s Supreme Court, which ruled this year that embryos are considered people. Providers remain jittery even after Alabama lawmakers claimed to have fixed the problem.



Perhaps counterintuitively, better reproductive care also includes more reliable access to abortion care, especially in emergencies.
Post-Dobbs, pregnancies in red states — including wanted pregnancies — have become much more dangerous, especially when things go wrong. In Texas, women with pregnancy complications have gone into sepsis before doctors would provide treatment. In Louisiana and Ohio, women have seen their fallopian tubes rupture as a result of untreated ectopic pregnancies, compromising their ability to have children in the future. In Florida and North Carolina, pregnant women have been turned away from emergency rooms and left to miscarry in a lobby bathroom or the back of a car. In Idaho, as the Supreme Court recently heard, pregnant women are being airlifted to other states for emergency care.
OB/GYNs are understandably fleeing these states. Some hospitals are shutting down their obstetrics wings entirely.



Such stories are horrifying and traumatic for the women involved. They also likely discourage women on the fence about having kids from deliberately conceiving, especially if those women have existing medical vulnerabilities. Perhaps unsurprisingly, procedures for permanent contraception (vasectomies, tube-tying) spiked last year.
If we’ve given up on encouraging Americans to voluntarily have more kids, there are other ways to avoid the economic damages associated with population shrinkage. A sudden surge in productivity, for instance. Or hey, more immigration! You know, politically easy stuff.

Big day for my MAGA Putin loving friends today! May Day!cAny of you delivering May Baskets to your comrades in arms today? I think this is the day MAGAts celebrate Trump’s Treasonist attack against the United Stares and its Constitution back in January of 2021.
Happy May Day to all my Putin loving MAGA friends!

Dusty May, new Wolverine head man.

Sources: Florida Atlantic's Dusty May to be Michigan's coach

I see on twitter this has become a common nickname among Philly fans. I clicked on a bunch of them but nobody ever seems to explain what it means. Is there anyone here that is familiar with Philly slang that can explain it to me?

Here is one example to show what I’m talking about but if you search “Cooper DeJawn” on twitter there are tons of other posts.

I also see a lot of “Cooper Sharp DeJawn” which I also don’t understand.

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Committed to New Mexico and then called it off to go to UW. Do not believe he visited UW.

To briefly secure the job of House speaker 15 months ago, Kevin McCarthy made concessions that cost him that job and which continue to cost the Republican Party. McCarthy made it so that one member could force a vote to oust a speaker, for example, and he gave the hard right significant power on a Rules Committee that now gums up the works for leadership. There might have been plenty more included in this bargain; the full scale of it was for some reason kept secret.


Cut through the 2024 election noise. Get The Campaign Moment newsletter.

High on that list is a more informal concession McCarthy made: legitimizing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). McCarthy did so in the name of trying to wrangle the conspiratorial right she effectively leads.
Increasingly, the right is starting to reckon with the predictable drawbacks of that.

Sen. Thom Tillis’s (R-N.C.) comments to CNN on Tuesday were particularly biting. Amid Greene’s efforts to oust McCarthy’s successor, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), Tillis called her a “waste of time” and a “horrible leader.”


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“She is dragging our brand down,” Tillis said. “She — not the Democrats — are the biggest risk to us getting back to a majority.”
Tillis added, “I’m embarrassed to have actually lived geographically in her district at one time before she was there.”
Greene’s fights against Johnson and Ukraine aid, among other issues, such as banning TikTok, have also earned her increasing criticism from right-leaning media:

• The New York Post cover on Sunday blared “NYET, MOSCOW MARJORIE.” (Nyet is Russian for no.) It has recently run pieces calling her “Putin’s useful idiot” and referring to her plot against Johnson as a “lunatic case.”
• A Fox News opinion columnist wrote a piece last week titled: “Marjorie Taylor Greene is an idiot. She is trying to wreck the GOP.”
• The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal — like the New York Post and Fox, a property of the Murdoch media empire — recently christened her “Rep. Mayhem Taylor Greene” and said she “and her crew of vandals prefer to scream and throw soup at the walls.”
• Even the staunchly pro-Donald Trump Newsmax recently ran a piece asking, “Who put Marjorie Taylor Greene in charge?”

Republicans have criticized Greene before — often somewhat obliquely — but McCarthy’s speaker bid in early 2023 presented something of a slate-clearing moment for her and the party.

The tenor of Fox News’s other coverage of Greene has also been skeptical lately.
Last month, Fox host Laura Ingraham played a clip of Greene talking about China buying up U.S. farmland and quipped: “I’m losing that caboose of thought there. God bless her.”


On Sunday, Greene was even treated to a skeptical interview from usual MAGA booster Maria Bartiromo.
“How is this leading to reelecting President Trump? How is this leading to the American people believing that the Republicans can govern?” Bartiromo asked Greene, adding later: “I guess what I’m saying is, how does this help keeping a majority in the House? How does this help by electing your candidate — you know, your candidate?”

She also pressed Greene on what her plan was for what happens after ousting Johnson, ultimately concluding that Greene had avoided her question. “Well, with all due respect, you didn’t give me a plan for the speaker’s role,” Bartiromo said.
The same day on Fox, former GOP congressman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said a Greene remark “sounds like a Democrat attack ad.” Former congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) added, “Yes. I didn’t hear the name [Democratic House leader] Hakeem Jeffries come out of her lips and talk about the frustration that she has for the Democrats.”


This is the tenor of much of the criticism. It’s not so much that Greene has been an extreme conspiracy theorist who once unapologetically appeared at a conference hosted by a white nationalist — Republicans made peace with all that long ago. It’s that she’s suddenly playing into the hands of Russia and the Democrats. The fear of the intraparty discord that she uses to elevate herself is suddenly becoming very real with the 2024 election just over six months away.

But the realization that this is someone Republicans shouldn’t hitch their brand to has been dawning for a while. Greene isn’t even particularly popular with the GOP base; an early-2023 poll showed her image among Republicans (30 percent favorable, compared to 19 percent unfavorable) was better only than now-former congressman George Santos (N.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) among a list of 11 high-profile Republicans. She was one of the GOP’s biggest underperformers in the 2022 election.
Nor is her current crusade particularly in line with the GOP base; a Monmouth University poll Wednesday showed just 20 percent of Republicans want Johnson out. Another 32 percent oppose that, and 47 percent have no opinion.
As I wrote at the time McCarthy was elevating Greene: “There’s little question she’ll test the wisdom of GOP leadership’s newfound affection for her.”
But there were (very) short-term politics to be played. It didn’t work out for McCarthy. It’s not really working out for his party, either.

A son ended up dying after his dad made him run on a treadmill because he was fat.

Hard to watch.

Poll time

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed poised on Thursday to narrow the scope of the criminal case against former President Donald J. Trump on charges that he plotted to subvert the 2020 election.

Such a ruling, endorsing at least part of Mr. Trump’s argument that he is immune from prosecution, would most likely send the case back to the trial court to draw distinctions between official and private conduct. Those proceedings could make it hard to conduct the trial before the 2024 election.

D. John Sauer, Mr. Trump’s lawyer, pressed an extreme version of the former president’s argument. In answer to hypothetical questions, he said that presidential orders to murder political rivals or stage a coup could well be subject to immunity.
But several of the conservative justices seemed disinclined to consider those questions or the details of the accusations against Mr. Trump. Instead, they said the court should issue a ruling that applies to presidential power generally.
“We’re writing a rule for the ages,” Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said.
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh also said the court should think about the larger implications of its decision. “This case has huge implications for the presidency, for the future of the presidency, for the future of the country.”
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said that a ruling for Mr. Trump could enhance democratic values.
“A stable, democratic society requires that a candidate who loses an election, even a close one, even a hotly contested one, leave office peacefully,” he said, adding that the prospect of criminal prosecution would make that less likely.
“Will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?” he asked.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she had a different understanding. “A stable democratic society,” she said, “needs the good faith of its public officials.”
The court’s ruling on whether Mr. Trump is absolutely immune from prosecution on those charges will be a major statement on the scope of presidential power. Depending on its timing and content, the decision will also help determine whether Mr. Trump’s trial will start before the election, in time to let both jurors and voters evaluate the evidence that Jack Smith, the special counsel in the case, seeks to present.
Here’s what else to know:

• Some justices focused on whether motive matters. This is a recurring pressure point in the question of whether an official act can be treated as a crime: Does it matter whether a president had a corrupt purpose? Proponents of a strong presidency point out that if the answer is yes, that could allow courts to second-guess whether a president’s exercise of his constitutional responsibilities was reasonable, a significant blurring of separation of powers.
• A lot of the discussion has swirled around the question of whether, without immunity, presidents will be hounded by their rivals with malicious charges after leaving office.
• Michael Dreeben, speaking for the government, said executive immunity would license a president to commit “bribery, treason sedition, murder” and, as in Mr. Trump’s case “conspiring to use fraud to overturn the results of an election and perpetuate himself in power.” He added, “The framers knew too well the dangers of a king who could do no wrong.” Lower courts have rejected Mr. Trump’s immunity claim.
• Mr. Trump contends that he is entitled to absolute immunity from Mr. Smith’s charges, relying on a broad understanding of the separation of powers and a 1982 Supreme Court precedent that recognized such immunity in civil cases for actions taken by presidents within the “outer perimeter” of their official responsibilities.
• Mr. Trump is accused of a sprawling effort to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election, including by seeking to recruit bogus slates of electors in a bid to alter vote counts and pressuring an array of officials, like Vice President Mike Pence, to subvert the results. Mr. Trump faces a count of conspiring to defraud the government, another of conspiring to disenfranchise voters and two counts related to corruptly obstructing a congressional proceeding.
• In agreeing to hear the case, the Supreme Court said it would decide this question: “Whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.” The question suggests that the court could reject absolute immunity but call for more limited protections. It also indicates that the justices may try to distinguish between official acts and private ones.

Iowa State Auditor Rob Sand released a report Tuesday on college degree requirements in state jobs, arguing that the state should drop the requirement for some positions.



Sand, a Democrat, created the report with Opportunity@Work, a firm that seeks to advance employment opportunities for those with job training outside a traditional four-year college degree. The report identified 28 job titles in state government that could be better served by dropping the college degree requirement, Sand said.


Among those positions are administrative assistants, information technology specialists, nurse specialists and workforce advisers. Some of the positions require a four-year degree, while others say a degree is preferred.




Sand said a significant portion of Iowa workers have training through military service, community college or on-the-job training, making them skilled enough to do the work. But a degree requirement, or the indication that a degree is preferred, turns those potential applicants away, he said.


“That ‘paper ceiling’ stops a lot of really well-qualified people from applying for those jobs or getting those jobs,” Sand said.


Opportunity@Work has performed similar audits in other states. Sand said he reached out to the organization after seeing their work with Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan.


The state Department of Administrative Services manages the job postings and requirements for most state jobs, Sand said, and the department would need to approve any changes to job requirements. He said his office would share the report with the department and request that it change the requirements for the listed job postings.


"We're going to get a broader cross-section of Iowans applying for this work, including a lot of people who are value-focused, practical-focused, who have made those career decisions for those reasons," Sand said.




Download: Sand job report.pdf

Iowa DOT X account hacked​

The Iowa Department of Transportation's X account was hacked on Tuesday, the agency said.


The account, on the social media site formerly known as Twitter, was briefly being used to promote a cryptocurrency called Renzo. The account's name, profile photo and cover photo had been changed.


As of Tuesday afternoon, the Iowa DOT name and photos had been restored on the account. All of the account's posts have been deleted.


"It appears the @IowaDOT X account was compromised overnight. We have reached out to X to regain control. They are working to restore our account as quickly as possible," the DOT said in a news release.


The agency said the hack involved only the X account and no other DOT systems were affected.

Iowa Attorney General warns of ‘storm-chaser scams’​

In the wake of destructive tornadoes that caused major damage in Minden and Pleasant Hill over the weekend, Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird said Iowans should be on the lookout for "scammers and shady contractors" looking to exploit victims of the natural disaster.


Bird's office said the scammers could present as cleanup, home repair and construction contractors, especially those seeking business door-to-door and asking for payment upfront.


Iowans should check a contractor's reputation and identification, get a written contract, work directly with insurance companies and avoid risky payment methods, Bird's office said.


"Iowans are resilient, but they should not need to fight off scammers while rebuilding their lives," Bird said in a news release. "Before hiring a contractor, take your time, do your research, and protect yourself from falling victim to a storm-chaser scam. My office is always a resource to those who suspect they are being targeted by scammers.”

Iowa AG secures settlement for businesses, charities targeted by a misleading mailer​

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird announced nearly 500 Iowa businesses and charities will receive full refunds for money lost through misleading mailers.


Bird’s office announced a settlement with Master Marketing Group LLC, which has been conducting business as GA Business Compliance. According to the attorney general’s office, the company misled Iowans in wrongfully believing that as part of the process for forming a new business or charity that they needed to obtain a certificate showing they had registered to do business in the state. GA Business Compliance then charged Iowans $65 for the certificate.


In circumstances where the certificate is actually needed, it can be obtained from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office for $5.






Under the settlement, GA Business Compliance has agreed to issue full refunds to 478 Iowa businesses and charities, totaling nearly $30,000, and pay a $5,000 penalty. The company also is permanently banned from sending mail solicitations to Iowans.


Most Iowans who paid GA Business Compliance by credit card should have already received their full refunds, according to the attorney general’s office. Remaining Iowans will receive a check from the Iowa Attorney General’s Office that will be mailed within the next few weeks.


Iowans who believe they’ve been affected or did not receive their check should contact the Iowa Attorney General’s Office at 888-777-4590.

Wait, hold on, my bad-they ranked Trump last place. Biden was 14th. Anyway, Happy Presidents’ Day!

“In a recent survey conducted by a panel of experts specializing in the American presidency, President Biden was ranked 14th-best president, while his likely 2024 presidential opponent former President Donald Trump found himself at the bottom of the list.

The 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey which was conducted from Nov. 15 to Dec. 31, included current and recent members of the Presidents and Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association, which is the foremost organization of social science experts in presidential politics.”

April 30, 2024 Update:

Ave Attendance for MBB for the 2023-2024 season = 9,961.

Scanned Tickets Ave (actual butts in the seats) = 5,742 (38% of 14,998 Capacity)

Link to story:



ORIG (Feb 10) POST:

I have been saying for a while now that announced attendance and scanned tickets (actual butts in the seats) are 2 very different numbers. @HawkHoops80 questioned me on this, thinking the 2 numbers were the same.

As you will read, just 6,390 tickets have been scanned on average at Friday/Saturday/Sunday games (43% of Carver-Hawkeye Arena’s 14,998 capacity).

Good story from the Gazette from today:

Iowa men’s basketball’s attendance woes are worse than official numbers suggest, lack quick fixes​

Tickets-scanned data paints bleak picture of men’s basketball turnout at Carver-Hawkeye Arena



John Steppe
Cedar Rapids Gazette
john.steppe@thegazette.com
Feb. 10, 2024 6:30 am


IOWA CITY — Fran McCaffery was hopeful for a “good” crowd last weekend against Ohio State.

One does not need to look far to understand why. It was a Friday night game. The 6 p.m. start time was helpful for any fans who had to drive back to Des Moines or other distant locales afterward.

It was a winnable game against an Ohio State team that had lost its previous three games.

Cost was not an issue either. Some ticket prices on StubHub before fees were cheaper than the signature Carver Cones that fans crave. After fees, it was still cheaper than the soft-serve ice cream in a souvenir bowl.

But, according to ticket-scanned data, more seats were empty than occupied for the Hawkeyes’ entertaining, 79-77, win over Ohio State.

It has been a consistent issue for the Hawkeyes this season.

Iowa’s listed attendance average of 9,712 fans per home game ranks 10th out of the 14 teams in the Big Ten. Data obtained by The Gazette via public records requests paints an even bleaker picture about men’s basketball turnout.

In Iowa’s13 home men’s basketball games so far — 12 regular-season games and one preseason exhibition — the Hawkeyes averaged 5,202 tickets scanned per game.

That equates to a mere 35 percent occupancy of 14,998-seat Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

A major winter storm in January led to a season-low 1,351 fans at the Iowa-Nebraska game, but even if you exclude that game, the average would be only 5,523.

The Ohio State game had 6,875 tickets scanned, according to Iowa Athletics.

The only time when the arena was more than two-thirds full — again based on tickets-scanned data, which looks at how many people are actually at the game versus how many bought tickets — was the Hawkeyes’ loss to then-No. 2 Purdue on Saturday, Jan. 20.

“You always want to grow your crowd,” Iowa athletics director Beth Goetz told The Gazette. “You want to make sure that you create an environment that everybody — your fans and your athletes — enjoy being in. If and when those are down a little bit, it’s our responsibility to look and figure out how we can try to address that.”

McCaffery believes Iowa fans “really support the team.”

“The key for us — and it’s been this way for a long time — is weekend games,” McCaffery said the day before the Ohio State game.

Weekend games are more amenable for fans traveling the roughly two hours from the Des Moines area, 30 minutes from Cedar Rapids or hour from the Quad Cities.

An 8 p.m. start time on a Tuesday, on the other hand, would mean someone traveling back to Des Moines might not make it home until midnight (while possibly having to work the next morning).

“We make it real easy for you to watch it on TV,” McCaffery said, “and they often don’t like the start times. During a midweek, you got issues with that. They show up on the weekends typically.”

To McCaffery’s point, weekend home games have experienced better turnout than weeknight home games. Iowa’s weeknight games have averaged 3,303 tickets scanned versus 6,390 on Friday, Saturday and Sunday games.

“We don’t want to use that as an excuse, but we do have to recognize that if you’re playing a weekday game at 8 p.m., then it’s going to impact who’s going to have the ability to attend,” Goetz said.

The 6,390 fans on average at Friday/Saturday/Sunday games still make up only 43 percent of Carver-Hawkeye Arena’s capacity.

Iowa men’s basketball also has benefited from a fair share of weekend games in 2023-24. Home games on Friday, Saturday or Sunday have outnumbered weeknight games, 8-5, so far this season. Three of Iowa’s four remaining home games are on weekends as well.

Other teams on campus and across the Big Ten have shown weeknight slots do not necessarily create an insurmountable challenge to convince fans to attend.

The weeknight-versus-weekend dilemma does not exist for Iowa women’s basketball, which has sold out every home game and seen third-party ticket prices rise well into the triple-digits. The Iowa women benefit greatly from having reigning National Player of the Year Caitlin Clark, though.

Looking at population demographics, the U.S. Census-defined Cedar Rapids-Iowa City Combined Statistical Area has 454,583 people, according to the 2022 estimate. Nebraska and Purdue are in significantly smaller Census-marked CSAs, yet boast significantly higher men’s basketball attendance numbers than the Hawkeyes.

A lack of postseason success appears to drive some apathy toward the men’s basketball program. Iowa has gone 24 seasons without advancing to the Sweet 16 after previously going through a two-decade stretch with five trips to the second weekend of the tournament.

But the regular-season results — the results of the games fans are choosing not to attend this year — have been largely positive in recent years for a program that is not a traditional men’s basketball powerhouse.

McCaffery, in his 14th season leading the Hawkeyes, is the program’s all-time leader in overall and B1G wins.

Iowa has earned NCAA tournament bids in 4 consecutive years — the longest streak for the program since the 1980s — and it would have been five straight tournaments, had COVID-19 not forced the cancellation of 2020 March Madness.

Iowa has won 20-plus games in eight of the last 11 seasons after previously going six straight seasons without 20-plus wins.

That’s not to mention the 2022 season, when Iowa won the Big Ten tournament title. The 26 wins in that season were the second-most in program history behind Tom Davis’ 30-win team in 1986.

This year’s apathy toward men’s basketball had some subtle warning signs as early as last season.

Results from Iowa Athletics’ end-of-year survey to ticket-buying fans, which The Gazette obtained via a public records request, indicated a 12-point drop in net promoter scale from plus-39 to plus-27. (The net promoter scale is a “measure of fan satisfaction and loyalty” that ranges from minus-100 to plus-100.)

The plus-27 score, while still considered “healthy,” was well below the plus-82 for men’s wrestling and plus-93 for women’s basketball.

Goetz anticipates the department doing something “a little more robust, a little more in depth” than a typical midseason or end-of-season survey after this season to gather more data and “understand more what the barriers are that exist.”

“There’s a real data analysis that has to happen to understand who is coming,” Goetz said. “When and where are they using their tickets? Where are those tickets coming from? And you really have to dial in and talk directly to your fans — those that are attending each game, and those that are not, perhaps season ticket holders in the past and haven’t renewed and try to figure out what those dynamics are.”

Some schools have moved into smaller, more intimate venues. Baylor, for example, moved earlier this year from the 10,284-seat Farrell Center to the 7,000-seat Foster Pavilion.

Goetz has previously signaled a desire to renovate 41-year-old Carver-Hawkeye Arena, saying last year that the arena has been a “great friend and home to us for about 40 years, and we need it to continue to be so for a few more decades to come.”

Iowa Athletics began a feasibility study last year, marking the first step toward a major renovation of Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Those plans are not yet finalized, but Goetz does “envision it’ll shrink just a little bit” from a seating capacity standpoint.

“Shrinking a venue a little bit and trying to make sure we meet the demand is likely an important way to think about things as we make those decisions,” Goetz said.

As for those who did show up for last Friday’s Ohio State-Iowa game, Goetz thought they were “animated, passionate, into the game.” But she also recognizes the need to improve attendance.

“We’re going to continue to do our best to make sure that we provide an environment that’s going to get them there, so we can support the program as best we can,” Goetz said.

Game vs Rutgers on Saturday, Jan. 6, 2024:

NM

The Court also ruled there is evidence that the Auditor’s Office violated the Open Records Law by not releasing an 11th email in a timely manner. That email was not included in the records the Auditor initially produced and the Kirkwood Institute specifically requested it in a follow-up request. The Auditor’s Office eventually released it as part of court proceedings. But the Iowa Supreme Court ruled the Kirkwood Institute could seek damages to cover its legal fees as the release was “unreasonably delayed”.

Full article:

Now Iowa needs to have Jan go get Raegan Beers. How good of a post could she be with Jan coaching her? She is from Colorado. Many Addy knows her. That would be perfect and a big that I could really use. And she is not a one year player. Go Hawks!