You REALLY think folks aren't attending per-conference games to make a point about being upset they didn't make it to the S16 the previous year? REALLY?
Chad Leistikow throws appropriate shade at Carver crowds
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You REALLY think folks aren't attending per-conference games to make a point about being upset they didn't make it to the S16 the previous year? REALLY?
That's what's been stated in this thread. I agree, it's ridiculous.
Well that’s obvious and no one was arguing otherwise. Your point, which is factually incorrect, was that attendance rankings were better than the team’s year end ranking.
“The numbers are what they are”. True, which of course can be an issue like in your case when you don’t know how to read them.
Not one game, but one tournament.
You know, the one in March all programs have their eye on throughout the season. Success during March Madness is what matters most.
Shit the bed in the NCAA tourney? The entire season can go f**k itself, and, it’s especially disappointing when it happens year after year after year.
Winning the big ten west? Fantastic.
Getting shellacked / embarrassed in Indy? Erase it all.
The amount of fans on this board that think just one more win (round 32 to sweet 16) makes or breaks a season is astonishing.
Of course many of these people are the same ones that went from a “deep B1G Tournament run” to “B1G Tournament championship” to now just a Sweet 16.
My advice, ignore them.
Next it'll be Elite Eight, the Final Four, then the Championship game, then Champion.
Well we already see Iowa being compared to Kentucky, so it’s the next logical step.
It's a popular idea here, but I seriously doubt it is at the University.
Texas' new stadium was $375 million for 15k seats. But even if you cut it in half and adjust it for the lower number of seats, you're still talking about $130 million. I like the idea, but I don't know how you can justify the expense.
It would be cool tho .....
Tearing down the old capital mall is like the only option land wise right??? That’d be cool. Never going to happen but it’d across the street from the ped mall!
I'm not sure who purchased the old City Carton property down by the river (near Big Grove), but it's a sizable chunk of land a short walk from downtown. I always though that would make a great arena or baseball stadium location.
This is silly. You're going to far to defend a dumb point. One game doesn't wipe out a season, as bad as that game sucked.
I've been consistent for a long time, well before the cash grab Big Ten tournament existed.
THE bar for the season is NCAA tournament results. Everything else is about what gets a team as far as possible once there. The only thing I value about the BTT is how it affects NCAA performance.
Had 8 feet of water there in '08. Likely in the 100 year floodplain, city would nix that...
I've never been to far.
If we're that good, we should win that game going away. Evidently we're not and it's showing with an average of 5,000 unsold seats and many more unfilled in any given season.
Win more and attendance will be better. Guaranteed.
Iowa basketball hasn't returned to its level of prominence pre-Alford. We got more national attention. Apropos` the current topic, attending the BBall games just aren't trendy or cool. Schedules aren't being made around game time. That "feeling" won't return without more success at the end of the year. The Sweet 16 and beyond is now at twice in 34 seasons, with 23 seasons since the last one. Last shared title was 45 seasons ago. Last FF 43 seasons ago.
The forty or so years before Alford saw at least 3 (2 Ralph, 1 Lute) Big Ten titles, 3 FFs (Bucky 2, Lute 1), 2 Regional Finals (Ralph and Dr. Davis) and I think 6 Sweet 16s, maybe 5. I could be wrong about some of that, recall isn't perfect anymore. That's what built the culture that drew sell outs. It is in that culture that people scheduled their days and weeks around game time. Does anyone care now like the Geezers cared in 70, 78, 87 or 99?
Plus, it's just an old arena, with shitty parking and poorly accessible to where the bulk of the crowd wants to be before or after the game.
The forty or so years before Alford saw at least 3 (2 Ralph, 1 Lute) Big Ten titles, 3 FFs (Bucky 2, Lute 1), 2 Regional Finals (Ralph and Dr. Davis) and I think 6 Sweet 16s, maybe 5. I could be wrong about some of that, recall isn't perfect anymore. That's what built the culture that drew sell outs. It is in that culture that people scheduled their days and weeks around game time. Does anyone care now like the Geezers cared in 70, 78, 87 or 99?
Plus, it's just an old arena, with shitty parking and poorly accessible to where the bulk of the crowd wants to be before or after the game.
Not if you (1) Build the arena on two or three parking floors so flooding isn't much of a problem and (2) grease the right palms, hire the right contractors and subs and of course the bank that gets to market the bonds.
Someone down there needs to display some creativity and ability to get big projects done and build a new arena walking distance from downtown.
Iowa was ranked 24th and playing NW last year, and we still only had 13, 231 in attendance. Iowa had more fans for the PSU(15,056), Nebraska (13,772) and Minnesota(14,558) games when we were unranked because those games were on the weekends. Iowa had a terrible home slate last year in the Big Ten. A Monday or Tuesday game isn't gonna draw fans, as Iowa fans don't all live in or near IC.
Good post. Good argument for building a more accessible arena so a lot more people could just park, walk over to the arena after eating dinner (e.g. tonight) downtown and attend the games.
Guy's what do the real estate people say? Location, location and location.
Where downtown would they be able to fit an arena? It just doesn't seem possible.
Old Cap seems to be the only viable option, the mall itself is 285k square feet, current hawkeye arena is 335 square feet. University of Iowa already partially owns it and will have full ownership in 2025. What they decide to do with it...
Building a 10k Arena there would be amazing, will they do it, doubtful.
Building a 10k Arena there would be amazing, will they do it, doubtful.
Perhaps to the casual fan, but I think more serious observers of the sport concentrate on the regular season and conference play,.. An end of the year single elimination tournament, while extremely fun to watch, is a very poor tool for identifying the best team in the nation. Using this same tool to measure the relative quality of (64) participating teams is questionable.
I think a basketball specific venue would great,... Carver was designed to do too many different things, so it does most of them in just an OK fashion.
They only matter to the teams trying to make the playoff. We're not one of those teams. I mean sure, every game matters in that you have to pretty much go 12-0 or minimum 11-1 to make the playoff, but in the end only 4 teams make it. You're saying the Iowa Northwestern game matters more than Iowa Indiana in basketball? The whole thing is an excuse. I understand it, there is also a huge difference between a 11AM or even a 230 game on a Saturday vs a 8pm game on a Tuesday. If you live in CR even then you're home at 11, maybe in bed by 12. Des Moines home by 12:30? That's a struggle the next day. Not making excuses, is what it is.
There's always room. Maybe they need to abandon their current municipal buildings south of the courthouse or obliterate a nearby residential neighborhood. What's downhill from the Old Cap mall?
IC looked like a growing little city when I was last there. Time to knock down some old and put up some new.
Just had a thought. Why couldn't you take all the land east of Burlington starting at the river and move south and east until you have enough land? I'm thinking that is all just residential and light industrial. Build it right into that hill so the top concourse would have a spectacular view of downtown. Build that side with glass for the view. Have a large cool river walk thing, maybe terraced until the arena is beyond a flood elevation.
I'm so bored I actually google earth reviewed iowa city. there's an area about 4 blocks south of Dubuque and 6 blocks east of what I think is College that looks like a lot of aging houses and buildings. I'll bet there would be some major federal money to "relocate" the housing. Local contractors and the Trades would love it. Could build a few new restaurants and bars on the displaced businesses and with maybe some 5 or 6 floor mixed residential retail along Dubuque. Parking lots and a large new state of the art arena in the remaining areas.
Massive change but a huge opportunity for the city and the U.
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I mean just look at this season for Iowa football. Iowa wins the Illinois game, or Cooper Dejean doesn’t get hurt in the Nebraska game, and Iowa is playing tonight in the big ten title game, with a rose bowl on the line. You don’t get games with that type of significance until March Madness in college basketball. College basketball is about your body of work to get in the tournament. And once you get there, that’s what people remember. Fair or not.
Yeah college hoops is interesting. For most fans/casual fans, it's all or nothing as it relates to NCAA tournament. Literally a team has one bad game and they're out and entire season is perceived as crap/not worth anything.
It's the beauty and the downside of the NCAA tournament. Everything is judged off that lens. The 2021-22 Iowa team improved as much as I've been a team in many years, they were humming down the stretch once Perkins went into the staring lineup and Keegan turned into a guy capable of going 8-11 from 3-point range in the BTT.
That loss to Richmond will still for a long, long time. I thought Iowa was clearly at worst the 2nd or third best team in that entire region, and could hold their own against everyone in the regional, including Kansas. As much as it bothers me, I'm sure it sucked for the players 10 x as bad.
Fans can act however they want. I find it more enjoyable to look forward to how the team improves during the year and hopefully one of these years the first weekend of the NCAA tournament coincides with Iowa playing two of its best games of the year.
In college basketball at Iowa there are two ways to have lasting glory. Win the regular season conference title or have a deep run in the NCAA tourney. Both the 1979 and 1980 teams are remembered with reverence. 1979 had great success through the regular season, tying for the conference title with the eventual national champion that happened to have one of the greatest basketball players ever before flaming out right away in the tournament. The 1980 team got hot at the right time after a disappointing regular season where they underperformed because of Ronnie’s injury, and ran it all the way to the final four before Ronnie got hurt again.
Officially, we haven’t done either of those since. The elite eight run is also remembered with reverence with the #1 ranking in the regular season, but more so for the failure against UNLV. Nothing else has come close since.
The Big Ten tournament titles are nice, but they aren’t the same as the others. The 2001, 2006, and 2022 teams are going to be more remembered for their failures than the weekend runs.
One interesting note to add, the 1997 team isn’t very revered when it probably should be. This was the Minnesota vacated title season where Iowa and Purdue tied as runner ups, but Iowa beat Purdue both times they played that season.
1996–97 Iowa Hawkeyes men's basketball team - Wikipedia
If you watch any college basketball besides Iowa, you would be aware that there are a number of prominent schools that are have attendance problems as bad or worse than Iowa's. Heck, some ADs would kill for a crowd of 13K+ Our main problem is that the students here have not caught basketball fever even with the type of seasons and the Nationally great players we've put on the floor lately. Are they more self absorbed and phone enslaved than at other schools? I don't know the answer, but it hurts to see the students make a difference at schools like Purdue, Michigan, Michigan St, Iowa St. etc while we have a half empty student section. Yes, the University has not made it that easy to attend, especially in the throes of winter, but surely there should be some solutions to solve this problem, assuming the students even care to attend. And that's the real question. You can't make someone care about something that they have no interest in.
I find it humorous that some believe that the conference tourney format is a “money grab” and meaningless while simultaneously over emphasizing the value of the larger size but identical format March Madness.
The big show is the definition of a money grab, yet determines “the best team” every year. The matchups determine the eventual winner of the tourney far more than any qualitative aspect of college basketball.
The vast majority are eliminated by getting a bad matchup stylistically and you usually have one region play out with better matchups for one of the high seeds.
This is common knowledge among fans and is why region is almost more important than seeding although seeding is still very important.
Rebuilding or building a program requires certain things need to be prioritized first.
When building a quality program you have goals set to occur in a particular order…
Some of you want to skip steps like Iowa is in some mid-major league…. This isn’t the WAC, but even Gonzaga didn’t skip many of these steps.
LOSE BIG
1) Culture
2) System
3) Start recruiting to your system
LOSE SMALL
4) Gradually some individual success ( player awards)
5) A few better recruits arrive (top 150-100)
WIN SMALL
6) A bit more individual success and some team success
7)Program has an identity nationally
8)Even better recruits ( top 50-100)
WIN BIG
9)National player awards, conference championships, tourney championships.
10) Sell out your arena for twenty years…
Fran has Iowa checking a lot of these boxes, to give up on him now would be kind of dumb from my perspective.
The big show is the definition of a money grab, yet determines “the best team” every year. The matchups determine the eventual winner of the tourney far more than any qualitative aspect of college basketball.
The vast majority are eliminated by getting a bad matchup stylistically and you usually have one region play out with better matchups for one of the high seeds.
This is common knowledge among fans and is why region is almost more important than seeding although seeding is still very important.
Rebuilding or building a program requires certain things need to be prioritized first.
When building a quality program you have goals set to occur in a particular order…
Some of you want to skip steps like Iowa is in some mid-major league…. This isn’t the WAC, but even Gonzaga didn’t skip many of these steps.
LOSE BIG
1) Culture
2) System
3) Start recruiting to your system
LOSE SMALL
4) Gradually some individual success ( player awards)
5) A few better recruits arrive (top 150-100)
WIN SMALL
6) A bit more individual success and some team success
7)Program has an identity nationally
8)Even better recruits ( top 50-100)
WIN BIG
9)National player awards, conference championships, tourney championships.
10) Sell out your arena for twenty years…
Fran has Iowa checking a lot of these boxes, to give up on him now would be kind of dumb from my perspective.
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