This Article is Written By TommyT. To contact TommyT, email digitalzsports@gmail.com
Jon Rothstein gave me hope for the College Basketball season when he gave us a tweet of all tweets, announcing the Battle 4 Atlantis Tournament in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
The Battle 4 Atlantis field is filled with great teams like Duke, West Virginia, Memphis, Ohio State, Texas A&M, Utah, Creighton and Wichita State. Those teams were probably very excited to hear they would be going to the Bahamas to play basketball back in July. Cue the “Sioux Falls is the Bahamas of South Dakota” quips. Now I don’t know, maybe they are excited to be going to South Dakota instead, but I doubt it. I mean at least it isn’t North Dakota because that place is just BORING. They will play at the Sanford Pentagon with a small number of fans in attendance. This field is stacked, along with some other tournaments and it just gives me chills. There hasn’t been college hoops in so long and with March Madness getting cancelled I can’t wait to get back into things.
Now with that said, there’s just one thing I want from this upcoming season. Just give me an Iowa State win over Iowa, please. Iowa is going to be a different breed of a basketball team and have a very good chance of going deep into March Madness. They have Luka Graza, who is almost a guarantee for the Naismith College Player of the Year and John R. Wooden Award, along with one of the best three-point shooters in College Basketball, Jordan Bohannon. They return all five starters, with Toussaint expected to come off the bench with Jack Nunge, Ahron Ulis, Josh Ogundele, Keegan Murray and Kris Murphy. A deep team with lots of leadership and experience gives Iowa fans a lot to cheer for this season.
The only problem I see with this team is their defense. They lacked it through most of the season and just hoped they outscored most of their opponents. Graza is pretty slow on the court and Bohannon struggles with contesting and dealing with bigger PG’s. However, Bohannon has had almost a year in the gym to work and Graza who is a blocking machine down low one-on-one, has only gotten better. I know ISU won’t be as good as they have been in the past, but a win vs Iowa would be very nice. This is because when all my Iowa friends talk about how great this team was I will just simply remind them that ISU won the head-to-head matchup. I cheer for most any midwest basketball school in March Madness, with Iowa included. It would be nice to see Iowa, a team with mostly upperclassman and four year seniors beat some of those one and done schools with their cocky fan bases.