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Iowa endured its seemly-annual defeat at Illinois tonight.
The Hawkeyes were competitive, as they have been throughout much of the Big Ten season, but an Illini team in desperate need of a victory to keep its NCAA hopes alive had too much to play for to give Iowa a chance to earn a victory.
Instead, the 81-68 defeat added to a collection of 21 losses in the Hawkeyes’ last 22 visits to the so-called “House of ‘Paign.”
That lack of success — interupted only by a victory in 1999 — now spans four Iowa coaches, an equal number of Illinois coaches, and dozens of players.
“It’s a good environment,” Iowa junior Matt Gatens said. “The students are right on top of you. The heckling, it’s in good spirit, and it’s a fun time. It would be good to get out of here with a win sometime.”
Gatens was unaware of Iowa’s lack of success at the Assembly Hall until it was mentioned to him by a reporter earlier in the week.
“It’s something I didn’t realize. I’m sure teams have played well here and didn’t leave with a win,” Gatens said. “Hopefully we can turn that around soon. It didn’t happen tonight.”
Iowa’s Melsahn Basabe is counting on that.
He led the Hawkeyes with 17 points and seven rebounds.
Asked about the play of Illinois’ inside players and whether he hopes to someday duplicate the type of veteran play that Mike Davis and Mike Tisdale gave Illinois, Basabe didn’t hesitate.
“I don’t look at it as someday,” he said.
Iowa has another crack at ending a lengthy road losing streak on Wednesday when it looks to halt an 0-15 run at Michigan State’s Breslin Center.

There’s a reason Melsahn Basabe had shed his signature headband in recent games.
The Iowa freshman is trying to throw a live love his barber’s way.
“I forget the headband one game, but now I’m going without it. I want to show off what good job he does,” Basabe said. “His name is Grant. I go over to his house and get my hair cut. I figured I might as well show off his work.”
Teammate Devyn Marble was also sporting a new haircut before Iowa hit the practice courts Wednesday — also the work of Basabe’s barber.
Marble now has a design cut into his style, a look Basabe decided to bypass.
“I don’t want people to think we’re twins,” Basabe said.
The Hawkeyes returned to practice Wednesday after taking two of the past three days off.
With a bye in the Big Ten schedule this week, Iowa is idle until visiting Illinois on Saturday and McCaffery wanted to give his team a bit of a late-season breather.
“I didn’t want to go back-to-back days off, but a bit of rest right now will be good for everybody,” McCaffery said.
McCaffery hasn’t gotten as much rest as his players.
The Iowa coach spent Sunday on the road recruiting, attended Monday’s practice and then jetted off to the West Coast on Tuesday for another recruiting trip.

As veteran official Ed Hightower squatted in front of a television monitor at the onset of halftime at Carver-Hawkeye Arena on Saturday, Bryce Cartwright settled into a chair in the Iowa locker room.
The timing of Cartwright’s 55-footer that he rattled home as time expired was in question and officials took nearly five minutes to look at every possible angle before deciding that the ball was still on the fingertips of the Hawkeye junior as time expired.
As the three points were taken off the arena scoreboard, leaving Iowa with an eight-point lead over the Wolverines, Cartwright knew that the call had been changed.
“I could hear the crowd reaction. I knew what had happened,” Cartwright said.
Buzzer-beating buckets are nothing new for Cartwright.
He has sent Iowa into the locker room following buzzer-beating baskets four times this season, putting points on the board against Iowa State, Drake, Illinois and Ohio State.
Saturday he simply dealt with Hightower’s decision, scoring the Hawkeyes’ first basket of the second half. He later took and missed Iowa’s final shot in regulation and grabbed an offensive rebound, dribbled beyond the 3-point arc and fired an unsuccessful try at the end of overtime in the Hawkeyes’ three-point loss to the Wolverines.
“I live for those moments,” Cartwright said. “I embrace those situations. I want to be in a game that comes down to the wire and I want to the ball in my hands and I want to win it.”
That didn’t happen Saturday as Cartwright coped with a slight ankle injury he suffered during Thursday’s loss at Northwestern.
He finished the game just 3-of-13 from the field, struggling to get the elevation he needed around the basket and the push that would have helped him on the perimeter.
“If one more of them drop, it’s a different outcome. That’s the disheartening part of the deal,” Cartwright said.
Michigan coach John Beilein said the Wolverines tried to keep a body in front of Cartwright in crunch time.
“We know they like to go to him and we switched defensively on him in the second half, putting Stu (Douglass) on him and he did a good job (holding him to 3-for-11 shooting after halftime),” Beilein said. “We didn’t make it easy for him to get to the rim, which is what we were hoping to accomplish.”

After playing to a three-point game Thursday night in Evanston, both Iowa and Northwestern face a quick turnaround.
The Hawkeyes and Wildcats both return to Big Ten action on Saturday, but the similarities end there.
Coaches Fran McCaffery and Bill Carmody spun different thoughts when asked about the quick turnarounds following the Wildcats’ 73-70 win over Iowa.
Carmody complained about it, while McCaffery promised that it will not become an excuse.
The Wildcats practiced at 9 a.m. on Friday, then boarded a bus for a road trip to Indiana.
The Hawkeyes flew home Thursday night and host Michigan at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday afternoon.
Big Ten scheduling procedures normally require a two-day preparation period between games, but because this is a “wildcard weekend” which allows television networks to delay decisions to secure the best match-ups, that normal two-day window is waived.
“We’ve had short preparations before and we’ve played Michigan already so we know their personnel and what they do,” McCaffery said.
The Hawkeyes will prepare with a film session and walkthrough.
Carmody said he wouldn’t use the quick turnaround as an excuse either, but added he is no fan of it.
“It doesn’t seem quite right and it’s something that the Big Ten needs to take a longer look at,” Carmody said.

How valuable is Melsahn Basabe’s presence on the court to the Iowa basketball team?
Pop singer Bruno Mars pretty much sums up the freshman’s worth to the Hawkeyes in the lyrics to his current hit, “Grenade.”
The song goes something like this:
“I’d catch a grenade for ya, throw my hand on a blade for ya, jump in front of a train for ya, you know I’d do anything for ya.”
Iowa would have done anything to have Basabe on the floor longer during the first half of tonight’s game against Minnesota.
Basabe played just seven minutes in the first half, all during the first 10 minutes of the game as Iowa opened a 14-6 lead over the Golden Gophers.
He took a seat with 10:17 remaining in the first half and by the time he returned after halftime, the Hawkeyes trailed 30-20.
“We needed him. They’re so big and strong,” Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said. “Andrew Brommer gave us good minutes in his absence, but we struggled on the offensive end.”
Basabe entered Sunday’s game after stringing back-to-back double-digit point totals for just the second time this season in Big Ten play.
He finished with 20 points and 13 rebounds in Iowa’s earlier loss at Minnesota, but contributed just four points and four rebounds in 17 minutes before fouling out Sunday.
“When you go against a team like that with that type of size, you need as many big bodies as you can get,” Iowa center Jarryd Cole said.
With Basabe saddled with foul problems and Devon Archie absent for a second straight game because of a concussion, the Hawkeyes lacked needed depth in size against a Minnesota team which has gone big more often than not since losing point guard Al Nolen to an injury.
“They are so long and it creates issues,” wing Eric May said.
The Golden Gophers outrebounded the Hawkeyes 38-25, turning 13 offensive rebounds into nine points.
That size — and Iowa’s lack of it — factored into the Hawkeyes’ worst shooting night of the season.
Iowa’s 34-percent touch, passing the previous low of 35.3 percent in a loss to Xavier on Nov. 19, was a byproduct of a need to shoot perimeter shots against the Gophers’ size.
“You’re not going to finish when you get in there against them,” McCaffery said. “You have to get in there and drive and you’re still going to end up with a jump shot, maybe not a three, but it’s hard to finish.”
McCaffery was not pleased with his team’s execution in a Saturday practice that led up to tonight’s game and he hopes the outcome serves as a bit of a wake-up call for Iowa.
“I’m sure we’ll have their full attention tomorrow,” he said.

Can he do it again?
That’s the question Iowa basketball coach Fran McCaffery has for freshman forward Melsahn Basabe, who finally put together solid back-to-back efforts during the Hawkeye games with Indiana and Wisconsin.
It’s an important step forward for the freshman who has been dominant one game, and then disappeared the next.
Basabe followed his 20-point, 13-rebound game against the Hoosiers with 13 points and 11 boards against the Badgers.
“Melsahn came back strong and that is big thing for him and for us,” McCaffery said. “Going back to back like that is something he has had trouble doing, and it’s progress for him.
“He had a big game at Minnesota last month (20 points, 13 rebounds) and we’ll need that type of effort from him again. We need him to sustain the type of performances he has given us lately.”
When Basabe hasn’t turned in those types of numbers, he typically has been saddled with early foul problems which have limited his minutes.
“The hope would be that he has learned and will continue to do so,” McCaffery said. “We need him.”

Iowa basketball coach Fran McCaffery said this morning that Devon Archie’s return to the court remains a wait-and-see proposition.
The junior forward hasn’t played since suffering what McCaffery now labels a concussion when he hit the floor hard during the first half of last Saturday’s game at Indiana.
“We could use him (against Minnesota on Sunday),” McCaffery said. “He’s been playing well and they are so big. He adds another shot blocker, a rebounder and a runner who outlets the ball to the mix. Hopefully he can play.”
That won’t be determined until headaches Archie dealt with in the days following the Indiana game subside.
“Different people react differently to concussions and until the headaches go away and he passes the tests the medical people have, he won’t be available,” McCaffery said. “He told me Wednesday he felt like he was improving, which is a good sign, but it’s up to the medical personnel.”
Following an off-day on Thursday, Iowa returns to the practice court today to begin preparations for the Golden Gophers.
Minnesota has lost four straight games since losing senior guard and top defender Al Nolen to a broken foot.

As much as Iowa let Wednesday’s game against Wisconsin slip away, the Badgers earned their overtime victory over the Hawkeyes at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
When it mattered most, the Badgers had the ball in the hands of seniors Jon Leuer and Keaton Nankivil and junior Jordan Taylor.
The trio scored all but three of the Badgers’ final 16 points.
“We had to scrap for every shot,” Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan said. “I really liked the way we seized the momentum.”
They played like the veteran players they are at a time when Iowa found itself unable to finish.
One field goal over the final 7:46 of any game makes it difficult to win. One field goal over the final 7:46 of a game against the 13th-ranked team in the country makes it nearly impossible.
Hawkeye coach Fran McCaffery was able to point to a lack of rebounding, specificallly from his guards, and a defense that that didn’t finish the way it started as Iowa’s primary issues.
While holding the Badgers to second-half shooting that mirrored Wisconsin’s 18.2 percent start in the first half was unlikely, McCaffery found the Badgers’ 51.7 percent shooting after the break unacceptable.
“We let some guys get loose, and that’s disappointing,” he said. “In the first half, I felt like we did a great job of defending them. We just didn’t sustain it.”
Ryan left Carver-Hawkeye Arena as impressed with Bryce Cartwright as he was watching on tape.
“We were watching some film on him and I swore in two or three different games he broke a kid’s ankles because of how quickly he can change direction,” Ryan said. “I was working the officials for carries on the sideline, because that’s the only way you can stop a guy like that. The kid is good with the ball.”
Ryan said he felt fortunate that his team was still within five points at the break, crediting his team’s work on the boards with allowing that to happen.
Ryan also chimed in on his team’s first-half shooting performance, joking, “It really upset me in the first half when I heard some Iowa students behind us taking in money for a collection to play horse against our guys. I thought that was pretty clever.”
McCaffery wasn’t in much of a mood to joke.
With Minnesota posing another lengthy issue for Iowa on Sunday, the Hawkeyes will focus on some rebounding work following Wednesday’s effort.
Iowa junior Devon Archie was unavailable for Wednesday’s game. He’s had some minor headaches since tumbling to the floor Saturday at Indiana and has not been cleared to return to the court yet by Iowa’s medical personnel.

Two Iowa assistant basketball coaches didn’t have a front-row seat for Saturday’s win at Indiana.
Andrew Francis and Sherm Dillard were on the road recruiting, scouting potential future Hawkeyes as the current crop of talent was winning its fourth straight game against the Hoosiers.
“At the beginning of the year, we send guys out when we can. When it gets to this point in the season, there are fewer and fewer opportunities to go out and see people play so you have get out when you need to,” Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said.
McCaffery didn’t mind the timing. Francis and Dillard were able to sell some tangible results given Iowa’s two Big Ten wins last week.
“We all know that one of the benefits of coaching in the Big Ten is that every game is on national television, but having a game on ESPN or ESPN2 like the Indiana game was allows a different set of people to watch your team play,” McCaffery said. “Recruits get a chance to see how you play and to go to place like Indiana and be successful in that type of environment, that’s good way to sell your program.”

Things did not start well for Iowa’s Eric May on Saturday at Indiana.
The Hawkeye sophomore missed his first 3-point attempt, went 2-for-4 from the field and grabbed one rebound in the first half against the Hoosiers.
Earlier this season, that would have been enough for May to call it a day.
That didn’t happen Saturday.
May played through his early struggles and his active contributions in the second half helped Iowa rally for its first Big Ten road win of the season.
May went 3-of-4 from the field, had two blocks, two steals and an assist in the second half of the 64-63 victory.
He also helped Iowa get a handle defensively on the Hoosiers’ Jordan Hulls, who scored 15 of his 24 points in the first half.
“Seemed like had 15 right after the jump ball,” coach Fran McCaffery said. “But Eric stepped in and did a real good job there.”
More importantly, he played on, finding a multitude of ways to impact the game in the second half.
“I’ve had games where I would have faded after the start I had. That can’t happen any more,” May said. “I have to play through that stuff and in this game, I did that. I kept battling and made things happen. I let things come to me and when there was an opportunity to make a play, I did what I could do to make it.
“It’s something I need to do to help the team and this was an important win for us, a big win on the road. It’s a step forward.”
It was a step forward for not only the Hawkeyes, but his 11-point game was a step forward for May as well.