Last season Iowa made the NCAA tournament for the first time in eight years. Barely.
The Hawkeyes lost six of their last seven games heading into Selection Sunday and were handed a spot in the First Four as a No. 11 seed. Coach Fran McCaffery's team promptly lost to Tennessee 78-65 (strange score considering the game went to overtime), and that, as the saying goes, was all she wrote.
In other words it has been a very long time since fans in Iowa City have been able to greet mid-March serene in the knowledge that their team is headed to the NCAA tournament. I expect that to change in 2014-15. Even without former starters Roy Devyn Marble and Melsahn Basabe, this Iowa team should be able to bypass Dayton entirely and proceed directly to the round of 64. I have the Hawkeyes down in my book as a lock.