Iowa Basketball: Schedule Looking Good For Young Hawkeyes

Coming off a season that finished with the  #1 overall seed in the NIT, the Hawkeyes will enter the 2017-2018 year with NCAA tournament or bust expectations.

With only one senior on the roster, whose role is likely to be minimal, a tough schedule filled with tournament tested foes could be enough to keep this talented, but young Iowa team out of the big dance for the second year in a row. Especially in the Big Ten conference, when almost every road game is played at a rowdy, sold out arena.

Fortunately for the young Hawkeyes, it looks like they’ve caught a few breaks in the schedule.

You can find the entire schedule here, and you’ll notice that Iowa has only two out of conference road contests, one against arch rival Iowa State and the other against  Virginia Tech in the Big Ten- ACC challenge.

The Hawkeyes also face Colorado on a neutral floor, play Drake instead of a stronger Northern Iowa team in the annual Hy-Vee classic in Des Moines and have three games in the very winnable Cayman Islands Classic. With that schedule, 10 or 11 out of conference wins should be attainable.

Conference Play

While the out of conference schedule gives Iowa plenty of opportunities to rack up early W’s, the big breaks for the Hawkeyes come in conference play. In the 18 game conference schedule, Iowa faces five teams twice, four teams once on the road and four teams once at home. The four teams Iowa avoids facing on the road are:

1-Northwestern, a team returning four starters from its first ever NCAA tournament appearance

2-Purdue, the defending conference champion

3-Wisconsin, who has advanced to at least the sweet sixteen in each of the last four seasons.

4-Michigan State, whom is considered a serious national title contender.

That is some seriously good scheduling luck. Iowa will still face talented Indiana, Michigan and Minnesota teams twice, and they’ll have to play promising Maryland and Illinois squads on the road.

That leaves six conference games, split between perennial cellar dwellers Nebraska, Penn State and Rutgers and an Ohio State team with no sense of direction in the post Thad Matta era.

If Iowa can sweep those six games, which may be wishful thinking, the path to at least 10 conference wins and 20+ total victories becomes pretty clear.

It’s only August, but it’s never too early to start thinking about March.