Iowa basketball: Hawks should climb in week 16 polls

After dropping one spot in the rankings last week, the Iowa basketball team should be climbing in the week 16 AP Polls after an exciting win over Rutgers.

Oddly enough, the Iowa basketball team fell in the rankings last week despite winning both of their games including a road win against Indiana. While I can’t speak for the voters, it made absolutely zero sense to me especially considering I expected the Hawks to jump up a few spots.

Although the Hawks only played one game this week and it went down to the wire against Rutgers, there were a few losses right in front of Iowa that should let them jump up.

#20 Wisconsin just lost to Michigan State by eight points at home while #18 Kansas State just dropped a game to #23 Iowa State at home as well. With the Iowa basketball team on a three game winning streak and reaching 20 wins, will the AP Poll voters respect Fran McCaffery’s squad enough to vote them up?

Recent history says no, and unfortunately despite the excitement of beating Rutgers on a final shot, beating Rutgers isn’t considered a quality win. They are ranked just 112th in NET rank and 85th in KenPom’s adjusted efficiency margin. Even though the Iowa basketball team was on the road, it still doesn’t qualify as a quadrant one win.

Personally, I think the Iowa basketball team should be ranked #18 or #19, but based on what happened last week and with Iowa State getting a lot of love as of late, the Hawks will likely stay stagnant at #21 or even fall to #22.

With a big week next week though, Iowa should actually begin to climb. They play a ranked Maryland team and Indiana at home, and a few teams just above the Hawks have some pretty tough schedules as we alluded to in this article.

Either way, we will find out exactly where Iowa stands when the polls are released late tomorrow morning.