Iowa Hawkeyes: Iowa United to honor Chris Street in TBT

When the Iowa United begin playing in TBT, Nicholas Baer will not be wearing his traditional 51. He will be honoring Chris Street by wearing number 40.

If you haven’t been paying attention to recent news the past few weeks, then you may not realize that there is a team being formed to compete in The Basketball Tournament, a $2 million winner-take-all tournament. This team, the Iowa United, will be made up entirely of either the big four universities in the state or of players who are from Iowa (this piece only applies to Urbandale, Iowa native, and former UW-Milwaukee Panther Matt Tiby though).

As it stands today, there are three Drake Bulldogs, one Northern Iowa Panther, two Iowa State Cyclones, and two Iowa Hawkeyes. The Iowa Hawkeyes representing the Iowa United are former star shooting guard Peter Jok and this year’s Iowa basketball team’s senior leader Nicholas Baer.

When these two put on the Iowa United jersey come tournament time though, they will be representing the University of Iowa in more than one way. The first way is obvious. They are former Hawkeyes.

The second though may not be noticed by the casual observer who isn’t familiar with Hawkeyes history, but it’s undoubtedly the most important representation of the two.

Nicholas Baer will be wearing the number 40 in honor of the late Chris Street, a former Iowa Hawkeye basketball player who was killed in a car accident at the age of 20. Since his death, Street’s number has been retired by the University of Iowa and the Iowa basketball team created an award dubbed the Chris Street Award. The Chris Street Award is given annually to the player that best embodies the passion and effort of Chris Street.

While Peter Jok was the recipient of the award in 2017, I couldn’t think of a better choice to represent the Iowa Hawkeyes and the late Chris Street for the Iowa United this summer than Nicholas Baer.

Iowa United General Manager Matthew Crawford had this to say about the decision to honor Street on the Locked On Hawkeyes.

"It’s a great thing for the Hawkeye family and the state of Iowa because Chris meant so much to this state. We thought that was a good way to keep honoring him."

It’s an incredible gesture on the part of the Iowa United to put the pieces in place to do such a thing for not just Chris Street’s family but for the Iowa Hawkeye community, and most fans would agree that Nicholas Baer, a former walk-on turned invaluable role player will wear that number 40 with pride when the Iowa United play in The Basketball Tournament this summer.

As of right now though, the Iowa United need your help to get into the tournament so if you want to see this great collection of Iowa players play, you need to do your part and go to the Iowa United’s page on The Basketball Tournament’s website linked here and click the button that says “Support This Team”. There are 180 supports currently, and they need many more!