The Iowa Hawkeyes reached the Final Four in 1980. They reached the Elite Eight in 1987. Doctor Tom Davis kept Iowa nationally relevant for more than a decade, and in the good doctor’s final season in Iowa City — in 1999 — Iowa was a No. 5 NCAA Tournament seed which reached the Sweet 16.
In the 21st century, Iowa has struggled to live up to the standards set by Davis and the man who cracked the Final Four code before him, Lute Olson. The Hawkeyes used to be a program which made the NCAAs more often than not.
Then came Steve Alford.
The man who led Southwest Missouri State to an unexpected Sweet 16 berth, and who learned basketball under Bobby Knight at Indiana, moved up the coaching ladder and returned to the conference where he won a national championship. Alford’s return to the Big Ten was an eagerly-anticipated development in the conference. It occurred precisely as Wisconsin’s Dick Bennett team was preparing for the 1999-2000 season when it made a Cinderella run to the Final Four and changed the Badgers’ sense of what they could achieve.
Alford fell on tough times early in his tenure at Iowa, missing the NCAA Tournament in four of his first five seasons on the job. He got back to the Big Dance in 2005, however, with a young team ready to make a climb. His 2006 team rocketed to a No. 3 seed, creating the genuine belief that maybe, just maybe, Iowa was on its way to prominence once again. The Hawkeyes’ patience with Alford was on the verge of paying off.
Then came the game in Detroit against Northwestern State, a 3-versus-14 game the Hawkeyes were not supposed to struggle in. We know now with the benefit of hindsight how poorly Alford-coached teams have handled the NCAA Tournament. Alford could never get New Mexico to the Sweet 16, and he could never get UCLA past it. In 2006, however, Alford was a mystery relative to March, in part because his track record simply wasn’t that extensive. He had the Sweet 16 run with Southwest Missouri State, but two quick exits at Iowa in 2001 and 2005. This was a proving-ground moment, but no one could have known at the time how damaging this game was going to be for Alford’s career… or Iowa’s trajectory in the 21st century.
After losing to Northwestern State, Alford never figured out the NCAA Tournament… and Iowa never stabilized. The Alford part of the story has already been told, given his failures at New Mexico and UCLA. Iowa has never been as high as a No. 7 seed in the NCAA Tournament since that loss, 14 years ago. The Hawkeyes missed the Big Dance in seven straight seasons following that loss. Fran McCaffery finally got the Hawks back to the Big Show in three straight seasons, but he has never made the Sweet 16. Overall, if you accept that Iowa was an NCAA Tournament team this year — regardless of whether the event was played — Iowa has reached just five NCAA Tournaments in the 14 seasons since the Northwestern State loss. The Hawkeyes have truly never recovered from that game in 2006.
Wisconsin happily accepts these circumstances.