RON MALY HAS BEEN WATCHING THE PARADE GO BY FOR A LONG TIME. THIS IS ONE OF HIS WEBSITES.

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

All Right, So It Wasn't a Work Of Art. But When It Comes Time To Pick Teams for the NCAA's Big Dance In March, Nobody Is Going To Bother Asking How Pretty Iowa's 60-55 Vixtory Over No. 12 North Carolina Was In December

By RON MALY

Hey, that was quite a basketball game the Hawkeyes won tonight.

I wouldn't call it a Rembrandt or anything, but when the NCAA selection committee chooses
teams for its Big Dance in March, nobody is going to be asking how pretty Iowa's 60-55 victory over 12th-ranked North Carolina was.

Despite shooting just 32.7 percent, despite Aaron White going without a field goal all night and despite Jarrod Uthoff missing 11 of 13 shots, it was pretty enough to saddle North Carolina with a loss at home in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge that turned out to be one-sided in favor of the Big Ten.

I mentioned that Iowa shot only 32.7 percent from the field. Well, North Carolina's players shot even worse.  Their percentage was a paltry 27.9.

Back in the days when I was doing this stuff for a living, I'd probably have written something like this:

Iowa and North Carolina set collegiate basketball back to the days before the previous century--the 20th century, not the 21st century--with their offenses....

You get the idea.

But a guy only writes that way when the team he's supposed to be covering loses.  

When the team he's covering wins, he writes that the lousy shooting by both teams was the result of outstanding [heck, maybe even tenacious] defenses.

OK, so it wasn't a game for the ages. 

Maybe basketball inventorJames Naismith, wherever he is these days, won't be putting it into his top 10

We all know that. 

Don't forget, I already wrote that it wasn't a Rembrandt.

And we know Dick Vitale, the ESPN commentator, used the lulls [some of them darn long lulls] in the action to talk about his new book. 

For Vitale's sake and his publisher's sake, I  hope he sold a few books during the game.

Mike Gesell, who scored 16 points for Iowa, put together a 3-point play with 1:16 left in the game to decide things.


I thought he outplayed Marcus Paige, the North Carolina guard who is a native Iowan and was a high school standout at Linn-Marion.  Paige scored 13 points and looked pretty ordinary.