Sheesh, you take a week off and the team can’t win anything. It was a pretty awful week for the Hawks with two losses in a row against Minnesota and Illinois. No one really expected the Hawks to win in Champaign, but the loss to the Gophers hurt. ESPN’s Bracketology now has the Hawks as a 4 seed, playing UAB, then the winner of Florida/So. Illinois. The Hawks RPI ranking is still high, currently at no. 14 in the nation.

The Hawks really need to win their last two games against Penn St and Wisconsin. Both are home games. If they win those and do well in the Big 10 tournament, the Hawks should keep their high seeding.

On other news, the resignation of Davis at Indiana has a lot of people talking about Alford leaving after the season. Frankly, I wouldn’t mind trading Alford for Davis. Davis never won over the fans in Bloomington, in spite of his success. It is always tough to follow a legend, even when the legend was forced out like Bobby Knight was. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Alford go and I wouldn’t be too upset. Alford’s teams have always underachieved (until this year). His road record against the Big 10 is pretty awful. And the Pierce scandal wasn’t handled to anyone’s liking. So maybe we’ll have a change in the offseason.

The latest update to ESPN’s Bracketology is out and the Hawkeyes are now projected as a 3 seed. They are projected to play Winthrop in the first round and the winner of Oklahoma/Kentucky in the second round. I guess that beat all those ranked teams is helping out the Hawks’ tournament seeding a lot. They are still ranked only 18th in the nation, though their RPI ranking is no. 9.

The rest of the seven Big 10 teams are projected as follows: Ohio St (2), Illinois (4), Mich St (4), Wisconsin (7), Indiana (7), Michigan (9). Some of Iowa’s previous opponents are: Texas (1), NC St (4), Kentucky (7), UNI (6).