PURDUE SUCKS

"OH MY GOD IOWA WON THEIR BIGGEST GAME OF THE YEAR" - Actual sentiment from some Hawkeye fans.

Good lord. They won at home against a middling Purdue team that can barely stay in the Top 50 of the RPI. It's not like the Boilers are, let's say, ranked. The reasoning, though, was that Iowa needs to win out in order to have a shot to make the NCAA's, so every game is very important.

Yeesh. You'd think a game against a ranked opponent was bigger, but apparently games are only big if Iowa has a shot of winning them.

Let's make something perfectly clear: Iowa's road/neutral record is 3-10. That's arguably the worst road/neutral record in the top 100 of the RPI (you could, I suppose, make an argument for Washington at 1-8, but realize what sort of company Iowa's keeping here). At the very least, no team has as many losses with as few wins.

All that aside... darn good game by the Hawkeyes. The sad thing is this: If Iowa had played up to their potential and not lost at Arizona State (unforgivable) and Drake (were they all drunk?), then they're 18-10, 8-6 in the Big Ten, and probably around a 60 in the RPI. Considering there's a road game at PSU and the BTT coming up, it would be highly conceivable in that scenario that Iowa would have 20 wins on the year... even though there's about a baker's dozen cupcakes in that record. That's probably a 9 seed.

But, I suppose, that is the Alford Era in a nutshell: Worthless speculation in lieu of actual performance. Instead of deep NCAA tourney runs and kids who are proud to wear Iowa jerseys, we get The Hair Gel, talk of "March situations," reminders of his streak of winning records, and any other cheap, self-serving rhetorical trick usually reserved for losing Senate campaigns.

Oh, lastly, I cannot let slide the horror of Purdue's coach's hair last night. Imagine Jimmy Kimmel trying to wear an Alford. I'm trying furiously to find a picture of it right now. Absolutely unfathomably bad.

EDIT: Here is Matt Painter in all his glory. My God.