The Hlog

The Iowa Men's Basketball Team is Fifth in the Nation ...

in scoring defense.

That's 328 teams, and Iowa is fifth, allowing 57.8 points per game.

That would be good, except the Hawkyes are 327th in the nation in scoring offense with 56.0 points per game.

Which makes for very dull basketball. Dull like, say, a 5-10 Big Ten record and 12-16 overall mark.

Wisconsin is second nationally in scoring defense, at 55.3 points allowed. That's not as boring when you win, which the Badgers do every year. They're 13-2 in the Big Ten, in first place. Georgetown's scoring defense is fourth in the country, UCLA's in sixth. They're doing OK, too. Great defense typically means glossy records.

But these teams are averaging 80 or more points: North Carolina, Duke, Tennessee, Kansas, Vanderbilt, Memphis. They are all Top 15 teams. They are what basketball should be like, the jazz of sports in which great talent can improvise and floursih and entertain amid a sound structure.

Drake has structure, but is entertaining as well. The 20th-ranked Bulldogs average 72.7 points and allow 60.7. They're 15th in free-throw percentage, 15th in fewest turnovers per game, and 10th in fewest personal fouls per game. Those are signs of a smart team. But the 'Dogs are also 18th in 3-pointers made per game. They're like Todd Lickliter's last Butler team. Smart as whips, but as fun as a swimming pool in July.

And if you saw Leonard Houston's fabulous finish of an alley-oop with a high-flying, one-handed jam in Drake's big win at Butler Saturday, you saw something that would have been the best play in that night's Tennessee-Memphis national showdown.

Excuse me, now, I'm off to watch the Texas-Kansas State game on ESPN. Michael Beasley. I always wondered if anyone named "Michael" would be a good basketball player.




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