what an odd, odd victory for the cats. and an incredibly satisfying one.

michael jenkins. from three point land. with 2.7 seconds left. 75-74 northwestern, over #24 iowa. woof.

vukusic is the star. pierre "the rapist" pierce is the goat. pierce fouls vukusic on a three-point attempt with 12 seconds left in regulation. vukusic makes all three to tie it up. pierce misses an open jumper on the final play of regulation. up two with ten seconds left, pierce turns it over with an errant inbounds pass. and jenkins hits the three. and all is not well, but all is much better in the story.

down 12 with less than three minutes left, the cats did their part to get back in the game, but the hawkeyes certainly helped out northwestern's cause. the hawkeyes went 4 of 9 from the foul line from that point on, and vukusic scored 13 points in the final two minutes to send the game into ot. (wow...although they turned the ball over down the stretch, the cats did go 5-of-5 from the field after they went down by 12)

and, again, they weren't exactly dominant in ot. only 2-6 from the field, but they made the two field goals count.

coolest stat of the game: final field goal: Iowa - OT, 1:48; NU - OT, 0:00.

that said, vukusic was a machine. and a gutty, impressive one at that.

(maybe my impressions aren't so accurate on this team. the numbers were pretty standard for a game this season. they were outrebounded 34-21, they committed 15 turnovers, they allowed the opposition to hit 43% from three, and the cats went 9-of-19 from three. in fact, the only non-standard thing represented an improvement, as they went 18-26 from the foul line.)

(of course, i'm still getting over the fact that they're just not such a good team. in fact, they're a pretty bad team, but we'll sure accept another home victory over a first division big ten team.)

karl ravech just called it the game of the night. they showed three highlights on college gamenight: pierce's miss at the buzzer; parker's turnover on the attempted pass to vukusic in ot; parker's steal; and jenkins' three.

what's not particularly interesting, but still notable, is that people still don't have any understanding that the cats aren't the cats of 20 years ago. "you know things are getting bad when iowa loses to northwestern," is how one local news station's "happy talk" introduced the sports guy. (of course, they fail to notice that the cats swept iowa last season, and that they've beaten iowa in three of the last four in evanston.)

the highlight of another typical misinformed wayne larivee broadcast: "of course, the last two teams a ranked iowa team has visited northwestern, the wildcats came out on top. ironically, last season, the unranked hawkeyes swept northwestern." (wrong)

i wish my thoughts were more cogent about this game. we'll take the win. 9-9 looks a lot nicer than 8-10. the buckeyes squeaked by penn state tonight, so the cats certainly have a chance to move to 3-4 in the conference on saturday.

i'll be taking off for the burbs after work thursday. the gurs pad on friday. who knows what on saturday.